Senior Strategic Sourcing Leader — Global Spend

- United States - VWR International; United States; Remote; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

VWR International is seeking a Strategic Sourcing Manager in the United States to oversee large-scale sourcing initiatives in chemicals and life-science products. The role focuses on developing multi-year category strategies, optimizing supplier performance, and negotiating contracts to deliver sustainable value and supply continuity.

You will partner across functions, manage cross-regional supplier relationships, and drive cost savings while mitigating risks in a complex global environment.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in supply chain, business, finance, engineering, science, or a related field.
• Five or more years of progressive experience in strategic sourcing, category management, procurement, or supply chain within a complex, global, or regulated environment.
• Demonstrated success leading competitive sourcing events, complex negotiations, supplier selection, and contract implementation.
• Relevant category experience in laboratory chemicals and life-science products, raw materials,.
• Experience managing significant spend portfolios and delivering measurable savings, value creation, supplier performance, and risk-reduction outcomes.
• Experience with tendering chemicals and life-science products, market analysis, spend analytics, and total-cost-of-ownership models.
• Professional sourcing or supply-chain certification, such as CPSM or CIPS, is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Partners in the development and execution of multi-year category strategies for a complex supplier portfolio, aligned with business, growth, margin, quality, and supply-continuity priorities.
• Lead end-to-end strategic sourcing initiatives, including opportunity assessment, market analysis, request-for-proposal development, competitive tendering, supplier evaluation, negotiation, selection, contracting, and implementation.
• Use spend, cost, demand, and market data to identify value opportunities; build fact-based business cases; establish savings targets; and drive initiatives through execution and benefits realization.
• Negotiate commercial agreements that optimize total cost of ownership, service, quality, innovation, payment terms, capacity, and risk protection.
• Build strategic relationships with key suppliers; establish performance expectations and scorecards; conduct business reviews; and lead corrective, development, and continuous-improvement actions.
• Partner with portfolio, operations, commercial, marketing, quality, finance, and other stakeholders to translate business needs into sourcing strategies and ensure successful adoption.
• Collaborate with Global Sourcing to aggregate demand, leverage enterprise scale, and identify regional and global opportunities.
• Source chemicals and life-science products and company-branded manufacturing operations.
• Assess and mitigate supplier, geopolitical, capacity, quality, regulatory, and continuity risks; develop contingency and alternate-source strategies where appropriate.
• Partner with legal counsel and relevant stakeholders to ensure contracts meet company standards and applicable legal, regulatory, and compliance requirements.
• Lead annual price negotiations and proactively monitor commodity, inflation, supplier, and market trends to inform sourcing decisions and forecasts.
• Provide clear updates on sourcing pipelines, financial impact, supplier performance, key risks, and recommended actions to business leaders.
• Lead and develop sourcing professionals, where applicable, fostering accountability, commercial excellence, collaboration, and a continuous-improvement mindset.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

Job description

VWR International is seeking a Strategic Sourcing Manager in the United States to oversee large-scale sourcing initiatives in chemicals and life-science products. The role focuses on developing multi-year category strategies, optimizing supplier performance, and negotiating contracts to deliver sustainable value and supply continuity.

You will partner across functions, manage cross-regional supplier relationships, and drive cost savings while mitigating risks in a complex global environment.