Sr. Manager, Indirects - Utilities and Services

Job Description

Essential Functions & Responsibilities

· Build and maintain strong internal stakeholder and supplier relationships to ensure alignment, responsiveness, and stakeholder satisfaction.

· Lead sourcing and category management for a portfolio of utilities and services categories, ensuring clear requirements, aligned expectations, and measurable outcomes.

· Set and deliver performance goals for a high-spend category portfolio, including a robust productivity pipeline that maintains operational excellence.

· Partner with Sustainability, suppliers, and business stakeholders to execute short- and long-term sustainability strategies in a cost-effective manner.

· Lead supplier relationship management and conduct supplier business reviews; serve as an escalation point for performance, continuity, and risk issues (experience with utilities, sustainability, and sanitation industry leaders is a plus).

· Develop and maintain a fit-for-purpose supplier base that ensures supply continuity while reducing tail spend.

· Lead strategic supplier discussions on long-term objectives, market trends, innovation/technology, and investment opportunities.

· Own escalations for critical supplier issues; align cross-functional partners and drive timely resolution.

· Translate business needs into sourcing and category plans across AQSCI (Assurance of Supply, Quality, Service, Cost, and Innovation).

· Develop multi-year category strategies grounded in data, insights, and business requirements.

· Build strong cross-functional partnerships to influence decisions and drive adoption of category strategies across total spend.

· Identify, evaluate, and prioritize value-generating initiatives based on complexity, resources, risk, time to implement, and financial impact.

· Prioritize and allocate work across the team while personally owning key sourcing initiatives.

· Review key deliverables (strategies, RFx packages, negotiation plans, and contracts) to ensure quality, consistency, and compliance.

· Lead contract negotiations and execute agreements in accordance with procurement policies; apply expertise across categories as needed.

· Maintain a strong understanding of category dynamics (market conditions, pricing, cost drivers, and supplier landscape) and communicate key changes to business partners.

· Drive Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) improvements through analytics and cross-functional collaboration; measure and report value delivery.

· Coach and develop team members through clear expectations, regular feedback, and performance management; simplify complexity and enable execution.

Expected Experience & Required Skills

· Bachelor's degree in supply chain management, finance, business, engineering or related field. Candidates with extensive relevant experience and certifications (e.g., CPM, CPIM, etc.) may be considered in lieu of a degree.

· Possess at least 5 to 7 years of experience in Procurement, preferably in Indirect Procurement with relevant category expertise.

· Strong written, verbal, analytical, interpersonal, and presentation skills.

· Ability to prioritize multiple concurrent tasks and drive assignments to timely completion

· Ability to understand, organize, and communicate complex information or data sets in an easily understandable format tailored to a variety of audiences.

· Ability to work collaboratively in a team environment, support requests from, and interact directly across all levels of the organization.

· Demonstrates strong ownership, curiosity, and bias for action; results-oriented, proactive, and responsive.

· Have strong planning and execution skills to deliver projects related to TCO

· Ability to gather information to become a subject matter expert in newer areas (ask questions, synthesize, and simplify) to ensure understanding of the category dynamics and business needs

· Supports strategy development that aligns function with organizational goals and generates results that will have a positive impact on the function/business unit. Must have experience in the sourcing life cycle process and have a strong grasp of the tools needed to complete the process.

· Intermediate to advanced proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite ( Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook) and have an understanding for source-to-pay tools (SAP, Ariba, etc.).

Work Environment & Schedule

This position is considered a normal office environment with moderate travel to customer locations, stores, manufacturing facilities, etc.; offices are open workspaces. To create a more agile and modern workplace, we allow Chicago/Aon Center based employees to work virtually for up to two days each week and expect them to work in-person during the defined co