Procurement Specialist

Firstenergy Supply Chain Category Specialist

FirstEnergy at a Glance We are a forward-thinking electric utility powered by a diverse team of employees committed to making customers' lives brighter, the environment better and our communities stronger. FirstEnergy is dedicated to integrity, safety, reliability and operational excellence. Headquartered in Akron, Ohio, FirstEnergy includes one of the nation's largest investor-owned electric systems, more than 24,000 miles of transmission lines that connect the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic regions, and a regulated generating fleet with a total capacity of more than 3,500 megawatts.

About The Opportunity This is for three open positions with the FirstEnergy Service Company, a subsidiary of FirstEnergy Corp. The Supply Chain Category Specialist collaborates with key internal and external stakeholders to undertake and support complex sourcing initiatives to ensure delivery of category strategies. FirstEnergy Supply Chain is expanding its team in the key categories of Information Technology, Human Resources, Consulting Services, Professional Services, Legal, Communications, Facilities, Real Estate, Engineering, Construction and Utility Vegetation Management as it undergoes a strategic transformation to further support our business partners. Supply Chain is implementing a new Source to Pay system with supplementary technology to digitally transform our sourcing and category management team. SC is investing in market intelligence software, supplier risk, spend analytics and clean sheeting to advance our strategic sourcing priorities.

This position will be a full-time onsite position with flexibility to work remote 4 days a month, located at either Akron, OH or Greensburg, PA. Responsibilities include : supporting the strategic category manager in achieving significant cost reductions in assigned categories, defining contracting optimization strategies that seek total cost of ownership and service level improvements, working directly with stakeholders (users and support areas) to develop optimization strategies and improvement execution plans, leveraging technology, analytics, and tools to collect and analyze supplier spend data to drive savings, analyzing supplier performance data and provide input to category sourcing strategy, developing strategic plans for contracting and improving managed categories, ensuring execution of strategies within user area, leading supplier selection and management, measuring and tracking performance of overlooked suppliers, developing knowledge and best practices in the categories within areas of responsibility, ensuring user satisfaction of the strategic sourcing process, keeping strategic manager informed about procurement progress, planning and leading RFP processes in assigned categories, coordinating with users' technical assessment of received proposals, negotiating contract conditions that are more favorable for FirstEnergy, tracking market dynamics of categories, and defining cost benchmarks for categories under management.

Qualifications include : a Bachelor's degree in Supply Chain, business administration, engineering, or related discipline and 2+ years of related work experience is required. In lieu of a degree, High School or equivalent and 4+ years related work experience is required. Related work experience includes supply chain or sourcing. Specific utility level experience preferred in procurement of Material & Equipment, Professional Services or Utility Services is preferred. Successful implementation of category improvements and ensure compliance with all policies and procedure.