Purchasing Manager – Building Materials & ERP Systems
Location: Tampa Bay Area, FL
Job Type: Full-Time, In Person
Compensation: $28–$34/hour to start, based on experience
Industries: Flooring, cabinetry, countertops, interior finishes, construction materials, fabrication, distribution, or similar fields
About the Opportunity
We are looking for a hands-on Purchasing Manager who can do more than place orders. This person will own the purchasing function, improve vendor accountability, protect margins, help prevent material delays, and build better processes as our company continues to grow.
Our business operates across interior finishes, flooring, cabinetry, countertop fabrication, and a developing franchise model. Purchasing is a critical part of keeping projects on schedule, protecting profitability, supporting operations, and giving leadership better visibility into what is happening before problems affect customers.
This role is ideal for someone who has real purchasing experience, understands vendor follow-up and cost control, and is comfortable using an ERP system as more than just a place to enter transactions. NetSuite experience is strongly preferred, but we will also consider candidates with strong experience in another ERP or inventory/purchasing system.
This is not a purely clerical buyer role. We need someone who can manage the daily details while also helping build a stronger department.
What You Will Own
Purchasing & Material Readiness
You will manage day-to-day purchasing activity and help ensure materials are ordered correctly, followed up on, received, tracked, and available when needed.
Responsibilities include:
- Creating, reviewing, and managing purchase orders.
- Following up with vendors on confirmations, ship dates, backorders, substitutions, shortages, and delivery issues.
- Tracking ETAs and communicating material risks before they delay jobs.
- Coordinating with project managers, scheduling, warehouse, sales, finance, and operations.
- Helping ensure orders match job requirements, vendor terms, pricing expectations, and project timelines.
- Reducing emergency purchasing, missed orders, duplicate orders, last-minute expediting, and avoidable job delays.
Vendor Management & Cost Control
You will help bring discipline and accountability to vendor relationships.
Responsibilities include:
- Maintaining approved vendor information, pricing, terms, freight expectations, surcharge rules, and lead-time assumptions.
- Negotiating or helping enforce vendor pricing, freight, payment terms, restocking fees, claims procedures, and service expectations.
- Identifying pricing discrepancies, unauthorized increases, freight overcharges, invoice variances, missing credits, and vendor non-compliance.
- Working with accounting to help ensure vendor bills match purchase orders, negotiated terms, and approved pricing.
- Tracking claims, returns, damaged goods, shortages, chargebacks, credits, and unresolved vendor issues until completion.
- Evaluating vendors based on cost, reliability, responsiveness, quality, accuracy, delivery performance, and willingness to honor commitments.
ERP / NetSuite Purchasing Process Ownership
You do not need to be a programmer or NetSuite administrator, but you must be comfortable working in an ERP-driven environment and helping improve how purchasing operates inside the system.
Responsibilities include:
- Using NetSuite, or a comparable ERP system, to manage purchasing, vendors, item records, purchase orders, receiving, inventory, job costing, and reporting.
- Helping leadership identify where purchasing workflows, data, reporting, dashboards, saved searches, approvals, or alerts need improvement.
- Translating purchasing problems into clear business requirements for consultants, developers, or internal technical resources.
- Testing purchasing-related workflow changes and giving practical feedback before rollout.
- Helping determine whether problems are caused by process, training, vendor behavior, data quality, system setup, or reporting gaps.
Process Improvement & Department Building
We are looking for someone who can help turn purchasing into a more proactive, organized, and scalable function.
Responsibilities include:
- Creating practical SOPs, checklists, follow-up routines, escalation rules, and documentation standards.
- Identifying recurring problems, bottlenecks, duplicate steps, and failure points.
- Building visibility into open purchase orders, late materials, vendor issues, pricing variances, freight exposure, backorders, credits, and upcoming demand.
- Helping less experienced team members follow clear purchasing procedures.
- Supporting future growth across multiple companies, product lines, and locations.
Inventory, Warehouse & Operations Coordination
You will work closely with operations and warehouse teams to make sure purchasing supports actual job execution.
Responsibilities include:
- Coordinating material flow between vendors, warehouse, jobsites, production, and project teams.
- Helping define when items should be stocked, special ordered, drop-shipped, or handled through another fulfillment method.
- Supporting inventory visibility, stocking logic, reorder points, safety stock, and replenishment planning where appropriate.
- Helping reduce lost materials, poor staging, avoidable freight costs, and unclear handoffs.
Countertop Fabrication & Specialty Material Support
Our related countertop fabrication operations require special attention to slabs, remnants, vendor relationships, freight, and material utilization.
Responsibilities may include:
- Supporting purchasing and inventory strategy for countertop materials.
- Helping evaluate slab purchasing, remnant tracking, material utilization, storage, vendor performance, and freight cost.
