Senior Buyer, Strategic Sourcing

Senior Buyer, Strategic Sourcing

Fresia Foods is a high-growth frozen filled pasta manufacturer supplying club, retail, and food service customers under both branded and private-label programs. We are scaling volume, launching new SKUs at pace, and building out our strategic sourcing capability.

The Senior Buyer, Strategic Sourcing owns assigned spend categories end to end — market intelligence, supplier strategy, competitive bidding, negotiation, contracting, and the savings that reach the P&L. We are looking for someone who can build the analytics, run competitive RFPs, create genuine competition within categories, and drive cost down while delivering the materials the business needs on time and under budget — with a clear point of view on where each category is heading well ahead of the market moving.

• Build the system. Design and implement the buying systems and processes — category strategies, should-cost models, supplier scorecards, a commodity watch list, and a documented savings pipeline.
• A clear mandate. Strategic sourcing is a named company priority, and savings from this seat are tracked as a contribution to the company's cost and EBITDA goals.
• Scale with room to work. Multi-plant manufacturing, a national cold-chain 3PL network, a growing import program, and an active new-product pipeline.

Strategic sourcing and competitive bidding

• Maintain a rolling 12–18 month sourcing calendar driven by contract expirations, market position, and savings potential.
• Lead RFI/RFP/RFQ cycles end to end — supplier qualification, bid package, structured bid analysis, negotiation, and award recommendation with a documented business case.
• Build should-cost models (resin, board grade, freight, conversion, yield) so negotiations are anchored in cost structure rather than percentage haggling.
• Design bid events that create genuine competitive tension, including qualifying new suppliers where the field is narrow, working cross-functionally with Quality, R&D, Operations, and Finance.

Market intelligence and commodity tracking

• Maintain a commodity watch list and forward view across index-based inputs (CME dairy complex, durum and wheat, resin and board, protein markets) plus freight and energy drivers.
• Publish a recurring market update to the VP of Supply Chain: what moved, what it cost us, and what we recommend on timing — forward-buy, index versus fixed price, contract duration, volume commitment.
• Validate inbound price-increase requests against published indices and cost structure, quantify the annualized exposure, and lead the counter-position.

Cost savings — pipeline to P&L

• Own a documented savings pipeline (identified / in-progress / committed / realized) with a value, owner, and date on every line, against an annual target agreed with the VP of Supply Chain and Finance.
• Tie negotiated pricing through to purchase-order pricing, standard cost, and cost roll in the ERP so awarded savings are verifiable in the P&L.
• Drive non-price levers: specification and pack-format optimization, order-quantity and pallet efficiency, freight and payment terms, yield and giveaway reduction, and material consolidation across SKUs.
• Partner with R&D and Operations on reformulation and material substitution, producing the cost-impact analysis behind each change.

Supplier diversification, performance, and risk

• Build and maintain a supplier diversification matrix — spend concentration, single- and sole-source exposure, qualified alternates, capacity headroom, and geographic risk — and use it to prioritize where a second source is worth qualifying.
• Drive alternate-source qualification through Quality approval proactively, so options exist before they are needed under pressure.
• Run a supplier scorecard covering price, on-time-in-full delivery, lead-time variability, quality history, responsiveness, and financial stability; hold quarterly business reviews with strategic suppliers against it.
• Maintain approved-supplier documentation with Quality — SQF / BRC-GFSI certification, audit status, specification and allergen records, and customer-specific plant approvals.

Execution, terms, and cross-functional delivery

• Negotiate…