IT Procurement Category Manager

About The Weather Company:

The Weather Company is the world’s leading weather provider, helping people and businesses make more informed decisions and take action in the face of weather. Together with advanced technology and AI, The Weather Company’s high-volume weather data, insights, advertising, and media solutions across the open web help people, businesses, and brands around the world prepare for and harness the power of weather in a scalable, privacy-forward way. The world’s most accurate forecaster globally, the company reaches hundreds of enterprise clients and more than 360 million monthly active users via its digital properties from The Weather Channel (weather.com) and Weather Underground (wunderground.com).

Job brief:

As a Lead Procurement Category Manager at The Weather Company, you will help implement procurement and purchasing processes for technology categories in alignment with the strategic requirements set forth by Procurement and the business units. This role is responsible for all strategic and tactical aspects of supply chain procurement, including stakeholder management, requirements intake, product/service cost reduction, supplier negotiations, strategic sourcing, supplier performance management and improvement, project management, and the daily operational processing of requests and purchase orders (POs).

The impact you'll make:

• As a Category Manager, you will support sourcing needs as required by the business.
• Process procurement steps for assigned categories.
• Serve as the Procurement interface, acting as a liaison for procurement activities with IT and engineering functions.
• Collaborate directly with C-level leaders on all Procurement requirements.
• Manage multiple spend categories and strategic suppliers effectively.
• Play a key role on the team responsible for managing all tools utilized within the company.
• Develop and implement sourcing strategies.
• Negotiate with suppliers to secure cost-saving contracts and achieve material cost reductions.
• Balance strategic and tactical responsibilities: operate strategically in procurement activities while performing tactical tasks such as requesting quotes and issuing purchase orders.
• Drive the implementation of value chain improvement initiatives.
• Support tactical requirements, including processing P2P (Purchase to Pay) activities.

What you've accomplished:

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Business, IT, Supply Chain, or equivalent education/experience.
• Strong business acumen with 5-7 years of experience in procurement.
• Proven ability as a strategic thinker and consensus builder.
• Unquestionable ethics and integrity.
• Expert knowledge of technology categories, especially those essential to software and data businesses, including software licensing, contracted services, cloud services, AI, and other IT services.
• Exceptional verbal, written, and interpersonal communication skills.
• Effective cross-functional collaboration and matrix management skills.
• Self-directed with significant project management experience.
• Consistently meet commitments to internal and external customers on time.
• Demonstrated excellence in execution and sound decision-making.
• Advocates for change and drives improvement initiatives.
• Proficient in financial analysis, spreadsheets, cataloging, database management, project management, and procurement systems.
• Skilled in using Microsoft and Google tools.