Regional Category Manager, Real Estate - North America

Location: Austin, United States of America

In fast changing markets, customers worldwide rely on Thales. Thales is a business where brilliant people from all over the world come together to share ideas and inspire each other. In aerospace, transportation, defence, security and space, our architects design innovative solutions that make our tomorrow's possible.

Regional Category Manager- Real Estate- North America

Arlington, VA, Orlando, FL or Austin, Texas- Hybrid

Position Summary

Thales is looking for a Regional Category Manager who will primarily support North America (NORAM) Real Estate Category and in the this position represent the Procurement Organization both globally and for the Americas Region and shall be responsible for the effective creation and implementation of all the category’s strategic direction and management of the category within the scope of their responsibility (primarily supporting the Real Estate category strategy in managing Thales NORAM architectural, General Contractors and office furniture purchases for large CAPEX projects, and supplier relationship management).

Key Areas of Responsibility

Strategy

• Permanently develop and enrich the regional strategy for the category / commodity (as a part of the category) short mid and long term, based on entities needs.

• Ensure a perfect knowledge and buy-in of the category strategy of the Product / Project Procurement organization or the relevant stakeholders, and by entities / regions.

Competitiveness

• Monitor the market for their category, including key actors and suppliers, economic evolution, innovations, technology, in order to propose the most up-to-date solutions to businesses.

• Provide business with insights as to how products / projects could be more competitive, based on their monitoring.

• Prepare Make or Buy decision, in collaboration with project / product procurement manager or relevant stakeholders.

Supplier Management

• Organize competitions, assess and select best suppliers for their category / commodity, in close collaboration with entities / regions and with regular feedback loops/ Negotiate contracts and own the relationship with the suppliers for their category / commodity.

• Is responsible for the compliance of the purchase contracts with the laws, the Thales regulations and the customers requirements.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in business administration, procurement or comparable field of study with at least 7 years of relevant work experience in procurement or a master’s degree in procurement or business administration with at least 5 years of relevant work experience in procurement or in lieu of a degree, 12 years of relevant procurement work experience as equivalency.

• At least 4 years of experience in Make/Buy, Should Cost Analysis approaches and inputs as well as supplier risk assessment and mitigation planning.

• At least 3 years leading P3 sourcing projects greater than $300k spend and High Risk.

• Prior experience creating and deploying category strategy to secure short and long term vision of a commodity/ies applying procurement expertise to aid in meeting the same.

• Ability to guide and provide leadership to cross functional teams.

• Strong organizational, analytical, problem-solving and strategic thinking skills

• Needs strong communication skills, both written and verbal.

• Demonstrated experience negotiating contractual terms and conditions within an international, complex, matrixed environment.

• Ability to synthesize large amounts of data to make analytical decisions based using Excel (pivot tables) etc.

Ability to speak French, Spanish and/or Portuguese would be ideal.

If you’re excited about working with Thales, but not meeting the requirements for this position, we encourage you to join our Talent Community.

Special Position Requirements

Schedule: Core Business Hours are Monday-Friday. The expectation is that you are working a full eight-hour day, adjusting your scheduled hours of work to accommodate your workload, as well as hours of work to accommodate meetings with partners throughout North America, but also to facilitate effective and timely meetings and communication with the Global partners overseas.

Physical Environment: This role has been designated as a Hybrid position, with the current expectation that, when you are not traveling, that you will physically work from your assigned Thales office at least two days each week.

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