Category Management Specialist, Sr or Sr

Supplier Management Job Title

Category Management Specialist, Sr or Sr Staff

Hybrid

Entergy Services, LLC

Authorization to work in the United States is a precondition to employment in this position. Entergy will not sponsor candidates for work visas for this position.

This is a hybrid position requiring in office work two - three days a week, and can be based our offices in The Woodlands, TX, Jackson, MS, Little Rock, AR, or New Orleans, LA. The selected candidates will be placed as a Category Management Specialist, Sr or Sr Staff based on education, relevant experience, and demonstrated success at the category management specialist level.

Relocation assistance is not available for this posting.

The Category Management Specialist is responsible for driving Supplier Commercial Excellence across a diverse portfolio of IT sub-categories and business functions, including Hardware, Information Security, IT Professional Services, Software, Telecom, and Artificial Intelligence (AI). This position leverages extensive expertise in supply chain, category management, strategic sourcing, and contracting to execute the end-to-end procurement and supply chain processes of plan-strategy-source-perform.

As the single point of contact and strategic lead for Entergy's third‑party spend, the Category Management Specialist collaborates cross-functionally with internal stakeholders, such as business units, Supplier Development, Tax, Finance, Risk Management, Safety, Human Resources, and Legal, as well as external suppliers and industry organizations. The role is responsible for building and maintaining these cross-functional teams to create prioritized sub-category profiles, develop contracting strategies, execute strategic sourcing processes, manage negotiations, and implement and oversee post‑award contract management.

The primary objective of this position is to create value through the supply chain in terms of safety, cost, and performance, ultimately driving Supplier Commercial Excellence and delivering end-to-end value for the assigned portfolio of spend.

• Safety/Human Performance:
  • Actively promote strong safety behaviors and ensure the team always puts safety first.
  • Utilize key tools, programs, and proactive field visits to assure standards and behaviors.
  • Monitor and influence suppliers to proactively identify any safety concerns.
• Incident Response:
  • Perform storm role duties as assigned through the Storm Assignment Management System (SAMS).

• Category Strategy:
  • Develop and execute category and subcategory strategies, checklist, manage spend and regularly track market trends, Ability to work strategically and tactically to deliver positive business results.
  • Category Processes:
    • Systematic process to review commercial, process, technical, risk management and sustainability strategies for product categories and subcategories.

• Contract Negotiation/ Drafting:
  • Draft IT service agreements
  • Lead the Request for Proposal process for IT Professional Services, Software, Hardware or Telecommunications

• Supplier Management:
  • Supplier management strategy in place, linked with supplier segment, category strategies, and business reviews to ensure supplier performance.
  • Supplier Base:
    Supplier portfolio is regularly reviewed based on price/performance and cost structure comparison.
• Optimization:
  • Recurrent effort to bundle purchasing and to forecast demand across departments/business units.

• Customer Engagement:
  • Ability influence and work across Cross-functional teams and levels in the organization to optimize supply-chain, redesign-to cost and make-or-buy strategies.

• Category Management Specialist, Sr:
  • Bachelor’s degree in Supply Chain, Business, Accounting, Engineering, Legal, or other related discipline and minimum 9+ years of category management, strategic sourcing or other related supply chain experience OR in lieu of a degree, minimum 13+ years of category management, strategic sourcing or other related supply chain experience
  • Minimum 3+ years’ energy industry supply chain…