Global Category Lead - Clinical Trial Management

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Job Description

About this Role:

This role is a member of the R&D Procurement team, leading category strategy and a team of category managers to maximize enterprise value from external spend. It partners with senior stakeholders to shape business priorities, strengthen supplier relationships, and deliver measurable outcomes across cost, innovation, quality, sustainability, and risk.

How you will contribute:

Define and lead category strategies that maximize enterprise value from external spend through cost optimization, innovation, risk management, sustainability, and business growth

Act as a strategic partner to senior business leaders, aligning category priorities with organizational objectives and ensuring external spend supports critical business outcomes

Drive long-term business outcomes by shaping category strategy, supplier portfolio strategy, and enterprise spending decisions

Orchestrate cross-functional resources and stakeholder collaboration to deliver category goals, strengthen supplier partnerships, and ensure sustainable business performance

Manage a small team of category managers

Accountabilities:

Develop and execute category strategies that align external spend with enterprise objectives, business priorities, and long-term value creation goals

Shape demand and business requirements by challenging specifications, operating models, supplier strategies, and sourcing approaches to optimize total value and return on investment

Lead complex strategic programs and category value plans, ensuring delivery of cost, productivity, innovation, sustainability, quality, and risk management objectives

Drive cross-functional collaboration across business, operations, finance, legal, and procurement teams to deliver End-2-End category strategies and strategic initiatives

Build and maintain a high-performing supplier ecosystem that balances innovation, competitiveness, resilience, and long-term business needs, while including Quality and Sustainability requirements.

Own strategic supplier relationships, governance, and performance management to drive continuous improvement, innovation, and value delivery

Ensure supplier strategies, commercial models, and contractual frameworks support business objectives, regulatory requirements, quality standards, and supply continuity

Synthesize market intelligence, supplier insights, and business data into compelling narratives that influence strategic decisions and stakeholder alignment

Act as a strategic business partner to senior stakeholders, influencing spend decisions, investment priorities, operating models, and external resource deployment

Lead, develop, and enable high-performing teams by building critical capabilities, fostering collaboration, and driving a culture of accountability, continuous improvement, and business partnership

Coach category managers and associates toward excellent, business-aligned category strategies, embedding adherence to best-practice category-management methodology and raising the quality and consistency of strategy development and execution across the team Attract, develop, and retain category talent in a competitive market, actively building succession strength and career pathways across the team Allocate people and priority across the category portfolio, making cross-category trade-offs to maximize aggregate enterprise value

Accountable for the value-delivery agenda across the category…