Strategic Buyer

Join the Procurement Team based in Bristol as a Strategic Buyer and help us to achieve our mission of pioneering electric aviation.

We are in the process of growing our Procurement and Supply Chain team as we continue toward our journey of making electric aviation history. We are adding three Strategic Buyer roles to the team as part of this expansion. You'll grow and forge various cross-functional relationships across the business as you develop and deploy a category management, best practice approach to procurement in the ongoing development of the VX4 aircraft.

What success will look like for you, as a Strategic Buyer?

You will conduct market assessments, helping us to identify potential new suppliers as well as manage new and existing supplier relationships, ensuring adherence to contractual KPIs, to secure on-time, cost, and quality products/services. We'll also need you to take ownership of the commercial negotiation and contracting process from RFI/RFP through to contract award.

This role is a highly impactful, strategic position where you'll work in close proximity to the Head of Procurement. The work you'll be doing with your stakeholders is vital to ensure the success of our ambitious objectives for this year and beyond. That said, we're a fast-paced and agile business where everyone is hands-on and a 'doer' within the job in front of them. This means that alongside your more dynamic responsibilities, you will need to own tasks at all levels such as the end-to-end PO process and, ensuring information is accurate and up to date in our ERP system. We're an evolving business, so you'll have the opportunity to contribute to continuous improvement of our procurement processes and tools and play a key role in helping to develop future supplier ramp-up strategies.

You will be working closely with our expert internal teams across engineering, finance, and program, as well as key global external suppliers. You will need excellent communication, negotiation skills, attention to detail, and the ability to flex between essential operational tasks to strategic problem-solving to be successful in this role. You will work with and analyse data and insights to identify where there are potential risks in our supply chain and take the lead in finding required solutions. Global travel to the US, Asia and Europe is also an important part of the role, although you will have complete autonomy over the frequency of travel. 

What would we like you to bring?

We want you to be successful in your role, to achieve this, you will need to have demonstrable procurement or supply chain experience within a highly regulated industry such as Aerospace, Automotive, Manufacturing, Nuclear, Healthcare or similar. You will need a strong track record of developing strategic relationships with your suppliers that have resulted in category growth and first-class contract management, negotiation, and data analysis skills.  

You will have a high level of resilience to change and ambiguity and apply a continuous learning mindset to your work. Knowledge of verification and certification processes for aircraft would be advantageous, but not essential. Additionally, you will hold either a BA/BSc degree or equivalent in a business-related field or CIPS qualification.