Engineering Buyer in Litherland

Do you excel at building supplier relationships and negotiating commercial value that strengthen supply chain performance and improve the availability of critical engineering materials and services? Are you confident in delivering cost-effective, compliant, and timely procurement that supports engineering, maintenance, and operational teams? Do you thrive in a role where strategic purchasing decisions directly influence service levels, asset reliability, lead times, and broader corporate objectives?

Your role

As Engineering Buyer, you will play a key role in a fast-moving procurement team, partnering closely with Engineering and Maintenance to understand technical needs and ensure timely, compliant purchasing. You'll use your commercial insight and technical understanding to source materials, components, equipment and specialist services - balancing cost, quality, and lead time to deliver best-value procurement.

You'll source engineering materials and services, build strong supplier relationships, monitor performance, and support negotiations that deliver value and reduce risk. Working with Engineering, Inventory, and Finance, you'll help optimise stock, resolve queries, minimise downtime, and drive cost-saving and process-improvement initiatives, all while promoting safe, ethical, and inclusive procurement practices.

What you'll bring

For this role, we seek:

• Essential: Strong purchasing or procurement experience ideally within Engineering, Maintenance, Manufacturing, Transport, Utilities, FM, or similar technical environment.
• Strong negotiation, problem-solving, and commercial awareness.
• Proficiency in ERP systems (e.g., SAP) and Microsoft Excel (VLOOKUP, pivot tables).
• High attention to detail and ability to manage multiple priorities in a fast-moving environment.
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to engage confidently with technical stakeholders at all levels.

• Desirable: Experience supporting maintenance teams, reliability engineering, or asset management environments.
• Understanding of engineering terminology, mechanical/electrical components, and industrial supply chains.
• Ability to interpret technical specifications, drawings, or bill of materials (BOMs).
• Supplier performance management and KPI reporting experience.
• CIPS qualification or willingness to work toward it (fully funded if applicable).
• Full UK driving licence.

Who are we

Already one of the UK's leading port and logistics companies, our business contains several Statutory Harbour Authorities (SHAs) and as such operate within a Regulated environment. We continue to commit substantial capital investment across our operations to achieve our vision of becoming the UK's leading port operator. We have ambitious plans to grow and transform the supply chain to benefit our customers. Our investments are decarbonizing our operations, which in turn is helping us work towards our goal of having Net Zero Port Operations by 2040. Much of our success depends on our unrivalled facilities and technology. But in our sector, it comes down to having the right talent to enable our organisation to grow.

What we can offer you

In addition to a competitive salary, we have a strong track record of developing our people to expand their skills and experience and develop their careers. Valuing and rewarding our workforce is important to us, which is why we offer a fantastic range of flexible benefits to choose from, such as:

• 27 days holiday per annum (plus bank holidays)
• Matched contribution pension scheme up to 10%
• Peel Ports Flexible Benefits including salary sacrifice car scheme, healthcare cash plans, Cycle2Work Scheme, critical illness insurance, gyms, retail vouchers
• Commitment to learning and personal development
• We promote good physical and mental health and can provide additional support to colleagues via our employee assistance programme when required.

If you believe you have the skills and experience, we are seeking, and you want to join a thriving and ambitious place to work, we'd really like to hear from you!