Director, Direct Materials Procurement
Beyond Meat
Operations
El Segundo, CA, USA
Posted on Tuesday, February 28, 2023
COMPANY DESCRIPTION
At Beyond Meat, we started with simple questions. Why do you need an animal to create meat? Why can’t you build meat directly from plants? Thus, we make plant-based meats that allow families to eat more, not less, of the traditional dishes they love while feeling great about the health, sustainability, and animal welfare benefits of plant protein. Our goal is to bring exciting change to the plate—and Beyond.
Beyond Meat is focused on raising the bar on talent. We are dedicated to shaping an inclusive culture that drives excellence, innovation, and results by enabling talent acceleration and development, engagement, and employee experience.
The Director Direct Materials drives and supports the development of best procurement practices for direct materials (ingredients and packaging materials), including sourcing strategy definition, deployment, and stakeholder management, to maximize total cost of ownership savings and Procurement value contribution. Utilizes various practices from global end-to-end strategic category management to ensure best leveraging of our global scale and resources. Leads the team of Sourcing Managers and supports the target setting in alignment with procurement and cross functional leadership to enable the achievement of Procurement goals. Works in collaboration with regional cross functional teams, commercialization teams and innovation teams to understand business needs, regional market insights, risks and opportunities, and help drive company wide initiatives.
The Director Direct Materials drives Procurement value contribution to Beyond Meat while ensuring compliance with policies, strategies and takes ownership of procurement responsibilities related to critical business processes including procure to pay and procurement operations excellence. This is a critical leadership role in the Procurement team. This role manages a total spend of ~$300MM and growing.
RESPONSIBILITY: Manage category strategy development, deployment, and planning for direct materials
- Lead the development of the 3-year strategic plan for the sub categories
- Lead the development of strategies (including category strategies, supplier management strategies, and P2P strategy) to drive regional and global business expectations
- Manage alignment and deployment of strategies and financial plans
- Lead supplier negotiation strategy and process
- Support strategy execution (including project prioritization, securing resources, governance, and controls)
RESPONSIBILITY: Lead the Team of Sourcing Managers
- Lead the team of Sourcing Managers in different strategic planning and sourcing activities
- Mentor team members and develop capabilities with a hands-on approach
- Practice Beyond Meat Leadership Imperatives and Values to drive performance, talent management and self-management initiatives, in alignment with the VP of Procurement. This ensures effective talent and performance management by setting objectives, providing coaching and feedback, and defining individual development needs
- Facilitate build-up of best-in-class Procurement and industry mastery within the team. Develop and retain advantaged insights/know-how and practices
- Manage the cost center of the team in alignment with the VP of Procurement.
RESPONSIBILITY: Manage stakeholder engagement, collaboration of teams, and supplier relationships
- Identify and manage connectivity of category teams with functional stakeholders, suppliers and internal teams (e.g., innovation, commercialization, sales & marketing, Planning and supply chain, Proc. COE, etc.)
- Manage stakeholder engagement and alignment throughout the end-to-end sourcing process
- Lead global supplier relationship management (SRM) program for critical direct material suppliers
- Manage commercial supplier relationships and contracts for direct materials categories
- Enable single point of contact model for all sourcing activities for commercial and innovation activities and enable seamless linkages.
RESPONSIBILITY: Implement best practices for all direct material categories
- Drive market intelligence and external benchmarking to develop and implement best practices relevant to Beyond Meat operations
- Ensure standardization of processes and tools in coordination with other functions and IT and support digitization programs
- Drive harmonized global approach towards end-to-end sourcing practices. Take ownership of procurement responsibilities on process excellence and manage teams to drive collaboration with focus on implementation and execution of critical processes like P2P, Planning and replenishment, contract set up and master data support and order to cash support.
RESPONSIBILITY: Deliver assigned KPI's, Targets, and Goals
- Manage delivery of margin, innovation, cash flow and other deliverables for the assigned direct materials categories
- Be a point person responsible for delivery of goals for direct materials categories
- Active guidance and contribution to margin management and cash flow programs
- Productivity and Payment Terms recording and tracking
- Lead and guide the objectives to identify further Total Cost of Ownership reduction opportunities for direct material categories.
QUALIFICATIONS: Educational, Technical Skills, and/or Previous Experiences
- Appropriate University Bachelor's Degree Required; MBA, Preferred; Procurement Professional Qualification, Preferred
- Mandarin or Cantonese language is a plus
- Strategic Sourcing and Negotiation - Required
- Project Management and Communication - Required
- Relationship Management - Required
- People and Change Management - Required
- Minimum 7 years of experience in Procurement - Required
- Extensive knowledge of Spend Area at hand - Required
- Cross Functional Team management experience - Required
- Hands-on Category transformation experience - Required
- Strong PC skills; proficient in Microsoft office programs
- The role requires unique skills which includes not only fundamental sourcing capabilities such as negotiations, and supplier relationship management; but also includes leadership capabilities to drive total value creation, supplier collaboration to drive end to end value, supplier led innovation and commercialization support in close collaboration with senior category and business teams
- The candidate must demonstrate strong project management and stakeholder management skills and an ability to effectively work in a complex and fast-paced (start-up like) set up
- Team building, mentorship and team management including capability development and goal-oriented performance management is critical to the success of this role
- The candidate must have a strong work ethic with a very hands-on approach to managing the category spend and the team members. The individual needs to be a team player and work collaboratively with cross functional teams. Must take on responsibilities to manage not only strategic initiatives but also ensure day to day process efficiency and demonstrate agility to deal with ambiguity and tactical procurement operations related activities
- This role is a great opportunity for an individual to develop a long-term career at Beyond Meat with tremendous professional growth and learning opportunities
WORK ENVIRONMENT
- This position requires heavy computer use, emails, meetings, and phone calls in multiple time zones including eastern, mountain, central, pacific, EMEA, & Asia standard times.
- Must be able to sit or stand for extended periods of time with the ability to spend extended periods of time working at a computer station
- Some travel is required. If based in El Segundo 15-20% of required traveling; Remote, the amount of travel is 50%
Beyond Meat is an equal employment opportunity employer. Candidates are considered for employment without regard to race, creed, color, national origin, age, sex, religion, ancestry, veteran status, marital status, gender identify, sexual orientation, national origin, liability for military service, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local law. If you are interested in learning the status of your application, please note you will be contacted directly by the appropriate human resources contact person if you are selected for further consideration. Beyond Meat reserves the right to defer or close a vacancy at any time.
For all U.S. based roles: Applicants must be authorized to work for a U.S. employer. This role is not eligible for Visa Sponsorship at this time.