Sr.Director, North America Procurement

Solenis is a leading global producer of specialty chemicals focused on delivering sustainable solutions for water-intensive industries, including consumer, industrial, institutional, food and beverage, and pool and spa water markets. Owned by Platinum Equity, the company’s product portfolio includes a broad array of water treatment chemistries, process aids, functional additives, and cleaners and disinfectants, as well as state-of-the-art monitoring and control systems. These technologies are used by customers to improve operational efficiencies, enhance product quality, protect plant assets, minimize environmental impact, and create cleaner and safer environments.  

Headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware, the company has 69 manufacturing facilities strategically located around the globe and employs a team of over 16,100 professionals in 130 countries across six continents. Solenis is a 2024 US Best Managed Company, recognized fouryears in a row. For more information about Solenis, please visit www.solenis.com. 

Primary Role – (overview and overall purpose of job)

The role is responsible for the development and execution of the North America sourcing strategies that deliver year-over-year productivity, extended pay terms, reduced lead times, improved delivery/quality performance, reduced risk, increased sustainability in the supply chain  and support a broad business strategy driving Procurement Functional Excellence. 

 Duties and Responsibilities:

• Leads North America productivity initiatives across sites.
• Serves as key interface between the business in the Region and Global Procurement ensuring the function is maximizing value contribution to the Region. Conversely supports communication and escalation of Procurement priorities within the North America.
• Interfaces across sites to drive cost improvement and project execution. Liaison with other project resources to ensure proper focus and progress on initiatives. Influence cross functionally to secure support for procurement initiatives from key stakeholders such as engineering, quality and product management.
• Work with North America leadership to develop group and business wide supply transformation plans which both respect and influence category strategy.
• Works alongside Category Leaders and Procurement Leaders to develop and implement sourcing/supply chain strategies to harness economies of scale, drive economic value, and enable business growth in North America.
• Leverages supplier management/ commodity management/ total cost principles to manage the supplier selection process and encourage productive relationships with strategic suppliers that drive meaningful value to the organization in compliance with global and regional commodity strategy.
• Supports strategic initiatives within North America and Procurement to include make/buy analysis, M&A activity, VAVE and others.
• Assists operating sites in analyzing and understanding strengths / weaknesses in supply chain area, creating and implementing improvement plans to achieve world class standards.
• Coaches, mentors, and develops sourcing talent within North America. Collaborates with other group and corporate leaders to enable robust career paths. Builds a diverse, high performing supply sourcing organization.
• Supports the North America Procurement Leaders in complex and critical negotiations utilizing extensive professional knowledge and experience of principles and techniques of negotiation in the purchasing cycle.
• Builds and leverages relationships and networks across the organization. Uses personal influence skills to persuade others and gain support.
• As required, leads monthly and yearly tactical and strategic presentations and progress reports to the North America Leadership Team.
• Create and develop key partner relationships to enhance profitability, resilience and sustainability.
• Strive to continuously improve to world class the supplier performance in terms of delivery, quality, inventory and lead times

Minimum Qualifications: Education, Experience, Skills, Abilities, License/Certification:

• Bachelor’s Degree in a business or technical field, and ideally an MBA.
• Minimum of 15 years of broad sourcing leadership experience in the Chemicals industry