Strategic Sourcing & Category Innovation Manager

Strategic Sourcing & Category Innovation Manager

LHH is partnering with an established food distribution organization to hire a Strategic Supply Chain Sourcing Manager. This player-coach leadership role will guide a team of buyers while directly managing high-impact categories, strategic supplier relationships, complex negotiations, and commercialization initiatives.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead, coach, and develop a team of procurement and buying professionals.
• Create category strategies aligned with growth, margin, service, inventory, and working-capital goals.
• Manage strategic categories, critical suppliers, competitive sourcing events, and contract negotiations.
• Analyze spend, demand, market conditions, supplier performance, and inventory data to identify savings and sourcing opportunities.
• Establish supplier scorecards, performance reviews, corrective-action plans, and continuity strategies.
• Partner with Finance to evaluate savings, margin impact, total cost, and working-capital implications.
• Coordinate new product, private-label, national-brand, and commercialization initiatives.
• Collaborate across Procurement, Operations, Quality, Sales, Marketing, Finance, and Inventory teams.
• Improve sourcing processes, supplier governance, decision-making, and team accountability.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in supply chain, Business, Food Science, Finance, or a related discipline.
• 8+ years of progressive experience in strategic sourcing, procurement, category management, food buying, supplier management, or commercialization.
• At least 3 years of people leadership or major program leadership experience.
• Demonstrated success with contract negotiations, supplier performance, cost savings, margin improvement, and product commercialization.
• Food distribution or manufacturing experience strongly preferred.
• Knowledge of private-label products, commodity markets, co-manufacturing, and inventory management is highly desirable.
• Proficiency with Microsoft Office and experience using ERP, business intelligence, or workflow platforms.

Ideal Candidate

The successful candidate will combine strong commercial judgment with hands-on sourcing expertise and an effective coaching style. This individual should be analytical, collaborative, comfortable influencing senior stakeholders, and capable of balancing cost, quality, supplier continuity, inventory, and customer needs.

Why Consider This Opportunity?

• High-impact leadership role with ownership of strategic sourcing and category initiatives.
• Opportunity to develop purchasing talent and improve sourcing capabilities.
• Broad cross-functional exposure and influence over supplier, inventory, margin, and commercialization outcomes.