Senior Procurement Specialist in Bedford

Seeking a Defence Senior Procurement Specialist Engineering full-time (37.5 hours per week) for 3 months near Milton Keynes, England. Flexible working options, including 4-day week. This activity is inside IR35 and candidates will be required to work via an Umbrella Company.

Job Summary: Focussing on managing supplier delivery, primarily supporting development and production in Armoured Vehicles, Platform Integration, Special Projects and Weapons areas & domains to meet domestic and international programme and business needs. Success requires experience of working in a functional organisation and a blend of proven skills including relationship building and achievement of deliveries on time and in full, through the ability to successfully negotiate and manage procurements, ranging from simple to complex subcontracts. This will be coupled with effectively working within a multi-disciplinary product team including Engineering, Operations and Quality.

The role focusses on supporting a variety of programmes and undertakes activity across multiple categories of goods and services including simple to complex build to print in commodity areas including PCB's, box-builds, cable harnesses, mechanical, COTs and MOTs.

Job Responsibility

• Own and manage strategic, critical, and tactical supplier relationships to achieve best value and identifying and managing supply chain risks.
• Lead end-to-end sourcing and procurement activities for a range of engineered products, including tenders, RFQs, offer evaluation, negotiation, and contract award.
• Monitor and manage supplier performance to meet Schedule, Quality, Cost and Technical requirements, implementing corrective actions and improvement plans as required.
• Act as the primary interface between suppliers and internal customers, ensuring effective communication and issue resolution.
• Exercise delegated procurement authority, managing supplier agreements and purchase orders in line with governance requirements.
• Developing and maintaining strong stakeholder relationships, managing expectations, and influencing outcomes at multiple organisational levels.
• Supporting bids, proposals, and review activities by providing supply chain input as required.
• Driving continuous improvement within procurement and the wider supply chain.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

• Experience procuring complex drawn items (Mechanical Assemblies, PCB-A, Box Build and Cable Harnesses).
• Ability to successfully manage multiple Strategic, Critical and Tactical supplier relationships to overcome complex schedule and cost challenges.
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to effectively manage stakeholder expectations at a variety of levels.
• Capable of identifying and mitigating risks by implementing effective mitigation strategies.
• Excellent commercial skills with the ability to analyse and negotiate best-value agreements.
• Proven track record of adhering to procurement procedures and processes, ensuring compliance, accuracy, and timely execution of all procurement activities.
• Able to complete work under general direction, independently determining and developing approaches to solutions.
• Be an advocate of and has demonstrated the ability to deliver continuous improvement.

Additional Requirements:

• Must be a UK National (due to program security restrictions).
• Ideally holds UK Government Security Clearance.
• Supply chain experience in the defence environment.
• Experience leading or supporting Bids and proposals.
• CIPS.