Manager Procurement - Field and Plant Operations

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We are Optimum, a leader in the fast‑paced world of connectivity, and we're seeking driven and enthusiastic professionals to join our team, empower lives, fuel businesses, and drive innovation. Connectivity is now longer a luxury, but a necessity. A career at Optimum means you'll be enabling progress and enhancing lives by providing reliable, high-speed connectivity solutions that keep the world connected.

Our successes, now and in the future, are powered by our amazing product, a commitment to our people and culture, and the connections we make in our communities.

If you are resourceful, collaborative, and passionate about delivering consistent excellence, Optimum is for you!

The Manager of Procurement will lead all negotiations for assigned business unit or product category. This position will be responsible for developing relationships with the internal business unit key stakeholders, as well as developing and implementing a strategic procurement discipline to maximize supplier contributions to meet the business unit's plans, objectives, and budget. In addition to leading the development and execution of effective sourcing strategies, the Manager of Procurement will drive cost and contract negotiations, manage supplier and/or business unit escalations, and provide procurement project management.

This role will also provide oversight and approvals to ensure purchases follow company policies and align with our strategic supply base.

The ideal candidate must be detail-oriented, communicate effectively, able to execute on multiple projects and able to identify solutions to complex problems. He or she must have a positive attitude to set the tone with cross functional teams, facilitate solutions at an Enterprise-wide level and able to navigate through competing objectives to drive to outcomes while partnering with Executive leaders to facilitate trade-offs that optimize outcomes in a timely manner.

This role is responsible for providing the commercials and framework to optimize the value of products and services received from 3rd party vendors. Identifying commodity vs. strategic aspects of 3rd party relationships that ensure the right leverage points are negotiated into the contractual terms and that the partnership serves its purpose for the organizational goals overall.

• Maintain deep category expertise through understanding and application of industry developments, marketplace trends, emerging technology, new techniques, leading practices, and shared experiences.
• Drive all supplier negotiations to a competitive price. Reviews and assesses rate cards, quotes, statements of work, and master service agreements to quickly redline and develop a negotiation strategy to reduce the price, reduce the potential liability, and optimize the benefit.
• Perform cost/benefit and comparative analysis on hardware, software, and professional services.
• Negotiate and manage the contractual approval process for MSA's, MPA's, SOW's, Maintenance & Support Renewals, etc.
• Manage complex bid and sourcing, requests for proposals, evaluation of returned proposals, selection of vendors, and award the contract.
• Manage supplier or business unit escalations to contract implementations.
• Develop and maintain relationships with functional business units for purposes of gathering, analyzing and conveying information to support sourcing efforts.
• Coordinate the sourcing and contract management activities across the procurement teams to deliver targeted benefits to Optimum.
• Manage key supplier relationships, including addressing driving savings through innovation and resolving any issues and disputes.
• Review and approve supplier contract awards and purchase orders.
• Work with functional business units to optimize spend against contracts and ensure compliance.
• Provide negotiation summaries and performance reporting and analysis to senior leadership.
• Manage and monitor the contract management process within the budgetary costs or cost savings goals of the company.

• Bachelor's Degree (required), MBA a plus; 3+ years of functional procurement/supply chain experience
• Experience leading complex cross-functional initiatives involving Senior leader sponsorship
• Oracle Source to Pay experience strongly preferred
• Experience in the network, software and/or technology industry
• Ability to work under pressure in a fast-paced and challenging working environment
• Proficient in MS Office, particularly Microsoft Excel (Pivot tables, VLOOKUP's, etc)
• Excellent leadership skills with the ability to get into the weeds
• Ability to work cooperatively and collaboratively with all levels of the organization
• Outstanding interpersonal, communication, and business partnering skills
• Extremely organized, detail-oriented, and mindful of deadlines
• Superior organizational and time management skills with the ability to balance numerous diverse priorities and projects…