Associate Director, Human Resources and Professional Services Category

The Associate Director, Human Resources and Professional Services Category Leader, leads an enterprise Procurement team responsible for category strategy, sourcing execution, supplier relationship management, and value delivery across Human Resources and Professional Services spend. The core purpose of the role is to provide people leadership, coaching, prioritization, and direction to three direct reports and cross-functional category teams, ensuring strong execution, professional development, and consistent delivery against business priorities. The role serves as a strategic partner to senior functional stakeholders, building trusted relationships, influencing decisions, aligning competing priorities, and translating business needs into practical sourcing and supplier strategies. This position develops multi-year category plans using spend analytics, market intelligence, supplier segmentation, demand management, and stakeholder input to improve value, quality, speed, risk management, and supplier performance. The role delivers sustainable value beyond savings, including stakeholder experience, supplier governance, risk reduction, responsible sourcing, process efficiency, and innovation. What You’ll Do Leading a team through competing sourcing priorities while balancing senior stakeholder expectations across HR, Finance, Legal, and other professional services areas and converting ambiguous needs into aligned strategies and execution plans. Lead complex sourcing, negotiation, and contracting strategies, including RFx development, supplier selection, commercial modeling, and negotiation planning. Sets category priorities, coaches team members, removes execution roadblocks, and aligns sourcing strategies with senior stakeholder roadmaps and enterprise Procurement priorities Facilitates stakeholder alignment, shapes demand, leads sourcing events, guides supplier selection, and coordinates negotiation and contracting decisions across functions. Build trusted senior stakeholder relationships, influence business decisions, align competing priorities, and use spend, supplier, market, and demand insights to identify value creation opportunities. Establish and manage strategic supplier relationships through business reviews, performance scorecards, issue resolution, innovation roadmaps, and risk mitigation. Manages strategic supplier governance, business reviews, performance scorecards, issue resolution, innovation planning, and risk mitigation. Determines negotiation strategy, supplier segmentation approach, and recommended sourcing model for standard category initiatives. Approves team operating cadence, category performance reporting, stakeholder business review content, supplier performance actions, and continuous improvement priorities within scope. Promote preferred supplier usage, guided buying, catalogs, contract compliance, and efficient buying channels in partnership with Procurement Operations. Who You Are You are a resourceful, results-driven procurement leader with a track record of delivering exceptional stakeholder experience and leading strategic sourcing initiatives. You combine sound commercial judgment with the ability to coach others, influence senior stakeholders, and translate complex business needs into practical category strategies. Required Skills Bachelor’s degree in Business, Supply Chain, Finance, Human Resources, Life Sciences, or a related discipline required. An advanced degree, MBA, or relevant procurement certification is preferred. 8–12 years of progressive experience in procurement, strategic sourcing, category management, supplier management, consulting, or a related business discipline, including meaningful experience with Human Resources and/or Professional Services categories. Preferred Skills Experience in biotechnology, pharmaceutical, healthcare, life sciences, or another highly regulated industry; experience with procurement platforms, contract lifecycle management tools, eSo…

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