Job Description

Head of Sourcing & Supplier Management (RS Pro)

LocationHybrid working from Corby, London or Manchester

The Opportunity

You will be accountable for leading the sourcing and supplier management function for RS PRO across the EMEA region, managing a growing, and geographically dispersed team of Sourcing and Supplier Managers. You'll oversee a portfolio of suppliers across multiple technologies, ensuring product quality, service excellence, commercial performance, and strong long-term partnerships.

You will shape the EMEA sourcing strategy, accelerate new product introduction (NPI), optimise supplier engagement models, and drive commercial improvements that elevate the RS PRO proposition globally. This role also partners closely with APAC and Americas teams to create a unified global sourcing strategy.

This position is ideal for an experienced sourcing, category, or supplier management leader who wants to take ownership of a growing, strategically important supplier ecosystem and make a meaningful impact on product, customer and commercial outcomes.

What You Will Be Doing:

Strategic Leadership

• Lead, coach and develop the EMEA sourcing and supplier management team, building a high‑performance culture focused on outcomes and accountability.
• Own and execute the EMEA sourcing strategy, ensuring alignment to global RS PRO growth plans and product roadmap ambitions.

Supplier & Commercial Management

• Manage and optimise a diverse portfolio of suppliers, including onboarding, performance management, and development of long-term strategic partnerships.
• Implement and embed a supplier segmentation and scorecard framework to drive data‑led prioritisation and improved performance visibility.
• Own forecasting, reporting and strategy for margin management, including raw materials, inflation, cost‑to‑serve and supply chain risks.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Partner closely with Category Management, Quality, Brand, Business Development and global sourcing teams to deliver a seamless and market-leading RS PRO product offering.
• Strengthen collaboration with RS branded supplier management teams to ensure a complementary offering across categories.

NPI & Innovation

• Drive process improvements to reduce NPI cycle time from discovery to launch.
• Act as a key scout for new product opportunities, emerging technologies and supplier innovations.

Risk, Resilience & Governance

• Monitor geopolitical, commercial, sustainability and supply chain risks, ensuring mitigation plans are in place.
• Ensure ethical, compliant and responsible sourcing aligned with RS Group standards.

Technology & Ways of Working

• Champion the use of AI and digital tools to improve speed, productivity and decision‑making within the sourcing function.
• Build and standardise processes and operating models that scale across EMEA.

What we are looking for from you:

• Strong experience in sourcing, buying or supplier management within industrial or adjacent product categories
• Experience identifying, assessing, and mitigating supplier, geopolitical, and supply chain risks across multiple regions.
• Strong negotiation skills, with experience shaping contracts, commercial terms and long‑term supplier agreements.
• Demonstrated ability to lead organisational or process change, driving adoption of new ways of working across teams.
• Demonstrable commercial acumen with experience in cost modelling, forecasting, and margin optimisation.
• Understanding of ethical sourcing, compliance requirements, and responsible supplier practices across global markets.
• Strong analytical, problem‑solving and data‑interpretation capability
• Ability to operate autonomously, make decisions in ambiguity and balance long‑term strategy with day‑to‑day execution
• Experience designing and embedding processes, systems or operating models
• Excellent cross‑functional collaboration, stakeholder management and communication skills
• Leadership experience fostering high performance, coaching, and cultural alignment

We are RS Group.

At RS we’ve been solving engineering problems for over 80 years: big ones, small ones, easy and difficult ones. We turn the ‘what ifs’ into the ‘why nots’, the impossible into the possible.

Our purpose? Making amazing happen for a better world.

We offer service and product solutions. We send out a parcel every 2 seconds, to over 130 countries. We provide over 800,000 in-stock and over 3 million unstocked products to more than 1.2 million customers.

We want people like you, as you are curious about things, you like doing things differently and also in a human way with empathy. Because that’s exactly how we partner with people – our customers, suppliers, colleagues and communities – to solve problems.

We’ll also invest in your development and wellbeing – because building a more diverse and inclusive culture, being ethical, responsible and committed to our Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) action plan is at the heart of everything we do.

Come and join us and over 9000 employees worldwide – and we’ll help you to think big, do more and unleash your brilliance, so you do amazing things too.

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