Buyer, Ingredients

Job Purpose

As a Procurement Buyer for Ingredients, you will be a member of Kraft Heinz’s North American Zone’s (U.S. and Canada) Procurement team and play a role in supporting critical categories for the business. You will deliver value to the organization by facilitating the strategic sourcing process, establishing and maintaining relationships with our suppliers, and developing the category strategy and ongoing category management. You will help us live our value of Daring to Do Better Every Day by delivering productivity and cash flow targets that are focused on our Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). You will work and collaborate closely with several cross-functional areas.  

Essential Functions & Responsibilities

• Manage mid-level clients and supplier relationships continuously to ensure customer satisfaction, including conducting Supplier Business Reviews.
• Act as an escalation point for performance and risk issues, including supporting supplier issues and working with partners to identify and drive resolution.
• Support sourcing and category management for your assigned categories and deliver on performance goals for categories representing a significant amount of spend. Includes supporting strategic sourcing projects for supplier selection/optimization to implement the category management vision and strategies.
• Lead discussions with suppliers around short to long-term objectives and strategies, ongoing market trends, innovation and technology advances, and potential investment decisions.
• Develop a multi-year category vision and strategy based on the data, insights, and business requirements.
• Build strong business relationships to increase influence over total category strategy.
• Identify and evaluate potential value-generating projects based on their complexity, resources, risk, implementation time, and estimated financial impact.
• Manage a prioritized portfolio of projects for the category in the near and long term.
• Drive accountability throughout the business to ensure category strategy execution.
• In partnership with category managers, implement contracts in accordance with policies and processes.
• Maintain a strong understanding of category dynamics (current market, pricing, cost drivers, industry, and supplier variables) and communicates changes to business partners.

Expected Experience & Required Skills

• Bachelor’s degree in supply chain or operations management, finance, or related field. Candidates with equivalent related experience will be considered instead of a degree.
• Possess at least one year of experience in procurement, purchasing, strategic sourcing, or a related field. Prior experience in ingredients or direct procurement is highly desirable.
• Strong written, verbal, and analytical skills, as well as interpersonal and presentation skills.
• We “own” it at KHC, and success requires a results-oriented, self-motivated, proactive, independent, and responsive individual.
• Able to effectively negotiate and influence business decisions and change.
• Have strong analytical, planning, and execution skills.
• Can be forceful and direct as well as diplomatic.
• Able to multitask and balance projects at varying levels of complexity.
• Intermediate proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook) and have an understanding of source-to-pay tools (SAP, Ariba, etc.).