Job Description:
Strategic Sourcing Category Lead, Americas - Maintenance and Applied Analytics
Maintenance and Applied Analytics
Huntsman is seeking a Strategic Sourcing Category Lead, Americas - Maintenance and Applied Analytics supporting the Purchasing - Americas Division located in The Woodlands, Texas. This position will report to the Category Management Team Lead, Americas.
Job Scope
A procurement category leader with exceptional analytical capabilities who executes sourcing work while transforming how the team uses data to make decisions.
The Strategic Sourcing Category Lead, Americas - Maintenance and Applied Analytics is responsible for leading category management and strategic sourcing activities for assigned maintenance-related indirect spend while serving as a catalyst for data-driven decision making across the Indirect Sourcing organization.
The successful candidate will own category strategies, sourcing projects, supplier negotiations, contracts, stakeholder engagement, value delivery, and supplier performance. The individual will also apply advanced analytics, business intelligence, automation, and predictive modeling to improve how sourcing opportunities are identified, evaluated, executed, and sustained.
The role is intended for an analytically strong professional who wants to build a long-term career in procurement and help transform sourcing from a reactive, transaction-oriented function into a proactive, strategic, and insight-driven business partner.
The position will support a portfolio of maintenance and plant-services categories across the Americas. The specific portfolio may evolve based on business needs and category ownership, but may include:
- Mechanical maintenance, rotating and fixed-equipment support, millwright services, equipment repair, and field services.
- Electrical, instrumentation, controls, calibration, inspection, testing, and reliability-related services.
- Plant contractors and specialty trades, including scaffolding, insulation, painting and coatings, industrial cleaning, and related site services.
- Fabrication, machining, welding, specialty repair, rentals, selected MRO materials and consumables, and other maintenance support requirements.
- Turnaround, shutdown, outage, and planned-maintenance sourcing support, plus other regional indirect categories assigned to the role.
In summary, as the Strategic Sourcing Category Lead, Americas - Maintenance and Applied Analytics, you will:
Category Strategy and Portfolio Management
- Develop and execute fact-based category strategies for assigned Maintenance, contractor, and plant-services spend across the Americas, aligned with plant, business, and regional objectives through the 7-steps Strategic Sourcing Methodology adopted by Huntsman.
- Analyze spend, demand, specifications, supplier markets, cost drivers, contract coverage, stakeholder requirements, and risks to identify opportunities and build multi-year category roadmaps.
- Evaluate regional versus local requirements and determine the appropriate sourcing, supplier, and contracting model for each category or subcategory.
- Monitor labor, material, inflation, capacity, and market trends and translate findings into sourcing actions, business recommendations, and risk-mitigation plans.
- Maintain category plans, sourcing pipelines, value-delivery forecasts, and implementation priorities as active management tools.
Strategic Sourcing, Negotiation, and Contract Management
- Lead the end-to-end sourcing process, including opportunity assessment, stakeholder alignment, scope development, RFx execution, supplier evaluation, negotiation, award recommendation, contracting, implementation, and value tracking.
- Develop scopes of work, bid instructions, pricing templates, commercial requirements, evaluation criteria, and negotiation strategies.
- Conduct RFIs, RFQs, RFPs, e-auctions, supplier workshops, and competitive negotiations using the sourcing method best suited to the business requirement.
- Normalize and analyze supplier proposals, including labor rates, overtime, crew composition, productivity, mobilization, equipment, materials, travel, reimbursables, markups, escalation, payment terms, and total cost of ownership.
- Develop data-supported negotiation fact bases, scenario models, should-cost analyses, supplier comparisons, sourcing recommendations, and approval documentation.
- Negotiate pricing, service levels, productivity commitments, payment terms, warranties, escalation mechanisms, risk allocation, and continuous-improvement obligations.
- Partner with Legal, HSE, Finance, Risk, and business stakeholders to develop master service agreements, statements of work, rate sheets, service-level requirements, and related commercial documents.
- Drive implementation and adoption of negotiated agreements while monitoring contract utilization, price compliance, leakage, maverick spend, savings realization, and procurement-policy compliance.
Supplier Performance and Relationship Management
- Segment suppliers based on criticality, spend, risk, capability, and value potential and apply the appropriate governance and relationship-management model.
- Establish scorecards and KPIs covering safety, quality, service, delivery, responsiveness, productivity, innovation, compliance, and cost performance.
- Lead supplier performance reviews, QBRs, corrective-action plans, and continuous-improvement initiatives with key maintenance suppliers.
- Use supplier and operational data to identify root causes, recurring issues, cost-to-serve drivers, risks, and improvement opportunities.
- Partner with suppliers and internal stakeholders to improve productivity, standardization, reliability, innovation, and total cost.
- Assess operational, financial, labor, capacity, geographic, concentration, and supply-continuity risks and develop mitigation or contingency plans.
