Senior Supplier Risk & Performance Lead

RM Education; Abingdon; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Private medical healthcare

Life assurance

Group Personal Pension Plan

Job summary

RM Education is seeking an experienced Senior Supply Chain Lead to ownership of supplier performance, risk, and resilience for RM Assessment. You will manage tier‑one suppliers, drive governance, and ensure continuity of critical services across assessment delivery.

In this role you will lead cross‑functional teams, forecast costs, and own the supplier cost centre. We offer a hybrid working model with multiple locations and a commitment to diversity and inclusion.

Qualifications

• Substantial experience managing strategically important suppliers in an operationally critical environment.
• Strong operational‑risk, service‑continuity and problem‑solving judgement.
• Ability to challenge senior supplier stakeholders constructively and convert poor performance into owned, measurable recovery action.
• Commercial and financial awareness, including forecasting, cost control and working effectively with Finance and contract owners.
• Confident cross‑functional leadership and the ability to establish clear accountability where responsibilities overlap.
• Experience leading and developing supplier, service or operational‑management professionals.
• Clear written and verbal communication, including concise risk reporting and calm escalation during high‑consequence events.

Responsibilities

• Provide senior, proactive ownership of RM Assessment’s tier‑one supplier performance, operational risk and resilience, ensuring that critical externally delivered services remain effective, controlled and capable of supporting assessment delivery.
• RM Assessment depends on a small number of strategically important suppliers for session‑critical services. The Senior Supply Chain Lead provides one consolidated view of those relationships, anticipates risk, holds suppliers to account and ensures concerns are escalated before they become delivery incidents.
• Maintain the tier‑one supplier risk register; identify emerging threats, dependencies and concentration risks; ensure mitigations have clear owners; and establish tested contingency and out‑of‑hours support arrangements.
• Lead senior operational relationships with tier‑one suppliers. Establish evidence‑based performance governance, challenge underperformance and secure practical recovery actions.
• Own supplier‑management readiness as new services move into live operation, including ITTS services, the dual remote‑proctoring supply base and any future second scanning provider.
• Own the supplier cost centre, forecasts and monthly variance reporting, working with Finance and commercial contract owners to challenge costs and inform decisions.
• Line‑manage and develop two Supplier Managers, provide their senior escalation layer and build consistent, resilient ways of working across the supplier portfolio.
• Give senior leaders a clear view of supplier health, risk and recommended action, working across Operations, Product, Commercial, Finance and project teams.

Skills

Supplier management

Operational risk

Leadership

Forecasting & cost control

Cross-functional collaboration

Communication

Job description

RM Education is seeking an experienced Senior Supply Chain Lead to ownership of supplier performance, risk, and resilience for RM Assessment. You will manage tier‑one suppliers, drive governance, and ensure continuity of critical services across assessment delivery.

In this role you will lead cross‑functional teams, forecast costs, and own the supplier cost centre. We offer a hybrid working model with multiple locations and a commitment to diversity and inclusion.