Head of Direct Materials - Global Procurement

At Roche you can show up as yourself, embraced for the unique qualities you bring. Our culture encourages personal expression, open dialogue, and genuine connections,  where you are valued, accepted and respected for who you are, allowing you to thrive both personally and professionally. This is how we aim to prevent, stop and cure diseases and ensure everyone has access to healthcare today and for generations to come. Join Roche, where every voice matters.

The Position

Healthcare is evolving, and Global Procurement is responding by continuously striving for the highest possible performance, taking innovative and strategic approaches to business and supplier partnerships.  Global Procurement proactively manages the entire supplier ecosystem, making a vital contribution to improving health outcomes, reducing costs for patients and global healthcare systems, and ensuring that Roche continues doing now what patients need next.

The Delivery (Category) capability covers the core procurement activities from category management, strategic and operational sourcing, supplier management, contracting, content strategy definition, and execution. The Delivery (Category) capability comprises many communities grouping categories of the same value chain or having commonality. The communities are key enablers of strong category expertise while allowing flexibility in the procurement delivery response to the evolving needs of our customers.

This position is part of the Materials, Manufacturing & Capex (MMC) Procurement community leadership team reporting into the Chapter Lead of Materials, Manufacturing & Capex Procurement in Global Procurement

As the Head of Direct Materials Global Procurement, you will be accountable for the Procurement accountabilities of the global Pharma Direct Materials spend for Roche. You will work in a dynamic global environment where you will meet the challenge to bring vision, guidance, prioritization, and focus to the Procurement Category capability area such as team vision, capability development, and strategic Delivery prioritization (in line with functional objectives and business needs). 

You are a collaborator and through partnership with internal procurement Heads and Leads you will align on needs, identify opportunities, define goals, and advance priorities. You influence decision-making and remove barriers to ensure the delivery of high-quality customer-oriented sourcing and spend management strategies.

You will lead and guide a team of Procurement Category Expert and Senior Experts, working closely with them to develop the team vision, prioritize and focus efforts, and provide coaching and guidance to support your team’s development and growth both as individuals and as a team. 

You are accountable for the best allocation of your people to ensure flexibility, excellence in execution, delivery and performance, and talent development. You are part of the MMC Leadership Team and will support the implementation of GP Strategy in addition to your Category and Team accountabilities and be flexible in responsibilities as needed as a Senior Leader in Global Procurement. 

The Head of Direct Materials will play a variety of roles according to your experience, knowledge, and the general business/team requirements, including, but not limited to, these core responsibilities:

The Opportunity

• You utilise your in depth knowledge and expertise in Pharma Direct Materials to act as a Category domain lead providing thought leadership, advice, and know-how on delivery capability topics, strategies, and best practices, and shaping and defining the team’s delivery

• You are a strategic leader overseeing, improving and driving delivery of sourcing, category, contracting, technology and supplier related strategies as well as coaching team members, including modeling behaviors and mindsets necessary for advancing the capability vision.

• You oversee and ensure Supply Resilience, Financial and other core Corporate and Category specific goals. Taking accountability and working across functions to ensure cost effective and resilient supply across Pharma Direct Materials

• You work within the capability teams, networks, and squads/project teams to ensure prioritization and focus on delivering or supporting large, complex, and/or high risk projects as well as foundational work. 

• You are accountable for the performance of medium to large teams of Sr. Category Managers / Category Experts and Category Managers acting as a role model, demonstrating curiosity, passion, an entrepreneurial spirit, enterprise thinking, inclusive collaboration, and desire for continuous learning that underpin our culture and ways of working.

Who you are

• You hold a university degree, with a business or life science degree preferable. You have  12+ years procurement experience (strategic and operational procurement experience, including relevant related category experience and expertise), ideally in a matrix organization.

• You have demonstrated success in building, cultivating and managing global large and senior teams. 

• You have demonstrated experience in Pharma Procurement Production end-to-end value chain.

• You have proven excellent leadership, communication, conflict resolution, and influencing skills. 

• You have deep knowledge and experience in the related Direct Material categories and supply market, ideally with a  strong knowledge  of other categories.

• You strive to act as an enterprise thinker and leverage knowledge and expertise to create solutions for business customers by proactively fostering collaboration, including across the procurement network.

• You are action oriented and can make decisions and influence others to do the same; you repurpose work and ideas in favor of starting from scratch. 

• You demonstrate curiosity, active listening and a willingness to experiment and test new ideas when appropriate, with the focus very much on continuous learning and improvement.

• You work with colleagues across procurement, business and the wider Roche organization to broaden knowledge and expertise, better understand customer needs, and connect the dots.

• You are open-minded and inclusive, generously sharing ideas and knowledge, while being receptive to ideas and feedback from others.

Furthermore, you have fluency in English to Business level.

Note: Relocation benefits are not available for this posting.

Be part of our Global Procurement team in Basel, apply now !

Who we are

A healthier future drives us to innovate. Together, more than 100’000 employees across the globe are dedicated to advance science, ensuring everyone has access to healthcare today and for generations to come. Our efforts result in more than 26 million people treated with our medicines and over 30 billion tests conducted using our Diagnostics products. We empower each other to explore new possibilities, foster creativity, and keep our ambitions high, so we can deliver life-changing healthcare solutions that make a global impact.

Let’s build a healthier future, together.

Roche is an Equal Opportunity Employer.