Indirect Material Procurement Specialist

Job title: Indirect Material Procurement Specialist

Location: Oxford

Contract length: 1 year (with strong potential to extend for up to 2 years)

Work Structure: Hybrid (2-3 days in the office)

Randstad Sourceright, a leading provider of RPO & MSP Recruitment Services is currently recruiting for a Indirect Material Procurement Specialist to join a World leader offering Products, Solutions and Services across the entire Mobility value chain on behalf of a well established manufacturing organisation to play a key role in supporting Manufacturing Operations.

The Indirect Material Procurement Specialist plays a critical role in managing diverse non-production spend categories while directly supporting the procurement operations for a major New Facility Project. In this position, you will drive end-to-end sourcing activities—including drafting RFQs, conducting bid leveling, performing spend analyses, and assisting with commercial negotiations—to ensure goods and services are secured at optimal value and on schedule. Acting as a vital link between external suppliers and internal teams such as Facilities, Engineering, and Finance, the ideal candidate brings 3–5 years of purchasing or supply chain experience, strong Excel analytical skills, and ideally a background supporting capital projects, facility fit-outs, or indirect services within an industrial or manufacturing environment.

Some of the duties will include but are not limited to:

• Maintain the procurement timeline for the new site to ensure all equipment, furniture, fixtures, and site services arrive on schedule without delaying construction or move-in dates.
• Partner with Engineering, Facilities, and Project Managers to clarify technical specifications and service requirements before approaching the market.
• Process purchase requisitions, generate purchase orders (POs), and monitor delivery timelines for high-value facility assets and initial operational setup costs.
• Draft, issue, and manage Requests for Information (RFI), Requests for Quotation (RFQ), and Requests for Proposal (RFP) to prospective suppliers.
• Build commercial comparison models in Excel to evaluate supplier bids on an apples-to-apples basis across pricing, delivery terms, warranty, and payment schedules.
• Analyze historical companies, spend data and research external market benchmarks to identify cost-reduction opportunities and inform category strategies.
• Support discussions with vendors to negotiate discounts, volume rebates, favorable payment terms (e.g., Net 60), and service level commitments.
• Oversee ongoing procurement for non-production categories such as facilities management, security, janitorial services, MRO (Maintenance, Repair, and Operations), office supplies, and professional consulting.
• Coordinate regular business reviews (QBRs), evaluate vendors against agreed Service Level Agreements (SLAs), and address delivery delays or service quality failures.
• Vet new suppliers, ensure adherence to internal code of conduct and health/safety standards, and maintain up-to-date insurance and compliance documentation.
• Work closely with Finance to verify budget availability, Legal to align on standard contract terms, and Facilities/Operations to validate operational requirements.
• Maintain central repositories for all vendor contracts, amendments, and pricing agreements, proactively flagging upcoming renewal and expiry dates.
• Enter, update, and manage purchase orders, vendor master data, and pricing schedules within the ERP or e-procurement platform (e.g., SAP, Coupa, or Oracle).
• Calculate and document cost avoidance and realized savings achieved across projects and routine sourcing cycles.
• Support the rollout of automated purchasing tools, digital approval workflows, and e-sourcing platforms.
• Prepare PowerPoint slide decks, management summaries, and formal business cases to justify vendor selection decisions to senior leadership.

Essential Requirements:

• 3 to 5 years of proven professional experience in Procurement, Purchasing, Sourcing, or Supply Chain roles.
• Hands-on involvement in standard operational purchasing lifecycles: preparing and issuing RFQs/RFPs, conducting bid leveling, and assisting with supplier evaluation and onboarding.
• Active involvement in supplier negotiations, commercial analysis, and cost-benefit assessments to capture value and savings.
• Strong ability to manipulate data using formulas (VLOOKUP/VLOOKUP, INDEX/MATCH), Pivot Tables, and spend dashboards to analyze bids, pricing structures, and historical spend.
• Capability to summarize analytical findings into clear business cases, presentations, and management reports.
• Rigorous approach to maintaining procurement documentation, supplier contracts, compliance records, and tracking renewals/expirations.
• Proven capacity to balance routine day-to-day indirect purchasing requests alongside time-sensitive deliverables for structured projects (like the New Facility launch).
• Demonstrated ability to align internal departments (Facilities, Operations, Engineering, Finance, Project Teams) with external vendors to clarify specs, deadlines, and deliverables.
• Clear understanding of Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), payment terms, warranty conditions, and fundamental contract clauses.
• Clear verbal and written communication skills to articulate sourcing rationale to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• High degree of self-direction, detail orientation, and willingness to undertake occasional regional/site travel as needed by the project.

Desirable Requirements:

• Direct exposure to sourcing categories relevant to capital and corporate projects, such as Facilities Management (FM), MRO (Maintenance, Repair, and Operations), capital equipment (CapEx), construction/fit-out services, fleet, or professional services.
• Prior experience procuring for site expansions, greenfield/brownfield builds, office moves, plant retooling, or corporate relocations.
• Background working within manufacturing, engineering, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, or heavy industrial operations, where safety standards, site access rules, and technical compliance matter.
• Ability to read basic technical specifications, facility drawings, or engineering scopes of work (SOWs) without requiring constant hand-holding from project engineers.
• Direct hands-on experience using enterprise systems like SAP (e.g., S/4HANA, MM module) or Oracle Cloud SCM.
• Experience building spend analysis reports using business intelligence tools like Power BI or Tableau.
• Holding or studying toward recognized certifications such as CIPS (Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply) Level 4+, CPSM (Certified Professional in Supply Management), or an equivalent supply chain qualification.
• Basic certification or practical grounding in Lean Six Sigma (e.g., Yellow/Green Belt) to support procurement digitization and process standardization.
• Experience assisting with non-standard terms, NDAs, Master Service Agreements (MSAs), and Service Level Agreements (SLAs) in partnership with legal counsel.
• Familiarity with "should-cost" modeling, index-linked pricing, and structured supplier performance scorecards.