Stakeholder Partnership and Procurement Leadership
- Build trusted relationships with plant leadership, Maintenance, Reliability, Operations, Engineering, Finance, HSE, Legal, and other functions across the Americas.
- Translate operational needs into sourcing strategies and commercial solutions that protect safety, reliability, service quality, and business continuity.
- Facilitate cross-site alignment on specifications, supplier requirements, sourcing timing, award decisions, contract deployment, and implementation actions.
- Present category strategies, sourcing recommendations, analytical findings, supplier performance, risks, and value-delivery results to senior leaders and nontechnical audiences.
- Serve as the procurement subject-matter resource for assigned maintenance categories and contribute to procurement transformation, capability building, and continuous improvement.
Procurement Analytics, Predictive Insights, and Transformation
- Develop dashboards, scorecards, and self-service tools that improve visibility into spend, demand, sourcing pipeline, savings, contract coverage, price compliance, supplier performance, risk, and category trends.
- Integrate and analyze procurement, ERP, contract, supplier, finance, and operational data; identify data-quality issues and establish practical cleansing, classification, and reporting rules.
- Use SQL, Power BI, Python, advanced Excel, Power Query, or comparable tools to rapidly analyze large datasets and convert findings into sourcing and category actions.
- Automate recurring reports and analytical workflows to reduce manual effort, accelerate decision making, and improve consistency.
- Develop models for bid normalization, rate benchmarking, price variance, demand patterns, supplier concentration, sourcing prioritization, contract compliance, benefits tracking, and risk management.
- Apply statistical methods, forecasting, machine learning, and scenario analysis to anticipate spend, demand, supplier performance, capacity constraints, price movements, sourcing opportunities, and emerging risks.
- Create intuitive visualizations and concise decision narratives explaining what happened, why it happened, what is likely to happen next, and what action should be taken.
- Partner with Procurement Data, IT, Digital, and AI teams to improve data governance, automation, system integration, analytical standards, and adoption of data-driven sourcing practices.
- Coach sourcing colleagues on using data, dashboards, and analytical methods in category management and sourcing decisions.
Qualifications
You must possess the below minimum qualifications to be initially considered for this position. Preferred qualifications are in addition to the minimum requirements and are considered a plus factor in identifying top candidates.
The candidate must have an unrestricted right to work for Huntsman in the United States.
Minimum Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in Supply Chain, Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Data Analytics, Business Analytics, Economics, Statistics, Computer Science, Finance, or a related field.
- 3+ years of experience in Procurement, Strategic Sourcing, Supply Chain, Operations Analytics, Business Intelligence, or another analytical business function with demonstrated commercial exposure.
Skills and knowledge
- Demonstrated ability to lead projects, work with cross-functional stakeholders, and translate complex data into practical business decisions.
- Advanced analytical and problem-solving skills, including experience working with large, imperfect, and multi-source datasets.
- Advanced proficiency in Microsoft Excel and demonstrated experience with data visualization or business-intelligence tools.
- Strong written, verbal, presentation, and stakeholder-management skills.
- Demonstrated interest in building a long-term career in procurement.
Preferred Qualifications
- Master's degree in Analytics, Supply Chain, Data Science, Business Analytics, Engineering, or an MBA.
- Experience in manufacturing, chemicals, industrial, energy, or process industries.
- Experience supporting maintenance, contractor, engineering, turnaround, reliability, or operations-related categories.
- Experience leading sourcing events, commercial evaluations, supplier negotiations, contract development, and supplier-performance programs.
- Proven experience creating executive dashboards, automated reporting, analytical models, or predictive solutions that influenced business decisions.
- Working knowledge of procurement and contract systems such as SAP, SAP Ariba, or comparable platforms.
- Data and BI platforms: Power BI, SQL, Python, Tableau, Microsoft Fabric, Azure Analytics, SAP Analytics, SAP BW, advanced Excel, Power Query, Power Automate, or comparable tools.
- Analytical methods: data visualization, statistical analysis, forecasting, predictive analytics, machine-learning fundamentals, data modeling, scenario analysis, and KPI development.
- Procurement analytics: spend and demand analysis, bid normalization, price variance, should-cost modeling, supplier segmentation and performance, contract compliance, savings tracking, and risk analytics.
- Commercial capability: category strategy, RFx management, total-cost analysis, negotiation planning, contracting, supplier management, change management, and value realization.
Working Environment
- Ability to travel domestically and internationally, up to 20%.
- Ability to work in a Hybrid work environment, typically 1 day working from home and four days in the office each week.
Huntsman is proud to promote equal opportunity in the workplace All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to their race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, age, or any other protected characteristic.
All unsolicited resumes presented by recruitment agencies are treated as pro bono information or service and will not be compensated.
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