Category Manager, Senior

Location: Singapore, Singapore

In fast changing markets, customers worldwide rely on Thales. Thales is a business where brilliant people from all over the world come together to share ideas and inspire each other. In aerospace, transportation, defence, security and space, our architects design innovative solutions that make our tomorrow's possible.

Thales established its presence in Singapore in 1973 to support the expansion of aerospace-related activities in the Asia-Pacific region. Throughout the last four decades, the company grew from strength to strength and is today involved in the primary businesses of Aerospace (including Air Traffic Management), Defence & Security, Ground Transportation and Digital Identity & Security. Thales today employs over 2,100 people in Singapore across all its business areas.

**Responsibilities**:
This position is required to support both Bids and Projects activities in Thales Solutions Asia for Business line covering SIX, Defense and LAS.

The Procurement Bid & Project Manager (PPM) is the upstream point of contact for all procurement needs of the business.

**The Procurement Bid & Project Manager (PPM)**:

- Will be fully responsible to structure the acquisition and coordinate the actions of all other Procurement organizations and actors for the relevant bids and projects
- Will commit the Procurement Function, promote category strategies
- Must be involved upstream in the solution definition to ensure solutions fit with the Bids & Projects and customer needs and drive competitiveness
- Will be responsible to reach the objectives of the Procurement function for the offers and the projects (Total Cost of Ownership, Cash, goods & service availability and quality).
- Will drive and follow through activities related to competitiveness related to procurement and support design to cost approach, challenge Make team buy strategy.

**In Bid Phase**:

- Represent procurement as part of Bid team in BKO, Estimate review, CCR, and all gates per the Bid Plan
- Analyze the customer’s needs and context and then setting out the expectation to Category Team
- Carrying out the overall assessment of the purchasing R&Os
- To collapse and to optimize acquisition needs to meet the objective of each bid
- To assess the viability, defines strategy, consolidates from all Category team through Acquisition Management Plan (AMP)
- Deliverables of AMP and Procurement strategy through Procurement summary sheet and Procurement Executive summary according to Bid Plan
- Upon award at Bid Gate 3, to handover to Project APM if any. This includes introduction of the project content and transferring of all relevant up-to-date Bid purchasing information.
- Lead and Participate lessons learnt sessions on Acquisition matters if required for experience to gain and improve PSS effectiveness/competitiveness and evolution over the course of the bid phase.

**In Project Phase**
- Oversee the subcontracts, act as the interface between Procurement and Project on all acquisition matters.
- Formulate and prepare the AMP to incorporate all the latest changes.
- Lead and coordinate all acquisition activities associated on make, team or buy.
- Monitor subcontractors’ progress
- Work closely with Category team in the securing the material to ensure that project milestones are maintained.
- Manage risk, track and analyze budget gap to ensure that all products/services acquisition are within budget/EAC.
- Make timely and routine escalation to management as appropriately on acquisition irregularity (justify and highlight cost/schedule impact due to scope creep).
- Develop mitigation plan to address any impact due to these gaps.
- Lead all acquisition cost reduction initiatives, execution of these plans and track its result on a routine basis.

**Job Requirements**:

- University Degree in Business Administration, Engineering, IT or related
- Fluent in English
- Experience in project nature environment, preferably in low volume, high mix environment
- Good knowledge in Tactical and strategic supplier management
- Project Management / PMO experiences, preferably Procurement background
- Familiar in Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Security and Cyber related topics and experience in managing installation companies would be an added advantage.
- Familiar and experience with Power BI and other Microsoft office.
- Knowledge of SAP by Design will be beneficial.
- Required to travel frequently
- Strong leadership and able to drive cross-functional team
- Flexible and able to adapt to fast paced environment