Associate Director, Ingredients - Commodities

Essential Functions & Responsibilities  

• ​​Build and maintain excellent relationships with mid- to executive-level clients and suppliers continuously to ensure customer satisfaction and increase influence over total category spend.  

• ​Develop new capabilities for Kraft Heinz through people by hiring the right talent, ensuring clarity on the vision and jobs to be done, and driving engagement through effective coaching, guidance, and people development.  

• ​Develop a category and sourcing strategy for a comprehensive portfolio of complex and critical categories to Kraft Heinz. 

• ​Establish and deliver performance goals for a portfolio of categories representing a significant amount of spend.  

• ​Lead strategic sourcing projects for supplier selection and optimization to execute Category Management vision and strategies, deliver on business needs based on data and insights and leveraging external best practices. 

• ​Manage supplier relationships, facilitating Supplier Business Reviews, and act as a high-level escalation point for performance and risk issues. 

• ​Lead discussions with critical suppliers around long-term objectives and strategies, ongoing market trends, innovation, and technological advances.  

• ​Identify the most crucial supplier relationships in collaboration with operations and commercial; create a roadmap for improving or changing relationships for improved value aligned with category strategies.  

• ​Be a thought leader and enabler for continuously improving internal and external routines and business processes.  

• ​Manage a prioritized portfolio of projects for the category in the near and long term.  

• ​Led the supplier selection and RFx award process by executing highly complex contracts following policies and processes, applying expert-level negotiation techniques and tools in all situations.  

• ​Actively understand category dynamics (current market, pricing, cost drivers, industry, and supplier variables) through trade groups, publications, etc., and communicate ch