Category Manager – IT Infrastructure

A rare opportunity to join our global Financial Services client as a senior level Category Manager – IT Infrastructure to drive high level category strategy. We are seeking a deeply experienced Procurement or Category Manager with strong technology category expertise and significant specialist knowledge in IT Infrastructure and Hosting.

Category Management is part of the Procurement team and is responsible for setting the strategies to holistically manage and negotiate all external spend in order to optimise costs while balancing service levels, risks, Supplier Diversity, and strategic business objectives.  Category Management brings expert knowledge of external supply markets in partnering with business stakeholders to define and develop strategic opportunities to improve the value of our third-party solutions.

As Category Manager – IT Infrastructure, you will:

• Report into the Category Lead and be responsible for developing and driving category strategies across a cluster of critical spend sub-categories categories comprising IT functional and BU spend (for data centre technology, hardware, networking and distributed technology, data equipment, telecoms, and associated infrastructure services.
• Develop short and long term sourcing plans to generate annualised savings.
• Align the category plan to business objectives and translate those plans into Sourcing activities for the Sourcing team. 
• Closely monitor the sourcing projects to ensure delivery remains aligned to desired business outcomes.  The scale of influence is approximately £1 billion worth of spend.
• Be operating on a genuinely global platform as well as enjoying substantial autonomy and responsibility.
• Be interacting at the most senior level both internally and externally and must possess relevant interpersonal skills and gravitas.

For the Category Manager – IT Infrastructure role, we are looking for candidates who are/have:

• Significant experience of working within a complex global multi-business unit organisation, ideally including Financial Services.
• Successful Strategic Sourcing experience within IT Infrastructure & Hosting on a global basis.
• Proven track record of identifying & scoping sourcing projects which generate sustainable annualised savings.
• Experience dealing with senior level stakeholder to executive and board level.
• Experienced in working within a regulated environment.
• Demonstrate a successful team leadership and development experience at a range of staff levels.

• Supply chain/value chain design and implementation.
• Degree educated ideally with CIPS qualification.

To register your interest in this Category Manager – IT Infrastructure role, or any other opportunities please forward your full CV to info@gpa-procurement.com, stating your location and current salary details or contact us on 01423 520080 for a confidential conversation.

GPA Procurement (UK) Limited (GPA) acts as an employment business and an employment agency. GPA is committed to equal opportunity and diversity.