Sr Procurement Manager

Join GÉANT as a Senior Procurement Manager

Are you an experienced and skilled procurement specialist looking for a new challenge that will take you across national borders and off the beaten track? GÉANT's Procurement team is seeking an enthusiastic and dynamic Senior Procurement Manager to join our small and entrepreneurial department. Our team comprises two buyers, two senior procurement managers (including this role), and the Head of Procurement, supported by two contract managers from the Legal Hub. Together, we work to enhance the procurement function and foster a culture of professionalism, collaboration, and innovation.

In this role, you are responsible for executing EU public tender procedures, ensuring full compliance with applicable European and Dutch procurement regulations, with a focus on IT services and goods. You will be procuring both for GÉANT’s own needs and, on occasion, on behalf of GÉANT’s international members, also aggregated. In these cases, you will be leading cross-functional teams with members from a wide range of European countries, managing these stakeholders and suppliers.

You will also have a prominent role in evolving our procurement function. From refining processes and improving tools to delivering workshops and team trainings and sharing insights, your contributions will drive continuous improvement. You will ensure quality and compliance through the four-eyes principle and bring fresh and creative perspectives by staying connected to developments trends in the IT market and in (public) procurement.

If you are enthusiastic about EU public procurement and ready to embrace new challenges, we want to hear from you! Join us at GÉANT and be part of a team that is making a difference.

What you’ll be responsible for?

• Advise GÉANT (procurement) colleagues, senior management, and the wider GÉANT research and education community on procurement matters.
• Further shaping pan-European procurement cooperation with the members of GÉANT Association.
• Independently execute tender procedures, compliant with EC and Dutch public procurement legislation.
• Collaborate with and manage internal and external stakeholders.
• Work with suppliers on various areas, mainly IT and Cloud service providers.
• Contribute to the further growth and development of the department. You do this by acting as a coach/trainer for junior buyers and by contributing to the continuous improvement of tools, processes, and policies.
• Carry out other tasks as needed within the scope of the role.

About You

GÉANT is looking for a highly experienced and creative candidate who can (pro)actively collaborate with diverse stakeholders and bring together various interests. You have the expertise to advise and contribute to business objectives. You persuade and motivate, and you monitor the progress of complex projects. You are not intimidated by scale and complexity, and you have no problem with coping with unforeseen or unchartered circumstances.

As a procurement professional, you have:

Essential Criteria

• Extensive experience in carrying out procurements within an organisation subject to a Member State implementation of Directive 2014/24, ideally practiced within the Netherlands in accordance with Dutch public procurement law.
• Deep knowledge of European procurement legislation.
• Proven experience with large procurement projects in the public sector.
• Experience with EU procurement platforms.
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills.
• Ability to navigate and manage multi-stakeholder projects and environments.
• Entrepreneurial mindset, creative and pragmatic approach.
• Commercial awareness and strong collaboration skills.
• Proficiency in English to carry out all described activities, including writing tender documents and having business conversations with senior management of partners and suppliers.

Desirable Criteria

• Experience with IT category, ideally cloud-based solutions.
• Experience with the European Research and Education community.
• Enjoys overcoming challenges and finding solutions.
• A mindset of continuous learning, creativity and growth.

About Us

Why work for GÉANT?

GÉANT is at the heart of research and education networking, we offer talented people the opportunity to be part of something meaningful and worthwhile. With 150 employees based in Amsterdam and Cambridge, together we deliver an information ecosystem of infrastructure and services to advance research, education, and innovation on a global scale. Thanks to our terabit network, 50 million researchers, scientists, academics and students can share record volumes of data unconstrained by location, solving some of humankind’s biggest challenges. Work at GÉANT and you’ll be supporting critical research into sustainable energy, deep space, high-energy physics, earth observation, environmental disasters, medicine and much more!

Benefits of working for GÉANT

You’ll receive excellent benefits at GÉANT – we offer a generous holiday allowance and a 5% end of year bonus/allowance as standard. The other benefits you receive will depend on the country you are employed in, but you can rest assured that these will include an appropriate pension scheme and medical insurance.

Working Arrangements

We have adopted a flexible-hybrid model which means that employees will work flexibly between a remote and office environment.  Weekly visits to the office are required for most employees to support our values and collaborative culture and enable our teams to deliver great work.  For this role we anticipate that you may be required in the office for around 2 days per week.