Strategic Category Head (Labs)

Contract type - Open-Ended Contract

Full time - 35 Hours per week

1 post

(A revised salary range for this grade of £48,350 to £59,421 is planned to take effect from Spring 2024)

About Procurement Services

Team Finance, which includes our Procurement team, share a vision “to become world class in everything we do, and recognised as a trusted strategic partner in the successful delivery of the University’s Strategy 2030”.

To deliver this, we are focused on our mission: Through improved cost efficiency and strategic supplier alignment, we will maximise benefit for investment into academic research and teaching to support the University and its global standing. With better market insight, improved practices and ways of working with our suppliers and consortia partnerships, we will bring strategic and continuous innovation to the way we work in meeting the University’s current and evolving requirements and budgets.

Procurement at the University of Edinburgh has undergone a major transformation as we extend the scope of our influence and impact across our £1bn world-renowned organisation and introduce Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP.

 The team is now made up of two functional disciplines working together as one team, for the benefit of the University, to deliver more effective contracts for goods, services and works at all levels and throughout the entire organisation.  The two functional disciplines are: Strategic Procurement and Procurement Operations.

We are now looking for great people to join our award-winning procurement team.  We are looking for people who make things happen, who challenge the status quo, are excited about working in a diverse, dynamic environment and really want to make a change.

This is a great opportunity to join one of the key strategic teams in the University, in the role of Category Head of Laboratories, Medical & Veterinary Medical (Labs).

Be part of our new Procurement journey. 

The Opportunity

Reporting to the Head of Strategic Procurement, the Labs Category Head’s role is to lead, develop and manage a small, professional and high-quality procurement team, delivering procurement excellence for the University within the Labs Category. This will include both (i) improving the service and value delivered to our internal stakeholders, as well as (ii) improving external supplier performance, to successful achieve our strategic procurement ambitions and support the University in achieving its overall strategic objectives.

The vast majority of goods and services bought by the Strategic Labs Team derive from the College of Medicine & Veterinary Medicine (CMVM) and the College of Science & Engineering (CSE), represented on the following University campuses across the Edinburgh region.

1.         BioQuarter (mostly CMVM, some CSE)

2.         Easter Bush (CMVM)

3.         Kings Buildings (mostly CSE, some CMVM)

4.         Western General (CMVM)

5.         George Square (CMVM & CSE)