Associate Director, Category Management - Commercial Procurement

Job Description

The Associate Director, Category Management - Commercial Procurement will develop and execute strategies for global category areas encompassing Commercial & External Affairs Services to lower total cost of ownership, increase overall value, identify business demand requirements, and deliver the Procurement value proposition across a broad portfolio of Procurement categories and programs.

• Develop and continuously refresh category strategies for Commercial Services & External Affairs (including but not limited to creative & medical communication agencies, global value & access, digital marketing tech, data analytics and market research) to deliver value by speed, quality, risk, savings and innovation by identifying opportunity areas such as standardization and supplier consolidation.
• Establish and execute stakeholder engagement and governance plans for Commercial & External Affairs functions you support across Commercial, Public Affairs, and Medical Affairs organizations; define annual business partnering objectives, intake/prioritization, initiatives, and success metrics tied to business outcomes.
• Proactively identify initiatives and proposals that create outsized value (e.g. demand shaping, operating model improvements, supplier strategy shifts, preferred partner governance, rate/ROD optimization, content production efficiency, etc.) and drive implementation with stakeholders with clear business cases and decision asks.
• Oversee the category intake and triage model, spend activity, purchase requests for assigned Commercial Services category areas, and determine the proper engagement path and action plan for all purchases that meet the procurement involvement threshold.
• Lead category innovation and new ways of working by identifying external trends (agency models, media/data privacy changes, AI-enabled content workflows, measurement evolution) and translating them into pilots, playbooks, and scalable process improvements.
• Collaborate and engage across functions/regions to identify requirements and projected demand in alignment with business priorities and engage in strategic planning, target setting and action planning to deliver meaningful business impact.
• Consult with cross functional teams to execute strategic sourcing projects for assigned categories.
• Partner with internal senior leadership to define clear supplier objectives which meet Gilead’s business needs; including quality, reliability, innovation and cost.
• Develop & drive procurement impact and value delivery through strategic initiatives while monitoring key performance metrics, status on deliverables and dashboards.
• Collaborate with Procurement functions and business groups to ensure that all spend above established thresholds are managed strategically.
• Collaborate with Supplier Risk, Inclusion, and Sustainability functions to create a standard and repeatable process to integrate business diversity and responsible procurement into an overall value proposition.
• Drive use of sourcing and procurement best practices and standardization of processes while minimizing supply risk.
• Own market intelligence and trend sensing for Commercial & External Affairs and translate it into prioritized improvement initiatives (e.g. demand shaping, supplier strategy shifts, process changes, innovation/tech use cases) with clear recommendations to stakeholders.
• Combine all spend information into yearly plans and long term forecasts for costs, savings targets, and planned projects.
• Execute initiatives to classify suppliers and manage supplier relationships according to defined supplier relationship management standards.

• Bachelor’s Degree and Ten Years’ Experience
• Masters’ Degree and Eight Years’ Experience
• PhD and Two Years’ Experience

• 10+ years professional work experience plus a BS/BA or 8+ years professional work experience plus a MA/MS or MBA in a corporate environment, preferably in the areas of business partnering, procurement, commercial and external affairs, strategy & operations, business development, supplier management, or corporate…