Associate Director - Procurement

Job Description
Aldar Education is currently seeking an outstanding Associate Director – Procurement to provide senior procurement leadership for assigned Aldar Education portfolios, ensuring requirements are planned, sourced, contracted and delivered in line with procurement policy, Delegation of Authority, approved budgets, agreed SLAs and business priorities.

Job Description
Aldar Education is currently seeking an outstanding Associate Director – Procurement to provide senior procurement leadership for assigned Aldar Education portfolios, ensuring requirements are planned, sourced, contracted and delivered in line with procurement policy, Delegation of Authority, approved budgets, agreed SLAs and business priorities. This is an exciting opportunity to join the highly successful Aldar Education family of schools and play a key role in shaping the technology strategy and service delivery across some of Abu Dhabi’s leading educational institutions.

As the leading education group in Abu Dhabi, Aldar Education provides inclusive and innovative learning that inspires and empowers communities. We offer a range of educational brands for learners from nursery through to adult education, with the broadest choice of curricula across the largest number of locations in Abu Dhabi. Working collaboratively, our education network aims to empower the next generation to shape our future while directly supporting the educational priorities of the Abu Dhabi Government.

Our work is guided by the Abu Dhabi Economic Vision 2030, which seeks to build a sustainable, knowledge-based economy through premium education. The Associate Director – Procurement role combines portfolio delivery, governance, stakeholder partnering and commercial management across schools, HQ departments and cross-functional programmes. It supports procurement transformation through structured procurement planning, framework agreements, standardised specifications, data-led reporting, supplier performance management, audit action follow-up and continuous improvement.

The Associate Director is expected to act as a senior escalation point, coach assigned team members, challenge non-compliant or single-source approaches where appropriate, and help translate business needs into compliant, value-driven procurement outcomes.

• Develop, manage and monitor procurement plans for assigned portfolios to anticipate requirements, reduce emergency purchasing and improve operational readiness.
• Coordinate requirements across schools, HQ functions and departments, including confirmed and forecasted needs, scope clarification, budgets, timelines and approvals.
• Oversee complex capital and operational procurement programmes such as school expansions, specialized rooms, inclusion hubs, security, facilities, FF&E, refurbishment and technology or learning-space initiatives.
• Monitor delivery status, risks, dependencies and blockers, escalating decisions or constraints in a timely and solution-oriented manner.

• Lead and oversee RFQs, RFPs, bidder list recommendations, tender timelines, evaluation matrices, award recommendations, negotiations and approval submissions for the assigned portfolio.
• Ensure tender strategies, evaluation criteria, disqualifiers, procurement routes and approval requirements are robust, proportionate and compliant.
• Validate specifications with requestors before tendering and challenge single-source requests where competitive sourcing is required.
• Use standard templates, trackers and weekly tender reviews to support faster cycle times and better visibility of bottlenecks.

• Drive cost savings and cost avoidance through auctions, negotiations, demand consolidation, early stakeholder engagement and volume leverage.
• Identify high-spend and frequently purchased categories through spend analysis and convert suitable recurring requirements into framework agreements.
• Standardise specifications where appropriate to reduce fragmented requirements, avoid unnecessary customisation and improve economies of scale.
• Support catalogue-based ordering and approved reference catalogues for standardised items and school requirements.

• Coordinate with the Contracts Specialist, SRM Specialist, Legal, Finance and business stakeholders to support the timely execution of contracts, renewals, variations, framework agreements and purchase orders.
• Ensure purchase orders are raised to formalise approved requirements, secure budget commitment and enable compliant supplier engagement.
• Ensure procurement and award documentation is complete before handover to the relevant contract or supplier management owner.
• Escalate contract execution, purchase order or supplier delivery issues that may affect the assigned portfolio.

• Act as a senior procurement partner to schools,…