Senior Category & Sourcing Manager (Major Projects)

Closing Date

2025-01-10

Job Title: Senior Category Manager – Capital Delivery, Major Projects

Location: Falmer, West Sussex (2-3 days a week)

Contract Type: Permanent

Hours: 37 hours per week

Salary: £competitive

There has never been a better time to join our organisation as we build towards a greener future, tackling climate change, minimising our environmental impact and reducing our carbon footprint!

Job Overview

This is an exciting opportunity to be part of Southern Water’s growing Category Management discipline. Category Management at Southern Water is a strategic role with the opportunity to influence and shape Southern Water’s business model and supply chain strategies.

Southern Water will soon be entering into its largest ever 5-year business plan which will see improvements to the environment and development of new sources of water in the South East. As the Senior Category Manager, you will have the opportunity to play a key part in the development of important Water and Wastewater infrastructure in the South East.

• Manage the development and implementation of category and sourcing strategies for Southern Water’s Capital delivery programme and projects.
• Work closely with the Capital Delivery Directors and their teams to develop procurement strategies to meet business needs whilst maximising value creation and minimising total cost of ownership for Southern Water.
• Performance and delivery orientated – ability to lead, motivate and empower others to reach goals, improve and develop their performance.
• Seek and implement cost reductions and value improvements through analysis of market trends, cost drivers, customer requirements, business environment, and industry best practices.
• Work with the sourcing team to support execution of strategic and tactical sourcing, negotiating and contracting activities for the relevant categories and sub-categories, within regulated procurement best practice compliant with the Utilities Contract Regulations (UCR).
  
  

About You

• You will have experience of construction or capital procurement, ideally working in a regulated procurement environment.
• You will have relevant qualifications (CIPS chartership / Bachelors degree in business or a related field) and have significant experience working with leading-practice tools, techniques and processes covering category strategy development.
• You will be a great planner with robust project management capabilities, with confidence in leading a strategic purchasing team within a cross functional business which requires the soft skills to manage conflict resolution and objection handling using a range of approaches to influence key stakeholders across all levels.
• Excellent hands-on experience of Source to Pay technologies – able to use effectively to support delivery and for tracking status and good working knowledge of e-procurement tools (e.g. Jaggaer, Ariba, Coupa, Tradeshift etc).
  
  

Package

Benefits

This role will be full time Monday to Friday with a hybrid approach to working between our Durrington office and home. We are offering a competitive salary, depending on skills and experience, as well as other benefits including:

• Generous pension up to 11% company contribution
• 25 days annual leave
• Life assurance equal to 4x salary
• Salary sacrifice electric car scheme (after 6 months service)
• Health Cash Plan
• Full funded eye tests
• Two paid volunteering days a year
• Occupational health service
• Discounts with over 800 popular retailers
• Digital GP service
• Study support may be available for job-related qualifications
• Competitive maternity leave and flexible return to work options
• Cycle to work scheme
  
  

Join our Procurement team and see how far your career could progress with a company committed to career progression, training and development opportunities, our customers and the environment.

Does this opportunity excite you but you’re not 100% sure if you meet all the requirements for the role? Or are you concerned that ‘normal’ office hours aren’t possible given your personal circumstances? Whilst we can’t accommodate every flexible working request, we’ll try to find a practical solution. So why not engage with us and find out more about this role?

If this role isn’t quite what you’re looking for but are keen to be contacted about opportunities at Southern Water, you can register your details here: Introduce Yourself (myworkdaysite.com)

Our customers are at the heart of everything we do, because delivering water for life is our core purpose. To achieve this, we need 24/7 support in place to resolve incidents quickly and efficiently. All our employees understand the importance of out-of-hours incident support – because when problems appear, fixing them is our top priority. That’s why our people join together and support when and however needed to make sure our customers get the service they deserve. Joining the Southern Water family means you’ll become part of our incident support team. During your interview, your manager will speak to you about any incident support rotas that apply to your position.

Privacy Statement

Please note: If you are an existing Southern Water employee, you will need to confirm within your application that your Manager is aware of your application.

All applicants must be eligible to live and work in the UK. You will need to provide evidence of eligibility (e.g. a passport or long birth certificate and proof of NI) and current proof of address (dated within the last 3 months), will be required as part of the recruitment process. If you do not meet these criteria, your application will not be considered.