- Helping create practical processes for tracking usable remnants and deciding when materials should be reused, sold, discounted, stored, or discarded.
What We Are Looking For
The right candidate will be hands-on, organized, analytical, and comfortable being held accountable for results. We want someone who can live in the details without losing sight of the bigger picture.
Strong candidates will have:
- Experience in purchasing, procurement, sourcing, inventory, supply chain, vendor management, or construction materials coordination.
- Experience in flooring, cabinetry, countertops, building materials, construction, manufacturing, fabrication, distribution, or a similar industry.
- Strong follow-up skills and the ability to keep vendors accountable.
- Comfort reviewing pricing, freight, surcharges, credits, claims, backorders, substitutions, lead times, and vendor terms.
- ERP experience, preferably NetSuite.
- Strong Excel / spreadsheet skills.
- Ability to spot patterns, identify process gaps, and recommend practical improvements.
- Clear communication with vendors, project managers, warehouse staff, accounting, sales, operations, and leadership.
- Ability to work independently in a growing company where not every process is already built.
NetSuite / ERP Experience
NetSuite experience is strongly preferred. Comparable ERP experience will be considered if the candidate has used the system in a purchasing, inventory, operations, job-costing, or supply-chain role.
The ideal candidate understands how purchasing connects to vendors, item records, purchase orders, receiving, inventory, sales orders, job costing, billing, reporting, and operational accountability.
This person does not need to code, build Suitelets, or administer NetSuite, but they must be able to explain what purchasing needs from the system and help leadership design better controls and reporting.
Who Will Succeed in This Role
You may be a strong fit if you are the person others rely on when vendor issues, missing materials, freight problems, pricing questions, or ERP problems need to be untangled.
You should enjoy asking questions like:
- What was ordered?
- Was it confirmed?
- When is it arriving?
- Is the price correct?
- Are freight and surcharges being handled correctly?
- Is the vendor honoring the agreed terms?
- Will the material be ready before the job needs it?
- Does the system show the team what they need to know?
- How do we prevent this problem from happening again?
Why This Role Matters
This is an opportunity to take ownership of a purchasing function that directly affects job readiness, customer satisfaction, profitability, vendor accountability, and company growth.
For the right person, this is more than a purchasing job. It is a chance to help build a smarter procurement department, improve how the company uses NetSuite, support multiple lines of business, and contribute to the systems needed for future expansion.
Requirements
- Purchasing, procurement, inventory, vendor management, supply-chain, or related experience.
- Experience with building materials, construction, manufacturing, distribution, fabrication, interior finishes, flooring, cabinetry, countertops, or similar industries strongly preferred.
- NetSuite experience strongly preferred; comparable ERP experience considered.
- Strong Excel / spreadsheet ability.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills.
- Ability to work full-time in person in the Tampa Bay area.
- Strong organization, follow-through, attention to detail, and accountability.
Compensation
This is a full-time position with compensation in the range of $28–$34/hour to start, based on experience.
We are looking for someone who wants a meaningful role with ownership, visibility, and growth potential as the purchasing function becomes more structured and scalable.
Job Type: Full-time
Pay: $28.00 - $34.00 per hour
Benefits:
- Dental insurance
- Employee discount
- Health insurance
- Life insurance
- Paid time off
- Vision insurance
Application Question(s):
- What ERP or purchasing/inventory systems have you used?
- Have you been responsible for tracking open POs, ETAs, backorders, vendor confirmations, or late materials?
Describe how you have tracked open purchase orders, vendor confirmations, ETAs, backorders, late materials, or job-readiness issues. What system or process did you use?
- Have you reviewed vendor bills, pricing, freight charges, surcharges, credits, or invoice discrepancies against purchase orders or vendor terms?
Describe your experience reviewing vendor bills against purchase orders, quoted pricing, freight charges, surcharges, credits, or vendor terms. What types of discrepancies have you caught or resolved?
- Tell us about a time you improved a purchasing process, report, checklist, dashboard, SOP, or exception-tracking system. What was broken, what did you change, and how did it improve purchasing, vendor follow-up, inventory visibility, or job readiness?
- Describe one purchasing process you improved or one recurring vendor/material problem you helped solve.
- This role starts at $28–$34/hour, with potential to transition into a salaried management role based on performance and fit. Is this compensation range acceptable to you?
- If you inherited a purchasing department with late POs, missing ETAs, vendor follow-up problems, freight overcharges, and credits not being tracked, what would you do in the first 30 days to get control of it?
Experience:
- Purchasing: 3 years (Required)
- Vendor management: 1 year (Preferred)
- NetSuite: 1 year (Required)
- ERP systems: 1 year (Required)
- Inventory management: 1 year (Required)
- flooring, cabinetry, or interior finishes industry: 1 year (Preferred)
- Computer Proficiency:: 1 year (Required)
Work Location: In person
