Senior Manager External Manufacturing – Meals and Local Brands EU

Job description

Portfolio Ownership

Lead and optimize a portfolio of external manufacturing partners across Europe, ensuring strong supply performance, service continuity, and continuous improvement.

Team Leadership

Manage and develop the external manufacturing team for the assigned portfolio, including direct people leadership, capability building, and performance management.

Strategic Sourcing

Develop, champion, and execute procurement and external manufacturing strategies that support business growth, innovation, value delivery, and long-term network resilience.

Contract Negotiation

Lead critical contract negotiations, including outsourcing evaluations, commercial terms, service expectations, and long-term partnership agreements.

Risk Management

Identify and mitigate quality, technical, business, and quality risks, implementing corrective and preventive actions to protect continuity of supply.

Financial Planning

Responsible for financial planning and cost management for assigned categories and spend areas, supporting topline growth, productivity, and innovation.

Process Excellence

Drive continuous improvement in external supply management, governance routines, and operating structure to maximize results in cost, quality, and service.

Stakeholder Engagement

Lead and influence senior stakeholders across Supply Chain, Operations, R&D, Marketing, Growth, Quality, and Procurement to deliver business objectives and enable growth. Please kindly note that you need to have an EU Working Permit (Orientation Year Visa not included) in order to proceed for this position.

Educational Background

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Procurement, Supply Chain, Engineering or related fields. Additional competencies in Business Administration or Supply Chain are a plus.

Years of Work Experience

9+ years of progressive growing experience in procurement, ideally with experience in FMCG, external manufacturing, direct procurement sourcing, or outsourced manufacturing environments.

IT Skills & Knowledge

Strong understanding of Excel and presentation development; familiarity with procurement systems (Ariba, SAP), financial planning, and data analytics is a must.

Soft Skills

Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, analytical mindset, organizational agility, priority setting, stakeholder management, commercial sense, resilience, and strong leadership capability. Professional Attributes Communication Skills

• People are easily be exposed to senior management, no matter their level. Therefore, it's important to have excellent interpersonal skills, to take care of all kinds of different collaborators. Confident / Ability to give pushback
• We like people who are go getters and are not easily thrown off their game, not even when getting resistance.

Resilience

• Having the ability to bounce back after a disappointment or set back, big or small is what we value. Always continue to move onward & upward.

Commercial Sense

• Always seeking for opportunities to expand your business and build more savings, while over delivering your targets.

Analytical

• We're a very data driven company, making it crucial to be able to translate complex data into a simple solution with an analytical approach.