Senior Purchasing Manager

Full Description

Location: London (Hybrid – minimum 3 days in office)
Department: Global Purchasing
Scope: Global

Our partner is a global procuretech business delivering an innovative, end-to-end procurement solution across Europe, the Middle East, North America and Asia. With procurement hubs in Singapore, Dubai, London and Chicago, they combine deep category expertise with advanced technology to bring greater transparency, compliance, and efficiency to indirect procurement.

The Team

The global procurement function sits at the heart of what they do. The team blends strong market experience with cutting-edge tools to deliver exceptional results for customers. From sourcing and negotiation to supplier management and project execution, the team plays a crucial role in driving value and delivering a consistently high-quality service. Collaboration, speed and global alignment are key to our success.

The Role

We’re seeking a Senior Purchasing Manager to lead and develop the UK and US purchasing teams. This role is critical in ensuring the smooth and effective delivery of the end-to-end purchasing process while creating a supportive, inclusive and high-performance team environment.

The ideal candidate is a strong people leader who balances operational excellence with empathy, communication and a genuine commitment to team development. You’ll play a central role in aligning purchasing activity with broader global strategy, driving process improvements and supporting our ambition to lead the procure-tech market.

Key Responsibilities

Team Leadership & People Management:

• Lead, coach and develop a team of Purchasing Specialists and Managers.
• Allocate workload to ensure balance, efficiency and service-level adherence.
• Support the resolution of escalated procurement issues.
• Conduct regular 1:1s, performance reviews and career development conversations.
• Build a collaborative, inclusive and high-performance team culture.

Operational Management:

• Oversee the full purchasing cycle: RFQs, POs, supplier onboarding and invoicing.
• Monitor team performance against SLAs, policies and system requirements.
• Ensure process consistency across the team, including adherence to internal playbooks and compliance standards.
• Track key metrics and identify opportunities for optimisation.

Stakeholder Engagement:

• Act as the primary point of contact for regional and category procurement leads.
• Partner closely with Finance, Legal, Sales and Technology teams to support purchasing activities.
• Maintain strong relationships with suppliers and internal customers, ensuring timely communication and issue resolution.

Process Improvement & Systems:

• Lead continuous improvement initiatives across purchasing workflows and systems.
• Contribute to system enhancement projects, providing user insights and supporting testing or training.
• Promote best practices across S2C and P2P processes.

Qualifications & Experience

• 10+ years’ experience in procurement or purchasing operations, managing end-to-end processes.
• Proven experience leading and developing high-performing teams.
• Strong understanding of S2C, P2P, supplier onboarding and procurement systems.
• Experience with procurement platforms and ERPs (e.g., Microsoft Dynamics Business Central) is highly desirable.
• Excellent analytical, problem-solving and decision-making capabilities.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.

Skills & Competencies

• Ability to manage multiple priorities in a fast-paced environment.
• High attention to detail and commitment to accuracy and compliance.
• Strong interpersonal skills, able to build relationships across functions.
• Comfortable navigating change and supporting process transformation.
• Proactive, solutions-driven approach with a continuous improvement mindset.

Additional Information

• Hybrid working model with a minimum of 3 days per week in the London office (additional days may be required during training or as needed).
• Commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion.
• Flexibility to take on additional responsibilities as business needs evolve.
• Compliance with data protection and information security standards is required.

The Procurement Hive is a procurement consultancy and procurement recruitment business.

Transform your talent – Our recruitment services span over four decades of combined experience, recruiting supply chain and procurement talent for a wide range of organisations across the globe.

The Procurement Hive celebrates and supports diversity and is committed to ensuring equal opportunities for both employees and applicants.