Category Buyer

Your work as a Category Buyer is quite varied and consists traditional procurement activities to ensure our competitiveness, accomplish high-end engineering projects and production of parts at our suppliers and manage internal and external stakeholders to ensure decision making. From category perspective, you can be responsible for high precision machining and sheet metal, motion control parts and subsystems, fully integrated cabinet outsourcing, additive manufacturing and / or mechatronic subsystems for our radar-, communication- and command & control systems. A passion for technology is key since for example our high-end radar systems vary from the size of a flat screen TV towards long range radar that has a size of 8x4x4 meters and is on board of an aircraft carrier and therefore should operate in the challenging environmental condition of temperature, shock and vibration. 

The main tasks are: 

• Shape, communicate and steer implementation of the Category strategy;
• Drive selection, negotiation and contracting of suppliers;
• Manage, control and develop supplier performances together with the multidisciplinary team;
• Identify and achieve cost reductions and improvements in cooperation with the suppliers and stakeholders;
• Manage risks, opportunities and overall execution for new product introductions based on build-to-print up to build-to-specification.

We are part of the Thales Netherlands Procurement team that consists of several Procurement Segments. You will be working in the Mechanical and Electronics Segments together with fourteen other Category Buyers and your main base will be Hengelo.

Being responsible for a Procurement Category you will be also part of Global Category Team to align with the interest of the Thales Group, share best practices and be part of the Global strategy definition. In order to draft a strategy and manage the procurement category, the supplier base and execute new product introductions you will take the leadership in a multidisciplinary Category Technology Team with an Procurement Part Engineering Specialist, Industrial Architect and with the support from a Supplier Quality Manager and Supplier Performance Manager.  

Our procurement mission? Connect the world and its innovation to Thales. We strive to become the trusted partner in value creation to the Thales business and development needs. Therefore, we build strong supplier relationships by bringing sustainability, innovative solutions, competitive advantages and operational excellence.

As a high-tech system integrator, the company focuses on high level of outsourcing and integration of its supply chain to secure long-term supply. With purchased goods making up to 80 percent of total manufacturing costs and considering the challenging market conditions of shortages and inflation it’s safe to say that the procurement department and its supplier network is of strategic importance to Thales Nederland. 

By clicking the application button, you will be navigated to the website of the Thales. In case the link is not working anymore, the vacancy has expired and you will no longer be able to apply. We try to keep our job database as up-to-date as possible, we would very much appreciate it if you could let us know in case a link is not working? You can do this by sending an e-mail to vacatures@twente.com. 

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