Category Manager-Specialty Materials

Careers that Change Lives

Join Medtronic’s Global Sourcing team as the Category Manager for Specialty Materials- Pharmaceuticals, Drugs, Lithium, Glass, etc. to develop and execute category plans. You will lead category strategy, cost reduction initiatives, on-time delivery, quality, supplier performance, supplier consolidation/rationalization, and improve vendor relationships. 

To be successful in this position, you will require strong negotiation skills, technical aptitude, and strong relationship-building skills.  As a successful Category Manager, you will understand the industry and category environment, and identify and develop strategies that can leverage the supplier’s capabilities and Medtronic’s purchasing power at a global scale. 

We believe that when people from different cultures, genders, and points of view come together, innovation is the result — and everyone wins. Medtronic walks the walk, creating an inclusive culture where you can thrive. 

A career at Medtronic is like no other. We’re purposeful. We’re committed. And we’re driven by our Mission to alleviate pain, restore health, and extend life for millions of people worldwide. 

Remote flexibility is possible based on the candidate's location.

A Day in the Life

As the Category Manager-Specialty Materials, you will engage with Operating Units leadership to ensure delivery of effective procurement strategies and standards that deliver to Medtronic’s overall operations and business results. You will support and own key initiatives relevant to global commodity strategies. Through strategic leadership, you will facilitate or support Operation Networks discussions that will optimize the commodity in terms of quality, service, technology, market intelligence, risk, and total cost of ownership. You will work to leverage cross Operations Network strategies at an enterprise level and continuously develop and improve leveraging opportunities by consolidating spend with key business partners supporting the broader interests of Medtronic. In addition, you will leverage strategic sourcing processes across Medtronic by maximizing the company’s combined purchase power to reduce the overall cost of ownership and acquisition through strategic negotiations and optimize supplier relationship management opportunities through partnerships within their primary categories of oversight.

As the Category Manager-Specialty Materials you will:

• Manage an estimated ~ $40M annual spend on specialty materials (Pharmaceutical, Drugs, Lithium, Glass, etc).
• Advocate on behalf of supply management function with business units and operational partners to ensure support for core business objectives.
• Negotiate contracts that provide year-over-year benefits in performance
• Identify and develop business cases for a healthy year-over-year cost reduction pipeline with suppliers through lean, should costing, process improvement, tier 2 strategies, and yield improvements
• Perform market analysis in identifying the best cost country sourcing of said category, provide guidance to technical sourcing and engineering with supplier innovations, and proactively develop forward buy agreements where appropriate
• Define and manage winning category strategies and approaches with suppliers.
• Manage vendor relationships and drive year-over-year performance improvements with quality, delivery, and costs
• Lead regular business reviews with suppliers
• Analyze received quotations, select or recommend new suppliers
• Rationalize existing supplier base through stratification, market analysis, supplier development, and supplier consolidation
• Lead new and ongoing supplier audit activities to ensure the supply base has robust process controls and capabilities to meet existing and future Medtronic business requirements
• Conduct supply chain risk reviews

Supporting Supply & Supplier Market Intelligence, you will:

• Global market intelligence for the Specialty Materials category and provide insights to support network optimization opportunities.
• Obtain and communicate the market condition and technology trend information regarding commodities and suppliers. Implement appropriate business opportunities driving value to the enterprise.

Supporting Supplier Risk Management, you will:

• Develop market & category risk reduction strategies in partnership with the operating unit.