Principal Supply Chain Process Architect

Job Description:

Title: Principal Process Architect, Supply Chain Center of Excellence
Location: Remote – US
Level: Principal (15+ years’ experience)

Role

Nextpower is building a scalable supply chain management system to improve customer reliability, simplify and standardize ways of working, and strengthen process- and data-driven decision making while staying agile through major system changes (e.g., ERP).

The Principal Process Architect designs the end-to-end operating architecture for supply chain – process standards, decision rights, controls, and governed variations – and ensures that improvements deliver measurable results. This is a role for a systems thinker who architects how the supply chain operates across Plan / Source / Deliver and key interfaces, not a transactional process documenter.

What you’ll do

• Architect end-to-end supply chain processes (Plan / Source / Deliver and key interfaces), making cross-functional handoffs, decision points, and constraints explicit, and driving simplification and repeatability at scale.

• Define and maintain global standards including process blueprints, standard work/SOPs, business rules, RACI/decision rights, escalation paths, and a pragmatic variation policy (what must be global, what can be configured, and what can vary locally) with clear rationale and governance.

• Establish objectives and priorities with stakeholders based on data-based ROI determinations and business objectives.

• Effectively facilitate problem identification, knowledge sharing and solutioning across complex stakeholder groups.

• Lead solution implementation and/ or identify resource needs to achieve objectives

• Design practical controls at critical points (e.g., promise/commit, allocation, master data touchpoints, quality holds, supplier escalation), specifying evidence expectations that are workable in real operations.

• Lead systemic defect elimination, driving root-cause problem solving across process, data, system, and behavior, and reducing dependence on workarounds via a managed workaround registry with owner, risk, expiry, and exit plan.

• Leverage analytics and AI tools to accelerate process mapping, root-cause analysis, and scenario design, multiplying the impact and speed of improvements.

• Partner with Data Governance to define process data requirements, KPI definitions, and data quality expectations that enable one version of the truth for decision making.

• Partner with IT to align process intent with system capabilities and to drive clear business rules and requirements (epics/stories, acceptance criteria) while minimizing unnecessary customization, especially on enterprise platforms (Oracle preferred).

• Measure outcomes and drive follow-through by defining success criteria and KPIs for adoption/compliance and performance impact, monitoring leading indicators, and coordinating corrective actions when targets aren’t met.

• Manage a team of 3-5 process engineers and analysts (potential future scope).

• Drive a culture of continuous improvement.

What you’ll bring (Minimum qualifications)

• 15+ years in supply chain process design, operations excellence, or operating model roles in a global enterprise, with demonstrated end-to-end scope beyond a single function.

• Proven ability to build operating mechanisms (standards, decision rights, governance, controls, measures) that scale across regions and cross-functional teams.

• Strong systems thinking and trade-off management skills: able to optimize locally within enterprise standards and variation rules and to articulate downstream impacts and constraints.

• Experience working with enterprise platforms (Oracle preferred) and partnering with IT on process-to-system translation, including business rules, requirements, and acceptance criteria.

• High data fluency: understanding of master data, transaction flows, disciplined KPI definition, and practical data quality controls in an operational context.

• Executive-level influence and facilitation skills; able to align senior stakeholders without direct authority and coach teams toward consistent execution.

• Excellent organizational and project management skills, with a track record of identifying and resolving risks, issues, and dependencies and delivering initiatives on-time and on-budget.

• Experience leveraging AI, automation and desktop tools to increase individual productivity and as solution options.