Procurement Purchasing Director

Changing lives. Building Careers.
 

Joining us is a chance to do important work that creates change and shapes the future of healthcare. Thinking differently is what we do best. To us, change equals opportunity. Every day, our colleagues are challenging what’s possible and making headway to innovate new treatment pathways to advance patient outcomes and set new standards of care.

Procurement Purchasing Director

Department: Procurement
Reports to: Senior Director or Vice President, Procurement
Location: Princeton, NJ
FLSA Status: Exempt

ROLE PURPOSE

The Procurement Purchasing Director provides enterprise leadership for purchasing strategy, governance, and operational execution across all business units and sites. This role establishes the purchasing operating model, defines scalable decision‑rights frameworks, and leads transformation of processes, systems, and controls to deliver speed, quality, compliance, and measurable business value.

The Director governs enterprise purchasing performance and benefits realization and leads enterprise‑level operational negotiations within approved authority (e.g., invoice dispute resolution, credit recovery programs, standardized expedite and service‑recovery practices). The role operates in close partnership with Sourcing, Finance, Legal, IT, and Supply Chain, maintaining clear boundaries between purchasing execution and category sourcing strategy or long‑term contracting.

The Purchasing Director is expected to consistently demonstrate company values by Innovating for Outcomes, Collaborating to Win, Living Quality, Championing Our People, and Being Accountable for enterprise results, governance, and culture.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

1) Enterprise Purchasing Strategy & Governance

(Innovate for Outcomes • Live Quality • Be Accountable)

• Define and maintain an enterprise purchasing strategy aligned with corporate objectives, financial targets, and service expectations.
• Establish and govern decision rights, Delegation of Authority (DOA), approval frameworks, and escalation paths for purchasing activities.
• Set clear enterprise standards for purchasing execution while enabling appropriate local flexibility where justified.
• Ensure alignment between purchasing governance, sourcing strategy, financial controls, and risk management frameworks.
• Serve as the executive owner for purchasing policy interpretation and enforcement across the enterprise.

2) Process Excellence & Standardization

(Live Quality • Innovate for Outcomes • Be Accountable)

• Standardize purchasing processes, policies, SOPs, templates, and documentation across all sites and business units.
• Lead continuous improvement initiatives to reduce cycle time, rework, exceptions, and manual intervention.
• Establish consistent service levels, performance expectations, and exception‑management routines.
• Embed a culture of disciplined execution, quality, and continuous improvement across purchasing teams.

3) Enterprise Operational Negotiations

(Collaborate to Win • Be Accountable • Live Quality)

• Lead or sponsor high‑value, enterprise‑impact operational negotiations, including:
  • Invoice and charge dispute resolution
  • Credit recovery and remediation programs
  • Standardized delivery windows, expedite protocols, and service‑recovery practices
• Partner with Legal, Finance, Quality, and Sourcing to ensure negotiated outcomes are compliant, financially sound, and well documented.
• Maintain clear boundaries so long‑term pricing strategy, supplier selection, and contract negotiations remain within Sourcing ownership.

4) Performance Management & Financial Accountability

(Be Accountable • Live Quality)

• Own enterprise purchasing KPIs and management dashboards (cycle time, accuracy, exception rates, compliance, backlog, dispute resolution).
• Establish performance management routines with clear accountability, follow‑through, and escalation discipline.
• Partner with Finance to validate benefits realization and ensure accurate, auditable reporting.
• Communicate enterprise performance, risks, and improvement plans to senior and executive leadership.

5) Systems, Data & Digital Enablement

(Innovate for Outcomes • Live Quality)

• Lead optimization of purchasing systems and workflows, including ERP validations, approval logic, master data, and integrations.
• Oversee catalog strategy, standardized item descriptions, and cross‑site data maintenance disciplines.
• Promote data governance, analytics, and automation to enable scalab