Category Manager International Relations

Category Manager International Relations – 15613

Disability Confident and Armed Forces Community Commitment

For permanent and contingent vacancies with customers who are Disability Confident and / or Armed Forces Covenant signatories, candidates who identify as disabled, military veterans or spouses, and who meet the minimum essential criteria for the role, may be eligible for an interview under the customer's Disability Confident or Armed Forces Covenant commitments.

• Pay rate to Umbrella: £please contact directly for full day rate!

• IR35: In Scope

• Security Clearance: SC preferred/Minimum BPSS and eligible/willing to be put through SC

• Contract Length: 31/03/2027 with possibility of extension

• CV Deadline: Wednesday 28th October – 13.00

• Interview Process: MS Teams – 2 stages

• Location: Abbey Wood or London, Hybrid: 1 day per week onsite plus 2-3 days per month at Abbey Wood, as required for needs of business, Travel required between Bristol and London (average 1 day a week). Sporadic travel across the UK to other MOD sites and NATO countries if required by the role.

Top 3 Evaluation Criteria

1. Strong Stakeholder Management / Engagement skills to a senior level

2. Has an expert understanding of the principles of end-to-end commercial lifecycle management and a track record in the successful delivery of Category Management in a complex project-oriented environment.

3. An understanding of the Defence Industry, supply chains and/or deep knowledge in related categories e.g. autonomous systems, weapons systems, sense decide & communicating systems, power propulsion & auxiliary systems, would be an advantage.

Essential:

• Has an expert understanding of the principles of end-to-end commercial lifecycle management and a track record in the successful delivery of Category Management in a complex project-oriented environment.

• Practical knowledge & understanding of; tech/capability requirements process, early market engagement, market analysis, benchmarking, commercial levers, supply chain/industry shaping opportunities & their relative linkages to the acquisition and support processes.

• Evidence of influencing key senior stakeholders and suppliers towards commercial solutions in a complex commercial environment.

• Strong Stakeholder Management / Engagement skills to a senior level (1&2* MOD and senior NATO Stakeholders)

• Comfortable to challenge and has gravitas

• Organisational skills

• Relationship skills

• Strategic thinker – able to engage and implement

• Ability /experience to understand a complex environment

Desirable:

• A second spoken language is preferable. (European/NATO)

• Defence experience is highly desirable (strategic roles not operational)

o Could be MOD, or 3rd party, ex-military, consultancy.

• An understanding of the Defence Industry, supply chains and/or deep knowledge in related categories e.g. autonomous systems, weapons systems, sense decide & communicating systems, power propulsion & auxiliary systems, would be an advantage.

Skills Required

• Credible and assured to command the confidence of a range of senior stakeholders.

• Proven leadership experience.

• Ability to think strategically, act decisively and respond quickly.

• Strong commercial awareness including an expert understanding of the commercial lifecycle.

• Track record of delivering benefits (full range of non-financial and financial benefits) through category management interventions within a complex project/programme delivery environment.

• An understanding of the Defence Industry, supply chains and/or deep knowledge in related categories e.g. autonomous systems, weapons systems, sense decide & communicating systems, power propulsion & auxiliary systems, would be an advantage.

• A second spoken language is preferable.

Essential Criteria:

Category Management

• Has an expert understanding of the principles of end-to-end commercial lifecycle management and a track record in the successful delivery of Category Management in a complex project-oriented environment.

• Practical knowledge & understanding of; tech/capability requirements process, early market engagement, market analysis, benchmarking, commercial levers, supply chain/industry shaping opportunities & their relative linkages to the acquisition and support processes.

• Evidence of influencing key senior stakeholders and suppliers towards commercial solutions in a complex commercial environment.

Commercial Focus

• Has a strong practical understanding of market and commercial drivers

• Demonstrates the ability to draw conclusions from a wide range of complex data from different sources

• Experience in leadership roles in complex organisations, with demonstrable knowledge of category management and its successful delivery.

• Has a practical understanding of the concept of ‘value for money’ and can articulate what a successful return on investment looks like for a particular project/programme

• Has a focus on delivery of benefits (both financial and non-financial); total lifecycle costs, platform availability, resilience, innovation and speed.

