Marketing Procurement Sub-Category Lead

Block is one company built from many blocks, all united by the same purpose of economic empowerment. The blocks that form our foundational teams — People, Finance, Counsel, Hardware, Information Security, Platform Infrastructure Engineering, and more — provide support and guidance at the corporate level. They work across business groups and around the globe, spanning time zones and disciplines to develop inclusive People policies, forecast finances, give legal counsel, safeguard systems, nurture new initiatives, and more. Every challenge creates possibilities, and we need different perspectives to see them all. Bring yours to Block.

The Role

The role will be responsible for proactively managing, developing, and executing category and sourcing strategies across a sub-set of Marketing categories; inclusive of managing the end to end supplier management lifecycle. You should have strong leadership, communication and analytical skills and a proven ability to manage complex processes across a series of business partners. You will lead with a partnership mentality, and focus on business enablement. You will model teamwork and collaboration skills and have a noticeable positive impact on the velocity and success of your teammates. The ability to build relationships with business partners across the organization to ensure understanding of goals and priorities of the Marketing functions is a core requirement in this role. You must demonstrate collaboration internally and externally, have a passionate focus on success, and commitment to continuous improvement.

You Will

• Support Block leadership strategic planning efforts through: Heavy focus on sourcing (via best class sourcing methodologies) Contract negotiation, Risk mitigation, Ongoing management and performance of supplier relationships
• Be a trusted partner to the Marketing team in developing new strategies in an effort to increase delivery through people, processes, tools, and suppliers
• Ensure smooth performance of daily operations, allowing them to concentrate on more progressive activities
• Be the source of bringing in the best outside best practices by leveraging various sources of information and your external network
• Oversee complex, Block-wide supplier relations, developing solutions to new problems and using your foresight to anticipate future trends and issues
• Establish partnerships with important business partners aimed at identifying, understanding and fulfilling their requirements
• Develop selection/negotiation criteria, establish purchasing goals, coordinate resources, and provide category leadership following long-term buying goals
• Collaborate with business partners to lead contract negotiation with suppliers; develop negotiation approaches, fallback positions and acceptable terms and conditions through contract completion and identify important benchmarks to measure contractual arrangements
• Identify and realize cost-saving and cost-reduction opportunities and build a culture of long-term savings on procurement costs without compromising supply assurance or quality
• Assist to establish supplier life-cycle strategy to oversee planning, sourcing and selection of new suppliers, manage data for supplier performance and manage supplier off-boarding and transition
• Explore new technologies to optimize performance and transparency to business partners
• Support internal and external audit, SOX compliance and due diligence requests
• Support other ad hoc projects

You Have

• Minimum of 10 years of strategic procurement or supplier management experience; in a high-growth technology environment preferred
• At least 5 years in a Marketing Category position
• Ability to project manage, demonstrate project status, key actions, risks and opportunities
• Ability to navigate in unstructured environments while garnering trust with internal customers.
• Experience proactively resolving performance issues with assigned suppliers to ensure resolution
• Experience leveraging technology and financial systems to extract and analyze data
• Bachelor's degree from an accredited university preferably in Procurement, Business Administration, Finance, Technology or related field.
• MBA/advanced technical degree is preferred

We’re working to build a more inclusive economy where our customers have equal access to opportunity, and we strive to live by these same values in building our workplace. Block is an equal opportunity employer evaluating all employees and job applicants without regard to identity or any legally protected class. We also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories for employment on our team, and always assess candidates on an individualized basis.

We believe in being fair, and are committed to an inclusive