Lead Procurement Category Manager

About The Weather Company:

The Weather Company is the world’s leading weather provider, helping people and businesses make more informed decisions and take action in the face of weather. Together with advanced technology and AI, The Weather Company’s high-volume weather data, insights, advertising, and media solutions across the open web help people, businesses, and brands around the world prepare for and harness the power of weather in a scalable, privacy-forward way. The world’s most accurate forecaster globally, the company reaches hundreds of enterprise clients and more than 360 million monthly active users via its digital properties from The Weather Channel (weather.com) and Weather Underground (wunderground.com).
AI is part of how we work:
Human judgment, expertise, and creativity remain essential and are amplified by AI. We expect everyone in this role to use AI thoughtfully and proactively to accelerate their performance, improve the quality of their work, and explore new possibilities. We are looking for people who are curious, adaptable, and excited to help shape an AI-enabled culture that delivers better outcomes for our customers and our company.

Job brief:

As a Lead Procurement Category Manager at the Weather Company, you will help implement Procurement, purchasing processes and activities for technology categories in accordance with the business strategic requirements set forth by Procurement and the business units. This role will be responsible for all strategic and tactical aspects of supply chain procurement including stakeholder management, requirements intake, product/service cost reduction, supplier negotiations, strategic sourcing, supplier performance management and improvements, project management and daily operational processing of requests and Pos. Spend categories under management are focused on information technology, including software/SaaS, hardware, cloud infrastructure, telecommunications, and software development services (onshore and offshore).

The impact you'll make:

• Category Manager will help sourcing as needed by the business
• Process procurement steps for categories assigned.
• Work directly with IT and engineering functions as the Procurement interface acting in liaison capacity for procurement activities
• Work directly with C level leaders on all of their Procurement requirements
• You will have the ability to handle multiple spend categories and strategic suppliers
• You will become a key member on the team that leads all tools that are being used within the company.
• Develop and Implement sourcing strategies
• Work with suppliers to obtain cost-saving contracts/material cost reduction
• You will have a great opportunity to combine between strategic and tactical – you will work and act strategically as it relates to procurement as well as perform tactical tasks such as requesting quotes and issuing purchase orders
• Implementation of value chain improvement initiatives
• Support tactical requirements of position/processing P2P (Purchase to Pay)

What you've accomplished:

• You have a great business acumen and work experience in procurement for at least 5-7 years
• Strategic Thinker and Consensus builder
• Unquestioned ethics
• Expert knowledge of technology categories and especially those valuable to software and data businesses like software licensing, contracted services, cloud services, AI & other IT services
• Excellent verbal, written and interpersonal communication skills
• Effective matrix/cross functional skill sets
• Self-Directed with project management experience
• Meet commitments to internal/external customers on time
• Drives for execution excellence and makes sound decisions
• Champions change / Drives for improvement
• Ability to perform financial analysis, spreadsheets, cataloging and database upkeep, project management. Microsoft & Google tools, procurement systems
• Bachelor’s degree in engineering, Business, IT and/or Supply Chain education or experience