Risk and Assurance Management

• Demonstrates the ability to conduct analysis of options, risks and margins of error to provide assurance on decisions regarding the Category Group and individual category strategies and manage subsequent trade-offs.

• Demonstrates the ability to take calculated risks in an area of responsibility in order to implement efficient and innovative solutions.

Team Management

• Demonstrates the ability to manage a team, understands their commercial capability and where they have development gaps and can build their confidence to deal with setbacks

• Promotes effective individual and team performance, providing support, guidance and coaching to develop core capabilities.

• Models expected behaviour by showing commitment to personal and team development.

• Engages widely across stakeholder groups to increase category group knowledge and promote broader engagement.

• Inspires and motivates others

Builds relationships

• A highly resilient, decisive team player with a focus on collective goals. Experienced at decision making at senior levels with minimal direction and is an excellent problem solver.

• Demonstrates strong stakeholder engagement skills with the ability to demonstrate resilience in interactions with suppliers in order to defend the MoD’s position.

• Demonstrates the ability to present technical issues to senior stakeholders in order to help them arrive at decisions by acting in an advisory capacity.

Managing a Quality Service

• Identifies strategic business needs for your category in conjunction with senior stakeholders.

• Demonstrate positive customer service by understanding the complexity and diversity of customer needs and expectations.

• Deliver a high quality, efficient and cost-effective service by considering a broad range of methods for delivery.

• Ensure full consideration of new technologies, accessibility, and costs. Make clear, practical, and manageable plans for service delivery.

• Ensure adherence to legal, regulatory and security requirements in service delivery.

• Proactively manage risks and identify solutions.

• Establish how the business area compares to industry best practice. Create regular opportunities for colleagues, stakeholders, delivery partners and customers to help improve the quality of service

Job Summary

The MOD is making a significant investment in Category Management at a time when the public sector is being asked to deliver efficiencies. This is in recognition of the value Category Management can deliver in the MOD, delivering enhanced capabilities and value for money for the taxpayer at a time of fundamental change and reform to protect the nation and help UK industry prosper.

This is an exciting opportunity for an experienced Category Manager with International expertise to deliver a significant impact through the delivery of Category Management / International relations at the MoD supporting our MoD International colleagues with a SME expert understanding in Category Management. The function will be enabled through a small central Category Management “Centre of Excellence” and a larger category management delivery function built around industry facing category groups with sub-categories covering the entirety of MODs strategic spend.

This crucial role sits within the Category Management Transformation team reporting to the Head of Transformation & International for strategic category management. As a Category Manager you will work with the Category Group Manager and the portfolio leadership team to embed category management into the MOD value chain and drive the adoption of category management principles alongside the delivery of equipment, services and platforms, increasing the pace of delivery, lethality and availability alongside lower total life costs. As a Category Manager – International Relations, you will achieve this through:

• Growing stakeholder understanding of category management and its benefits for MOD.

• Working with the Portfolio leadership team and stakeholders across MOD, including Commissioning teams, the Portfolio leadership and programme delivery teams team to identify and prioritise category management opportunities to support agreed outcomes (pace, lethality, availability, innovation, through life cost optimisation).

• Developing and implementing specific category strategy(ies) based upon a deep understanding of customer requirements, demand, external market/supplier insights, dynamics and encompassing NATO first and UK/Defence Industrial Strategy.

• Building expert insight and knowledge of your categories through consultation with all relevant stakeholders and acts as a focal point for the category, developing a compelling vision and strategy based on, or influencing the external supply market capability. Challenging convention, influencing direction and acting as a catalyst for innovation.

• Where necessary managing the day-to-day activities of more junior Category Management staff allocated to your category.

• Working with stakeholders and Delivery teams to achieve buy-in and the seamless transition from approval of the strategy to the implementation of the strategy alongside delivery teams.

• Supporting the Delivery teams in the delivery of agreed strategy recommendations and actions.

