Commodity Manager II (Energy)

First Solar, Inc.; Perrysburg Township (OH); On-site; USD 84,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

First Solar, Inc. is seeking a Commodity Manager II for Global Energy Sourcing to develop and execute sourcing strategies for electricity, natural gas, and renewable energy across multiple sites and regions.

You will lead competitive sourcing events, evaluate suppliers, and align contracts with factory operations and corporate goals. The role requires a Bachelor's degree in a related field and at least five years of progressive sourcing experience, with hands-on leadership of RFIs, RFPs, and

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in a related discipline and 5+ years in strategic sourcing or energy procurement.
• Proven experience leading RFIs/RFPs, negotiations, and contract activities.
• Experience across multiple manufacturing sites, regions, or markets.
• Strong understanding of electricity, natural gas, and energy-market drivers.
• Proficiency with ERP, e-sourcing, CLM, and BI tools; data-driven mindset.
• Ability to apply TCO, cost benchmarking, risk analysis, and supplier segmentation.

Responsibilities

• Develop, implement, and improve global or regional energy sourcing strategies.
• Lead end-to-end RFIs, RFQs, RFPs, negotiations, and supplier selections.
• Negotiate energy supply, utility arrangements, and related contracts.
• Build cost models and evaluate pricing alternatives and scenarios.
• Develop market outlooks and budget assumptions for stakeholders.
• Manage supplier relationships and drive performance improvements.

Skills

Global energy sourcing

RFx leadership

Stakeholder management

Contract negotiation

Cost modeling

Data analytics

Energy economics

AI-enabled procurement awareness

Education

Bachelor's degree in Supply Chain Management or related field

Tools

Oracle

Power BI

ERP system

e-sourcing tools

Contract lifecycle management

Spend analytics

Job description

First Solar reserves the right to offer you a role most applicable to your experience and skillset.

Basic Job Functions:

Commodity Manager II, Global Energy Sourcing independently develops and executes sourcing strategies for electricity, natural gas, utilities, renewable energy, energy services, and bulk industrial gases across multiple manufacturing sites, countries, or regions. The role owns sourcing outcomes across cost, supply continuity, supplier performance, contractual risk, sustainability, and stakeholder service. It leads complex competitive sourcing events and negotiations, converts consumption and market data into sourcing decisions, manages strategic supplier relationships, and develops resilient commercial solutions that support factory operations, network expansion, and enterprise financial objectives.

Education/Experience:

Required

• Bachelor's degree in Supply Chain Management, Business, Finance, Economics, Engineering, Energy Management, Sustainability, Operations, or a related discipline.
• Five + years of progressive experience in strategic sourcing, commodity or category management, energy procurement, utility management, supplier management, commercial operations, or a related field.
• Demonstrated experience independently leading competitive sourcing events, supplier evaluations, commercial negotiations, contracting activities, and implementation workstreams.
• Experience managing moderately complex or high-value categories across multiple manufacturing locations, business units, or geographic markets.
• Strong understanding of electricity, natural gas, utility-rate structures, energy-market drivers, bulk-gas commercial models, and supply-continuity risks.
• Experience applying total cost of ownership, cost modeling, price benchmarking, scenario analysis, supplier segmentation, and risk assessment.
• Proficiency with ERP, e-sourcing, contract lifecycle management, spend-analytics, business-intelligence, and supplier-performance tools.
• Demonstrated ability to use AI-enabled procurement or analytical applications for market analysis, proposal evaluation, risk sensing, scenario development, or contract review while critically validating the results.

Preferred

• Master's degree in Business Administration, Supply Chain, Finance, Engineering, Energy, Sustainability, or a related discipline.
• Experience procuring energy or bulk gases within a multinational manufacturing, semiconductor, solar, chemical, automotive, aerospace, data center, or energy-intensive operation.
• Experience with deregulated power and natural-gas markets, utility tariffs, renewable power structures, power purchase agreements, renewable energy certificates, guarantees of origin, or comparable environmental instruments.
• Experience sourcing bulk or on-site industrial gases such as nitrogen, oxygen, argon, hydrogen, helium, carbon dioxide, or specialty gases.
• Understanding of index-based pricing, transportation and pipeline charges, take-or-pay provisions, minimum-volume commitments, demand response, renewable claims, and energy-related regulatory considerations.
• Experience with Oracle, Power BI, energy-management platforms, or market-intelligence applications.
• CPSM, CSCP, C.P.M., CPP, Certified Energy Manager, or other relevant professional certification.
• Working knowledge of category-management frameworks, Porter's Five Forces, Kraljic segmentation, supplier preferencing, clean-sheet costing, and structured negotiation methodologies.

Required Skills/Competencies:

