Indirect Buyer - IT, HR, PMC in Oxford

Purpose of the Role

We are seeking an experienced and commercially driven Category Buyer to manage and develop procurement activities across multiple business locations, covering the IT, HR, Professional & Management Consultancy (PMC), and Administration categories.

The successful candidate will be responsible for developing category strategies, managing supplier relationships, negotiating commercial agreements, ensuring competitive sourcing, and delivering measurable value through cost optimisation, quality improvement, risk management, and service excellence.

This role will work closely with stakeholders across the business to understand requirements, consolidate demand across locations where appropriate, and ensure that procurement activities are aligned with business objectives, policies, budgets, and compliance requirements.

Key Responsibility Areas

• Develop and implement category strategies for IT, HR, PMC, and Administration spend.
• Analyse spend, market conditions, supplier capabilities, and business requirements to identify opportunities for savings and value creation.
• Identify opportunities to consolidate demand across multiple locations and leverage the organisation's overall purchasing power.
• Lead end-to-end sourcing activities, including requirements gathering, RFIs, RFQs, RFPs, tendering, bid evaluation, negotiations, and contract award.
• Create sourcing documentation, commercial evaluation models, and supplier comparison analyses.
• Negotiate pricing, payment terms, service levels, contractual terms, warranties, and other commercial conditions.
• Ensure procurement activities achieve the best combination of cost, quality, service, risk, and total cost of ownership.
• Challenge specifications and requirements where appropriate to ensure commercially effective solutions.
• Monitor supplier performance against agreed KPIs, SLAs, pricing, quality, and service requirements.
• Conduct regular supplier reviews and develop corrective action plans where required.
• Build strong working relationships with stakeholders across IT, HR, HSE, Finance, Operations, Administration, Legal, and business/site management.
• Act as the procurement business partner for assigned categories.
• Ensure all sourcing and purchasing activities comply with company procurement policies, delegated authority limits, and applicable legal and regulatory requirements.

Key Performance Indicators

• Cost savings and cost avoidance delivered.
• Procurement spend under management.
• Category strategy implementation and maturity.
• Supplier performance and SLA compliance.
• Contract coverage and renewal management.
• Competitive sourcing and tendering effectiveness.
• Procurement cycle time and stakeholder satisfaction.
• Procurement policy and process compliance.
• Supplier consolidation and standardisation opportunities.
• Risk reduction and business continuity improvements.
• Value delivered through cross-location procurement initiatives.

Skills And Experience

• Bachelor's degree in Procurement, Supply Chain, Business, Finance, Engineering, or a related discipline.
• Professional procurement qualification such as CIPS or equivalent is desirable.
• Proven procurement/category buying experience, preferably within a multi-site or complex organisation.
• Proven experience managing indirect procurement categories, particularly IT, professional services, HR, HSE, and general administration.
• Demonstrable experience in strategic sourcing, competitive tendering, negotiation, contract management, and supplier performance management.
• Experience managing spend across multiple business units, sites, or locations is highly desirable.
• Strong commercial and analytical capability, with experience using spend data to identify procurement opportunities.
• Experience with ERP (SAP/ARIBA) and procurement systems and strong proficiency in Microsoft Excel and other relevant business tools.

The Ideal Candidate Will Be

• Commercially minded and results-oriented.
• Proactive, analytical, and comfortable working with data.
• Confident negotiating with suppliers and influencing internal stakeholders.
• Able to manage multiple priorities across different business locations.
• Comfortable operating independently while working collaboratively with cross-functional teams.
• Highly organised with strong attention to detail.

What you'll get…

As a new company, our reward scheme is constantly evolving. We continue to review the market to deliver a competitive benefits package, which currently includes private healthcare, company bonus, enhanced parental leave policy and a cash allowance to boost your benefits. We are a flexible business that is committed to promoting work-life balance, partnering with Yulife to provide our team members with total wellbeing support.

You’ll work in a rapidly scaling-up environment as a subsidiary of the multinational corporation, Tata Sons, to help build the UK’s biggest battery manufacturing facility and make your mark in a new organisation.

Agratas is a place to be authentically you. At Agratas we strongly believe that people are at their best when they feel supported and happy in their workplace. To that end we continue to cultivate a diverse workforce which protects the individuality of each team member. We therefore warmly welcome applicants from any race, gender, sexuality, and ability. Should you have a preference in how your suitability is assessed for this role or require any reasonable adjustments please let the Talent Acquisition team know.