Associate Planning Specialist

At National Grid, our commitment to a cleaner, greener energy future is powered by the dedication and ingenuity of our people. Join our team as an Associate Planning Specialist and be a part of something bigger-where your unique skills and passions can make a real difference. Together, we are superpowered.

As an Associate Planning Specialist
, you’ll support the Global Procurement function in delivering our ambition to enable a clean, fair, and affordable energy future through commercial, responsible, and innovative supply chain leadership. You’ll contribute to and lead a series of projects and initiatives which could be specific to one team or spread across multiple teams, and you’ll have the opportunity to collate, organise, and analyse data to bring insights to the wider Global Procurement team.

Working within the Procurement Planning Team (UK), you’ll support and implement a comprehensive performance strategy for Global Procurement encompassing planning, forecasting, performance improvement, and leadership reporting.

You will be analysing data, driving efficiencies, and bridging the gap between data and real‑world procurement outcomes. Ensuring procurement services are delivered effectively to expected service levels, service improvements and cost savings.

We’re seeking a professional with strong analytical, communication and stakeholder management skills and excellent attention to detail.

This role is based out of our Warwick office
, with hybrid working. We’re happy to discuss any additional flexibility in working patterns or requirements that you feel could help to make this job work for you!

• Support and provide guidance on Procurement business planning policies and processes carried out by the UK Procurement Planning Team, ensuring full compliance and adherence to agreed processes and methodologies.
• Support the development, management and monitoring of business plans to facilitate its delivery and ensure that it continually evolves so that Procurement is providing the optimum level of service to the National Grid business.
• Prepare reports and presentations to communicate procurement planning initiatives and reporting for the Procurement department, including quarterly stakeholder meetings and leadership reporting.
• Extract, analyse and summarise large or complex data sources into simplified and easy‑to‑interpret outputs for Procurement Managers.
• Develop and maintain strong relationships with internal stakeholders. Drive management and issue resolution of stakeholder and leadership issues and queries. Track, monitor and ensure actions and queries are addressed.
• Manage the Procurement Global Planning System, monitoring access, dashboards, automated reports, and training archive.
• Provide support to the Senior Planning Specialist, ensuring the right Planning system standards are embedded across Procurement with the necessary training of staff. Identify and investigate any potential system issues within the Procurement Global Planning System.
• Co‑ordinate the delivery of key service delivery activities to ensure that a consistent approach is taken, resources are used efficiently and that there is alignment with operational plans and service standards.
• Support the Planning and Performance Team in performing deep‑dive analysis of data and processes to identify opportunities for continuous improvement through effective business planning and provision management.
• Identify data inaccuracies, process blockers, or inefficiencies, and propose improved methods or ways of working to continually improve the way in which we operate.

• Critical & creative thinking, a collaborative approach, a process‑focused approach, confidence, resilience and excellent communication.
• Strong customer service and relationship building skills and interpersonal skills, ability to interact credibly and genuinely with stakeholders to enhance user experience.
• Manage different activities concurrently and meet deadlines.
• Experience in collating and organising data, analysing commercial issues and bringing insight to the detail including developing KPIs.
• Advanced Excel and strong PowerPoint, data visualisation (such…