Category Lead

Category Lead for approximately 12 months.

As Category Lead you will be responsible for the leadership and management of a busy and highly motivated team and/or crisis response activity, with a sharp focus on developing and delivering the category strategy and delivering strong commercial solutions.

There will be a strong emphasis on building and maintaining strategic relationships with colleagues, industry bodies, customers, suppliers and senior stakeholders to deliver the category strategy and complex commercial sourcing solutions in order to achieve the best outcomes.

Key responsibilities:

• Lead the development and delivery of commercial solutions, including market and stakeholder engagement activities to incorporate industry and customer input into category and sourcing strategies.
• Develop market sector knowledge and applying this to create a deep understanding of customer requirements, market capability and potential opportunities.
• Build relationships of influence with senior customers, strategic suppliers and industry leaders.
• Use market expertise and knowledge to spot trends and change markets accordingly, leading market engagement activities and other team members in sharing this information with customers
• Demonstrate significant proactivity, flexibility and adaptability to changing priorities and when required work “out of hours” on complex and high-profile projects. Travel in and round the UK as required and requested.

Key requirements:

• Excellent communication, leadership and people skills, with ability to guide and coach team members.
• Strong stakeholder management skills, customer focused with good commercial acumen.
• Demonstrable experience of working proactively, in a fast paced, commercial environment, delivering projects with a track record of achieving strong commercial results.
• Travel Industry experience, passion and knowledge.
• Category and crisis management experience.
• Flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances and support senior team members during crisis support activities.

If you consider yourself to have a disability or if you are a veteran, and you meet the essential criteria for the role, you will be put forward for the ‘Guaranteed Interview’ scheme whereby you will have the opportunity to discuss this role and your suitability with a member of the Sourcing team.

If you are successful in securing this role, please note that for the entire duration of this contract, regardless of extension you will be working this role at the equivalent PAYE rate that has been advertised. For absolute clarity, we only work on a PAYE basis. If you wish to understand PAYE vs Umbrella more, please let us know and we can send you some additional information.