Summary of the Role
The Senior Buyer is a fully proficient procurement professional responsible for independently managing a complex and higher-impact portfolio of suppliers supporting LGG Industrial's North American business. Assigned suppliers may involve technical or customer-specific products, imports, long lead times, multiple manufacturing locations, allocation constraints, rebate programs, recurring performance challenges, or significant branch and customer requirements.
The Senior Buyer manages supplier performance, commercial terms, sourcing activity, pricing changes, rebates, supply risk, and improvement initiatives with a high degree of independence. The role serves as a procurement resource to Branch Operations, Field Inventory Managers, Sales, Finance, and other functions and provides mentoring and subject-matter support to less-experienced Buyers.
Responsibilities
Safety and Compliance
- Maintain 100% commitment to Company safety policies, procedures, and applicable compliance requirements.
- Ensure assigned purchasing activities and supplier records comply with Company policies, internal controls, and established procedures.
Purchasing and Order Management
- Independently manage the purchase order lifecycle for assigned suppliers, including complex orders, import requirements, order changes, capacity constraints, and supplier recovery actions.
- Monitor open and past-due purchase orders, lead recovery efforts for significant delivery issues, and ensure accurate dates, quantities, costs, and supplier commitments are maintained in the ERP system.
- Resolve complex order, receiving, invoicing, freight, quality, pricing, and quantity issues involving suppliers and cross-functional partners.
- Communicate forecasts, demand changes, and priorities to suppliers and negotiate practical responses to lead-time, capacity, minimum-order, packaging, and availability constraints.
- Develop and execute supplier-specific mitigation and recovery plans when supply disruptions may affect important branches, customers, products, or programs.
Supplier and Commercial Management
- Independently manage relationships with a portfolio of moderate- to high-complexity and higher-impact suppliers.
- Lead supplier performance reviews, scorecard discussions, corrective actions, and improvement plans addressing delivery, quality, service, responsiveness, and commercial performance.
- Independently negotiate pricing, freight, lead times, minimum order quantities, packaging, payment terms, service requirements, and other operational or commercial terms within established authority.
- Develop cost-reduction and total-cost improvement opportunities and lead implementation with suppliers and internal stakeholders.
- Manage supplier issues affecting larger customers, customer-specific products, important programs, or demanding service requirements and coordinate appropriate escalation and communication.
Pricing and Rebate Management
- Manage complex supplier price updates, evaluate commercial and operational impacts, resolve discrepancies, negotiate changes when appropriate, and submit validated files to Corporate Data for ERP loading.
- Analyze supplier price-increase requests, supporting data, market conditions, and contractual requirements and recommend an appropriate response.
- Manage customer-specific rebate reimbursement by submitting qualifying invoices and supporting documentation, reconciling expected amounts, and resolving supplier discrepancies or collection issues.
- Independently manage supplier growth-rebate and incentive programs, monitor performance against thresholds, validate supplier calculations, and work with Finance to ensure amounts are accurately collected.
- Identify and pursue new growth-rebate opportunities and negotiate improvements to existing programs for assigned suppliers.
Strategic Sourcing, Risk, and Continuous Improvement
- Lead sourcing activities within assigned supplier or product areas, including requirements definition, market research, requests for quotation, commercial analysis, supplier evaluation, recommendation, and onboarding.
- Evaluate supplier alternatives and recommend sourcing decisions based on quality, service, capacity, risk, total cost, and business requirements.
- Lead root-cause analysis and corrective action for recurring supplier and procurement issues.
- Lead defined procurement improvement projects involving process, standard work, ERP functionality, automation, electronic data interchange, reporting, or supplier integration.
- Monitor supplier and market risks and develop mitigation plans for higher-impact supply, capacity, geographic, financial, or continuity exposures.
Cross-Functional Collaboration and Leadership
- Partner with Field Inventory Managers on complex demand, lead-time, order-quantity, supply, and supplier-constraint issues while maintaining clear ownership of supplier-facing procurement actions.
- Resolve complex branch and customer requirements involving supplier capabilities, commercial constraints, availability, or recovery plans.
- Provide supplier delivery, capacity, risk, and recovery information for backlog, SIOP, strategic-customer, and operating reviews.
- Lead cross-functional projects involving assigned suppliers or procurement processes and drive timely completion of agreed actions.
- Mentor less-experienced Buyers, provide subject-matter guidance, and support team coverage and training as needed.
Commercial Authority and Other Duties
- Independently negotiate operational and commercial terms within established authority and recommend decisions involving significant cost, risk, or business impact.
- Do not execute contracts or otherwise legally bind the Company unless such authority has been expressly delegated.
- Support special projects and perform other duties as assigned.
Skills and Abilities
- Strong supplier relationship management, negotiation, and commercial-analysis skills.
- Ability to independently manage complex suppliers, competing priorities, and significant delivery or commercial issues.
- Strong proficiency with Microsoft Excel and the ability to analyze supplier, spend, pricing, rebate, and performance data and develop actionable recommendations.
- Demonstrated proficiency with ERP purchasing functions, reporting, data maintenance, and purchasing controls.
- Strong project-management, root-cause analysis, problem-solving, and continuous-improvement skills.
- Ability to lead cross-functional work, influence stakeholders, and drive accountability without direct reporting authority.
- Effective written, verbal, presentation, and supplier-facing communication skills.
- Ability to understand the operational and customer impact of procurement decisions in a multi-location industrial-distribution environment.
- Ability to mentor and support the development of less-experienced procurement team members.
Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in Supply Chain Management, Business, Operations, Logistics, or a related field plus approximately 3-5 years of relevant procurement, purchasing, supply-chain, or industrial-distribution experience; or
- High school diploma or equivalent plus approximately 6-8 years of relevant experience, including meaningful purchasing or supplier-management responsibility.
- Demonstrated experience independently managing assigned suppliers and resolving complex purchasing, delivery, pricing, or commercial issues.
- Demonstrated success negotiating pricing, freight, terms, lead times, and supplier commitments.
- Experience organizing and leading defined projects and cross-functional improvement activities.
- Advanced proficiency with Microsoft Excel and demonstrated ERP purchasing experience are required.
- Experience in a multi-location industrial-distribution environment preferred.
- APICS, CPSM, or related procurement or supply-chain certification preferred but not required.
- Travel is required, generally up to 10%, based on business needs.
Physical Requirements and Work Environment
This position is based in a standard office and hybrid work environment and requires regular use of typical office equipment, including computers, telephones, printers, and copiers. Reasonable accommodations are available to support individuals with disabilities in performing the essential functions of this role.
- Ability to work in a stationary position for extended periods of time.
- Ability to move within the office to interact with colleagues and office equipment.
- Ability to occasionally move light items, typically up to 10 pounds.
- Ability to operate standard office equipment and use computer-based business systems.
- Ability to comprehend and follow instructions and safety procedures.
- Ability to read, write, and communicate effectively in English.
- Ability to communicate effectively with colleagues, suppliers, and customers.
Total Rewards
- Competitive compensation plan
- Health benefits: medical, dental, vision, short-term disability, and long-term disability
- 401(k) with company match
Equal Opportunity Employer
It is our policy to employ qualified persons without regard for race, creed, color, national origin, nationality, ancestry, age, sex, marital or domestic partnership status, sexual orientation, veteran status, or disability. Individuals are considered for employment, promotion, or training solely on their abilit