You will work across Military Strategic Headquarters (MSHQ), Front Line Commands (FLCs), National Armaments Directorate (NAD) and Defence Nuclear Enterprise (DNE) & NATO.

Job Description

In the role of Category Manager, you will be responsible for delivering commercial excellence and technical awareness across categories and sub-categories within your remit, driving up the maturity and quality of category strategies and their adoption across portfolios as well as sharing best practices and realising the potential of our allies, in order to bring best practices back to the MoD.

You will engage with Senior Leaders across MOD and be a core member of the Portfolio Category Management team, providing a customer-focused service, understanding the business need and stakeholder drivers across the asset lifecycle, identifying optimum operational, technical and commercial options becoming a trusted advisor. You will also develop relationships with strategic suppliers, driving ‘value for money’ and risk management excellence across your category(ies) ranging large complex platforms, equipment, support, Infrastructure, FM, corporate services, digital services to commodities.

The role will also require you to use your commercial expertise to identify opportunities for improvement and implement these changes at a local level by working with affected parties to identify and overcome challenges.

For clarity, ownership of the implementation of agreed strategies will sit with the respective delivery teams with the Category Management team supporting as required.

The key responsibilities of the role (job description) include:

Strategic delivery and management of the category:

• Championing Category Management across your category(ies).

• Defining the fundamental components of a category from strategy creation through implementation in terms of its scope, deliverables, time scales, resource requirements and budget.

• Producing category workstream plans, incorporating risk and quality across agreed category scope. Sets priorities for strategies and opportunities.

• Working with key stakeholders to proactively identify, influence, challenge and prioritise future business needs and wants across the full business requirements (RAQSCIS) spectrum encompassing NATO first and UK/Defence Industrial Strategy.

• Identify external marketplace scale, dynamics, suppliers, innovation, and potential solutions. Providing advice and ability to challenge where necessary.

• Initiating market intelligence reports, running industry and/or market engagement days. Works to develop new market opportunities / markets where these do not currently exist.

• Combining market engagement with research, data and economic analysis to produce a holistic market understanding and reports.

• Work with stakeholders to identify, risk assess and prioritise improvement opportunities to deliver Portfolio priorities.

• Working collaboratively with internal and external stakeholders to build a compelling vision and strategy based on insights, analysis, facts, and data. Ensuring strategies and proposed outcomes are practical aligned to Portfolio priorities and able to be implemented.

• Maintaining category strategies and category plans aligned to Portfolio priorities, refreshing them at appropriate frequencies.

• Provide support and oversight of the implementation of category strategy outcomes (sourcing, supplier management & business change opportunities).

Category coherence & alignment, delivering positive outcomes:

• Understand related/linked category teams and strategies to ensure coherence, alignment, interoperability and integration to support Portfolio outcomes.

• Supporting business cases, where necessary, to demonstrate coherence, integration, through life support, value for money, benefits and risks across platforms and Portfolios Building and maintaining key relationships across the department and with important external stakeholders

• Influencing MSHQ, NAD Options and Commissioning to shape future portfolio priorities adopting Category Management principles.

• Identifying and mapping key internal and external stakeholders including NATO allies for category and specific sub-categories, cultivating and managing proactive relationships including industry to implement category management directly and through the supply chain.

Enabling and developing Category Management

• Bringing the best practices and learning from the external market to the department through leveraging industry and Allies experience to develop deep market insights and knowledge.

• Encouraging and empowering others to adopt best practices, driving collaboration and innovation across the Defence enterprise to demonstrate continuous improvement.

• Developing, sharing and promoting best practices and lessons learned to create a culture of learning and good practice that supports continuous improvement to optimise category delivery. Driving change based on Lessons Learned.

Performance and day to day management of a team to deliver Category Management across the Category Group

• Identifying capacity and capability requirements across the category.

• Planning and leading effective impact assessments of the business and operational impacts of category strategies.

• Identifying change management requirements and processes to influence operational and behavioural change to realise the business benefits from category group and individual category strategies. Ensures category outputs are integrated into Business As Usual (BAU).

• Providing regular management reports and/or updates to Category Group Manager and other senior stakeholders and forums as required.