Category Specialist

If you want to use your procurement expertise to create lasting public benefit, this is an opportunity to help shape how LBBD turns public money into better services, stronger communities and improved outcomes for residents. As Category Specialist, you will lead allocated sub-category procurement projects from early market insight and strategy development through to tender, award and initial implementation. You will develop category plans, identify new contract opportunities, shape specifications, evaluation models, KPIs and social value commitments, and lead Gold procurements that are compliant, commercially robust and focused on the outcomes that matter most.

This is more than a technical procurement role: you will help services think differently about how they buy, how they design contracts, and how they use supplier markets to secure maximum value, quality, innovation and wider social, economic and environmental benefit. Working with colleagues across the Council, suppliers and partner organisations, you will use data, market intelligence and stakeholder insight to manage risk, challenge assumptions and unlock opportunities for better public value.

You will play a visible role in embedding sustainability, social value and continuous improvement into procurement activity, helping LBBD buy well, spend wisely and deliver contracts that make a real difference for residents and communities.

You should hold MCIPS Level 6, or be able to demonstrate equivalent professional knowledge and experience. We are looking for someone with a strong track record of leading high-value or high-risk procurements and managing governance, risk and stakeholder expectations through to contract award and early-life implementation. Continuing professional development in public procurement, commercial practice, contract management, supplier relationship management, sustainability or social value would be welcomed.

Experience of supporting or developing team members, assuring quality and encouraging continuous improvement would also be valuable. You will be expected to work in line with LBBD Contract Rules, Financial Regulations and wider Council policy requirements, using these as enablers of good decision-making, transparency and public value. In return, you will join a service with ambition, influence and a clear purpose: helping LBBD buy well, spend wisely and secure the maximum public benefit from every pound invested.

You will be a procurement professional who is motivated by more than process: you will want to use your commercial expertise to help public money go further and deliver tangible benefits for residents and communities. You will bring the confidence, judgement and curiosity to lead complex procurement activity in a fast-moving public sector environment, with significant experience of end-to-end procurement or category management, including market engagement, tendering, evaluation, award and mobilisation.

You will understand public procurement legislation, contract law, governance and frameworks, and know how to apply them in a way that is practical, proportionate and focused on outcomes. You will be comfortable using spend analysis, cost modelling, stakeholder mapping and category tools to shape strategies that maximise value, quality, social value, sustainability and innovation. Above all, you will be a trusted adviser and constructive challenger: someone who can influence senior stakeholders, negotiate effectively, write clearly, support colleagues and keep public benefit at the centre of decisions.

Think you know Barking and Dagenham? Think again. While this small corner of east London might have a reputation for needing development, scratch beneath the surface and you'll find active communities and a place that consistently punches above its weight. The borough is changing - and changing for the better. And It Starts Here. Yes, the borough has its challenges. But it's on the cusp of something exciting.

With one of the youngest populations in the country, ambitions are high and rightly so. 98% of our schools are rated Good or Outstanding and every year more of our talented teenagers get into Russell Group Universities and hotly sought after apprenticeship schemes. We have award winning parks, centuries old manor houses full of relics and artifacts you can go and see, and the ruins of one of Anglo-Saxon England's most powerful and…