Head of Sourcing

The United Kingdom Health Security Agency (UKHSA) is a system leader for health security; taking action internationally to strengthen global health security, providing trusted advice to government and the public and reducing inequalities in the way different communities experience and are impacted by infectious disease, environmental hazards, and other threats to health.

UKHSA’s remit, as an agency with a global-to-local reach, is to protect the health of the nation from infectious diseases and other external threats to health. As the nation’s expert national health security agency UKHSA will:

• Prevent: anticipate threats to health and help build the nation’s readiness, defences and health security
• Detect: use cutting edge environmental and biological surveillance to proactively detect and monitor infectious diseases and threats to health
• Analyse: use world-class science and data analytics to assess and continually monitor threats to health, identifying how best to control and mitigate the risks
• Respond: take rapid, collaborative and effective actions nationally and locally to mitigate threats to health when they materialise
• Lead: lead strong and sustainable global, national, regional and local partnerships designed to save lives, protect the nation from public health threats and reduce inequalities

The Commercial, Vaccines and Countermeasures Delivery (CVCD) Directorate has responsibility for UKHSA’s procurement, commercial strategy and governance, business development collaborations, countermeasures against environmental threats and the supply and distribution of vaccines for national immunisation campaigns and for Covid.

We maintain a complex ecosystem of contracts and partnerships that enable the agency to respond to current and emerging health challenges. We manage business development partnerships that drive innovation and generate income to support core UKHSA capabilities. Our challenge is to develop innovative commercial arrangements that will shape and support the agency’s capabilities, preparations and response to health threats.

This role sits within the Commercial Sourcing and Delivery team, which is responsible for providing expert commercial and procurement support through the end-to-end commercial lifecycle for UKHSA Directorates, programmes, and projects. The team drive value for UKHSA through managing contract delivery and supplier relationships to ensure the delivery of goods and services to UKHSA customers, and enabling self-sufficiency through the effective management of the Market Place platform.

Sourcing works across the end-to-end commercial lifecycle at UKHSA to deliver strategic procurements and programmes. As owners of the Commercial Pipeline, they ensure current and future demand is balanced against our resource profile – as well as assure the quality of information and data that is submitted to the pipeline.

Sourcing, and this role, deliver value to UKHSA customers, Major Programmes and Business Partners through the ability to provide procurement subject matter expertise and crucial input into business cases and sourcing strategies. Their commercial delivery responsibility is supplemented through turning insight into action by rationalising and aggregating commercial spend across suppliers, identifying cost efficiency opportunities and the implementation of initiatives to achieve them.

The role will report into the Deputy Director Commercial Sourcing and Delivery and will join the team at a busy time as a new Sourcing and Delivery structure and ways of working are embedded. It will oversee a team that manages procurements in a multi category health environment including, Estates, Technology, Science and Professional Services.

We are looking for a strong procurement professional with extensive experience in leading a sourcing team within a busy and challenging environment. You will be an enthusiastic and collaborative leader, championing commercial best practice and ensuring the Sourcing team delivers an efficient, compliant, and high-quality commercial service to UKHSA. You will also bring excellent communication and stakeholder engagement skills, building…