Senior Supplier Relationship Manager in Abingdon

Would you like to help enrich the lives of learners around the world? At RM, we've been pioneers of education technology since 1973. We provide technology and resources to the education sector, supporting over 20 million students and improving educational outcomes worldwide. What we do helps learners at all stages of their lives, from preschool to higher education and professional qualification; we partner with schools, examination boards, governments, and professional organisations globally to make learning more accessible, more engaging, and more impactful.

RM operates through three divisions: Assessment (digital assessment and marking solutions), Technology (managed services, hardware, and software for schools), and TTS (educational resources). Within the assessment market we are experts in providing solutions for online exam testing and marking and the management and analysis of educational data. We work with government ministries, exam boards and professional awarding bodies for high stakes assessment such as GCSEs, ALevels, and professional qualifications. Each year, our software is used globally to conduct hundreds of thousands of on-screen tests and to mark millions of paper based scripts. For over a decade we have been partnering with the world's leading awarding bodies to deliver intuitive, secure, and reliable e marking solutions.

Responsibilities

• Provide senior, proactive ownership of RM Assessment's tier one supplier performance, operational risk and resilience, ensuring that critical externally delivered services remain effective, controlled and capable of supporting assessment delivery.
• Maintain the tier one supplier risk register; identify emerging threats, dependencies and concentration risks; ensure mitigations have clear owners; and establish tested contingency and out of hours support arrangements.
• Lead senior operational relationships with tier one suppliers. Establish evidence based performance governance, challenge underperformance and secure practical recovery actions.
• Own supplier management readiness as new services move into live operation, including ITTS services, the dual remote proctoring supply base and any future second scanning provider.
• Own the supplier cost centre, forecasts and monthly variance reporting, working with Finance and commercial contract owners to challenge costs and inform decisions.
• Line manage and develop two Supplier Managers, provide their senior escalation layer and build consistent, resilient ways of working across the supplier portfolio.
• Give senior leaders a clear view of supplier health, risk and recommended action, working across Operations, Product, Commercial, Finance and project teams.

Experience and capabilities

• Substantial experience managing strategically important suppliers in an operationally critical environment.
• Strong operational risk, service continuity and problem solving judgement, with evidence of anticipating issues rather than only responding to incidents.
• Ability to challenge senior supplier stakeholders constructively and convert poor performance into owned, measurable recovery action.
• Commercial and financial awareness, including forecasting, cost control and working effectively with Finance and contract owners.
• Confident cross functional leadership and the ability to establish clear accountability where responsibilities overlap.
• Experience leading and developing supplier, service or operational management professionals.
• Clear written and verbal communication, including concise risk reporting and calm escalation during high consequence events.

Desirable experience

• Management of outsourced technology enabled or high volume operational services.
• Experience of seasonal, regulated or time critical delivery environments.
• Experience introducing multi supplier resilience or transitioning new suppliers into live service.

Measures of success

• Every tier one supplier has clear ownership, governance and meaningful performance measures.
• Supplier risks and dependencies are visible, actively controlled and escalated early.
• Contingency and out of hours arrangements for critical services are agreed and tested.
• New supplier services enter live operation with an explicit and accepted management model.
• Forecasts are reliable and material cost variances are understood and acted upon.
• The Supplier Managers operate as a coherent team with effective leadership and escalation.

What's in it for you?

As well as a competitive salary and our core benefits package which includes private medical healthcare, life assurance and a Group Personal Pension Plan with higher contribution levels available. There are lots of voluntary benefits too. You could buy additional annual leave, join our dental plan, sign up for a health assessment, or take part in our cycle to work scheme. You could even earn yourself an extra bonus for successfully recommending a friend or family member for a position within RM. We have My Work which provides office based colleagues with multi location and hybrid working options. As well as your office base, you can spend a proportion of your time working at other locations that suit your role and your life, including home, other offices, customer sites, distribution centres or on the move. We encourage you to discuss arrangements for this role with your potential line manager during the recruitment process.

To better reflect the society that we serve, we're committed to building a diverse workforce and creating an inclusive and welcoming environment for all. To achieve this, we create teams of talented people from different backgrounds and experiences and strive to be a business where our people can bring their whole selves to work, we also want to make the recruitment process as inclusive as possible for everyone. Should you require additional support with your application or through the interview process, please contact us at . Unfortunately, we are unable to offer visa sponsorship for this role.