Director, Category Management - Advanced Materials

 

Step into a career with ASM, where cutting edge technology meets collaborative culture. ​

For over 55 years ASM has been ahead of what’s next, at the forefront of innovation and what’s technologically possible. With more than 4,500 ASMers representing 70 nationalities, our people and our advanced semiconductor devices are playing a crucial role in trends such as 5G, cloud computing, AI, and autonomous driving.  But we’re more than just a tech company. We value diversity, inclusion and sustainability as we strive to make a positive impact on the world.  Our development programs help support your growth, shaping your future and pushing the boundaries of innovation to unleash potential.  

Director, Category Management -  Advanced Materials

Position Summary

The Director, Category Management -  Advanced Materials is a strategic leader accountable for owning and executing a comprehensive, forward-looking sourcing and supplier strategy to build a resilient global supplier network and drive innovation and value creation across the Advanced Materials category. The leader will shape ASM’s long-term sourcing roadmap, create leverage, negotiate contracts and ensure cost, quality, and supplier excellence.

As part of ASM’s Global Sourcing leadership team, the Category leader will collaborate closely with Engineering, Operations, Quality, and Business Units to translate business needs into strategic sourcing solutions — enabling ASM to scale globally with resilience, agility, and technological leadership.

ASM utilizes some of the most highly technical materials to enable its leading-edge technologies that drive ASM’s leading innovation and technology. These highly specialized materials categories (quartz, silicon carbide, ceramics, graphite and heating elements) will require a highly technical leader who also possesses commercial acumen.  The categories are highly driven by technological needs and close engagement with key technical leaders.  Additionally, this leader will need to understand full supply chain scope from raw materials through manufacturing and surface treatment. One critical key to long-term success will be partnering to ensure access to technology,

 

What you will be working on

Architect a Future-Ready Supply Base

• Develop and execute a 3–5 years global category sourcing strategy, ensuring our supplier capabilities are 2-3 years ahead of product introduction.
• Achieve year-over-year total cost of ownership (TCO) reduction through deep technical value engineering, not just negotiation.
• Establish a "Zero-Defect" quality culture with key suppliers, driving toward Six Sigma levels and achieving a >95% OTD for complex, long-lead items.
• Continually evaluate new suppliers that can vertically integrate and scale with ASM. Uplevel the commercial relationships with key partners through Supplier Relationship Management programs that help to deliver long-term value for ASM.

 Technical Leadership & Supplier Innovation

• Act as the primary technical authority for your category, leveraging deep expertise to evaluate emerging technologies and supplier capabilities.
• Drive supplier-led innovation, establishing joint development roadmaps that result in the adoption of at least two new technologies or processes per year.
• Champion early supplier involvement in New Product Introduction (NPI), thereby significantly reducing time-to-market.
• Be able to engage engineering and suppliers on technical level discussions on design and opportunities to improve yield, quality and costs.

Team Leadership & Development:

• Build, coach, and develop a high-performing, global sourcing team.
• Foster a culture of excellence and data-driven decision-making, leveraging tools like SAP S/4HANA, Power BI and other analytics tools.
• Achieve high team retention rate through active mentorship and development planning.
• Influence and manage internal stakeholders such as manufacturing, quality, purchasing, planning, business units and finance. Ensure team responsiveness towards supporting cross functional initiatives that relate to continuity of supply, cost management, quality enhancement, lead time reduction, capacity management, etc.

Operational Excellence & Execution

• Own end-to-end supplier relationship management, implementing standardized scorecards and metrics, holding quarterly business reviews (QBRs) and driving continuous improvement.
• Lead cross-functional efficiency programs and improvements to reduce overhead, lead times, liabilities and costs.
• Ensure supply chain resilience by developing and maintaining rob