• Global Energy Category Strategy: Advanced ability to translate enterprise demand, market conditions, site requirements, sustainability goals, and commercial risks into actionable multi-year sourcing strategies.
• Energy Economics and Price-Risk Analysis: Ability to evaluate energy-market fundamentals, index movements, tariff structures, consumption patterns, price exposures, timing alternatives, and commercial scenarios.
• Complex Energy Contracting: Strong knowledge of energy, utility, renewable, and bulk-gas pricing mechanisms, service-level provisions, volume commitments, performance requirements, and contractual risk allocation.
• Total Cost and Scenario Modeling: Ability to construct and interpret cost models, forecasts, sensitivity analyses, sourcing scenarios, and business cases supporting commercial decisions.
• Supplier and Market Intelligence: Ability to assess supplier capabilities, market positions, financial conditions, operating risks, technology developments, regulatory changes, and emerging energy alternatives.
• Accountability: Owns outcomes endtoend with a strong sense of commitment and integrity. Following commitments, uses data to track results, learns quickly from misses, and converts setbacks into continuous improvement aligned to organizational goals.
• Effective Communication Skills: Communicates with clarity, structure, and empathy. Tailors messages to audience needs and ensures understanding of actions, ownership, and next steps.
• Financial Acumen: Understands financial drivers and implications of decisions. Uses costbenefit thinking to manage resources responsibly and support sound business choices.
• Data-Driven & Evidence-Based Thinking (Analytical Aptitude): Frames problems clearly, gathers and evaluates relevant data, tests assumptions (including AIgenerated insights), and translates analysis into sound decisions while balancing detail with speed.
• Problem Solving Skills: Identifies root causes using structured methods, tests countermeasures, prevents recurrence, and scales effective solutions.
• Execution: Translates strategy into measurable results by managing dependencies, removing obstacles, and driving work to closure with accountability and urgency.
• Collaboration: Cocreates solutions across teams and functions by leveraging diverse strengths, building alignment in matrix environments, and prioritizing enterprise outcomes over siloed success.
• Negotiating Skills: Prepares options, balances interests, and achieves mutually beneficial agreements while maintaining strong relationships.
• Influencing Skills: Builds alignment and commitment through credibility, data, and logic. Effectively navigates tradeoffs, influences without authority, and gains buyin across levels and functions in a matrixed environment.
• Business Partnership: Connects functional expertise to business outcomes by translating needs across stakeholders, aligning priorities, and enabling informed tradeoffs that create enterprise value.
• Systems Thinking: Understands how people, processes, technology, and decisions interact endtoend and optimizes for enterprise outcomes.
• Process and Project Management Expertise: Plans, executes, and improves projects and processes by managing scope, resources, and stakeholder alignment to deliver results.

Essential Responsibilities:

• Develop, implement, and continuously improve global or regional sourcing strategies for assigned energy, utility, renewable energy, and bulk-gas portfolios.
• Consolidate requirements across multiple sites and identify demand-aggregation, contract-alignment, supplier-leverage, and sourcing-wave opportunities.
• Lead end-to-end RFIs, RFQs, RFPs, competitive negotiations, supplier selections, sourcing recommendations, awards, and implementation activities.
• Negotiate energy supply agreements, utility arrangements, bulk-gas contracts, framework agreements, service agreements, and related commercial terms.
• Build total-cost models and evaluate pricing alternatives, including fixed, indexed, blended, tariff-based, transportation-inclusive, or other applicable structures.
• Develop market outlooks, pricing scenarios, budget assumptions, sensitivity analyses, and sourcing recommendations for Finance and business stakeholders.
• Lead supplier business reviews and corrective-action initiatives to improve cost, service, quality, and delivery performance.
• Develop category risk-management plans addressing supplier, market, regulatory, infrastructure, and geopolitical risks.
• Identify and execute supplier consolidation, standardization, and demand-management opportunities that improve total cost of ownership.
• Support manufacturing expansion projects, utility infrastructure requirements, and capacity-planning initiatives through commercial sourcing strategies.
• Manage supplier relationships and performance across cost, service, reliability, responsiveness, compliance, innovation, and continuous improvement.
• Assess supplier, market, regulatory, contractual, infrastructure, and geopolitical risks and establish appropriate mitigation or contingency actions.
• Partner with Manufacturing, Facilities, Engineering, Finance, Sustainability, Legal, EHS, Treasury, and site leadership to align sourcing strategies with operational requirements.
• Support renewable-energy and decarbonization objectives by evaluating commercially credible renewable supply structures, energy attributes, and lower-carbon alternatives.
• Establish category performance measures covering savings, cost avoidance, budget performance, supply reliability, contract coverage, supplier performance, and risk.
• Lead resolution of significant supplier, contract, pricing, service, or implementation issues.
• Provide category guidance, sourcing support, and informal coaching to less-experienced procurement professionals and site stakeholders.
• Identify opportunities for standardization, demand management, specification optimization, supplier consolidation, process simplification, and commercial innovation.
• Apply approved AI-enabled tools to monitor market signals, analyze spend and consumption, compare proposals, identify contract risks, develop scenarios, and prioritize supplier or sourcing actions.
• Design and lead practical AI-supported workflows for proposal analysis, market-intelligence synthesis, pricing-anomaly detection, contract review, or supplier-risk monitoring.
• Evaluate AI-generated recommendations using validated business, supplier, market, financial, legal, and operational information before presenting sourcing decisions.
• Train stakeholders and sourcing colleagues on responsible use of approved AI tools, including validation, confidentiality, documentation, and human-decision requirements.
• Other duties as assigned.
• Job description subject to change at any time.

Reporting Relationships:

• This position will not have direct reports.

Travel:

• Up to 20%

Estimated Salary Range:

• $84,200 - $120,000 annually

US Physical Requirements:

Office Physical Requirements:

All positions in our office require interaction with people and technology while either standing or sitting. In order to best service our customers, internal and external, all associates must be able to communicate face-to-face and on the phone with or without reasonable accommodation. First Solar is committed to compliance with its obligations under all applicable state and federal laws prohibiting employment discrimination. In keeping with this commitment, it attempts to reasonably accommodate applicants and employees in accordance with the requirements of the disability discrimination laws. It also invites individuals with disabilities to participate in a good faith, interactive process to identify reasonable accommodation that can be made without imposing an undue hardship.

Potential candidates will meet the education and experience requirements provided on the above job description and excel in completing the listed responsibilities for this role.All candidates receiving an offer of employment must successfully complete a background check and any other tests that may be required.

Equal Opportunity Employer Statement:

First Solar is an Equal Opportunity Employer that values and respects the importance of a diverse and inclusive workforce. It is the policy of the company to recruit, hire, train and promote persons in all job titles without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, veteran status, disability, sexual orientation, or gender identity. We recognize that diversity and inclusion is a driving force in the success of our company.