Strategic Sourcing Category Lead, Americas - Maintenance and Applied Analytics

Job Description: Strategic Sourcing Category Lead, Americas - Maintenance and Applied Analytics Maintenance and Applied Analytics Huntsman is seeking a Strategic Sourcing Category Lead, Americas - Maintenance and Applied Analytics supporting the Purchasing - Americas Division located in The Woodlands, Texas. This position will report to the Category Management Team Lead, Americas. Job Scope A procurement category leader with exceptional analytical capabilities who executes sourcing work while transforming how the team uses data to make decisions. The Strategic Sourcing Category Lead, Americas - Maintenance and Applied Analytics is responsible for leading category management and strategic sourcing activities for assigned maintenance-related indirect spend while serving as a catalyst for data-driven decision making across the Indirect Sourcing organization. The successful candidate will own category strategies, sourcing projects, supplier negotiations, contracts, stakeholder engagement, value delivery, and supplier performance. The individual will also apply advanced analytics, business intelligence, automation, and predictive modeling to improve how sourcing opportunities are identified, evaluated, executed, and sustained. The role is intended for an analytically strong professional who wants to build a long-term career in procurement and help transform sourcing from a reactive, transaction-oriented function into a proactive, strategic, and insight-driven business partner. The position will support a portfolio of maintenance and plant-services categories across the Americas. The specific portfolio may evolve based on business needs and category ownership, but may include: • Mechanical maintenance, rotating and fixed-equipment support, millwright services, equipment repair, and field services. • Electrical, instrumentation, controls, calibration, inspection, testing, and reliability-related services. • Plant contractors and specialty trades, including scaffolding, insulation, painting and coatings, industrial cleaning, and related site services. • Fabrication, machining, welding, specialty repair, rentals, selected MRO materials and consumables, and other maintenance support requirements. • Turnaround, shutdown, outage, and planned-maintenance sourcing support, plus other regional indirect categories assigned to the role. In summary, as the Strategic Sourcing Category Lead, Americas - Maintenance and Applied Analytics, you will: Category Strategy and Portfolio Management • Develop and execute fact-based category strategies for assigned Maintenance, contractor, and plant-services spend across the Americas, aligned with plant, business, and regional objectives through the 7-steps Strategic Sourcing Methodology adopted by Huntsman. • Analyze spend, demand, specifications, supplier markets, cost drivers, contract coverage, stakeholder requirements, and risks to identify opportunities and build multi-year category roadmaps. • Evaluate regional versus local requirements and determine the appropriate sourcing, supplier, and contracting model for each category or subcategory. • Monitor labor, material, inflation, capacity, and market trends and translate findings into sourcing actions, business recommendations, and risk-mitigation plans. • Maintain category plans, sourcing pipelines, value-delivery forecasts, and implementation priorities as active management tools. Strategic Sourcing, Negotiation, and Contract Management • Lead the end-to-end sourcing process, including opportunity assessment, stakeholder alignment, scope development, RFx execution, supplier evaluation, negotiation, award recommendation, contracting, implementation, and value tracking. • Develop scopes of work, bid instructions, pricing templates, commercial requirements, evaluation criteria, and negotiation strategies. • Conduct RFIs, RFQs, RFPs, e-auctions, supplier workshops, and competitive negotiations using the sourcing method best suited to the business requirement. • Normalize and analyze supplier proposals, including labor rates, overtime, crew composition, productivity, mobilization, equipment, materials, travel, reimbursables, markups, escalation, payment terms, and total cost of ownership. • Develop data-supported negotiation fact bases, scenario models, should-cost analyses, supplier comparisons, sourcing recommendations, and approval documentation. • Negotiate pricing, service levels, productivity commitments, payment terms, warranties, escalation mechanisms, risk allocation, and continuous-improvement obligations. • Partner with Legal, HSE, Finance, Risk, and business stakeholders to develop master service agreements, statements of work, rate sheets, service-level requirements, and related commercial documents. • Drive implementation and adoption of negotiated agreements while monitoring contract utilization, price compliance, leakage, maverick spend, savings realization, and procurement-policy compliance. Supplier Performance and Relationship Management • Segment suppliers based on criticality, spend, risk, capability, and value potential and apply the appropriate governance and relationship-management model. • Establish scorecards and KPIs covering safety, quality, service, delivery, responsiveness, productivity, innovation, compliance, and cost performance. • Lead supplier performance reviews, QBRs, corrective-action plans, and continuous-improvement initiatives with key maintenance suppliers. • Use supplier and operational data to identify root causes, recurring issues, cost-to-serve drivers, risks, and improvement opportunities. • Partner with suppliers and internal stakeholders to improve productivity, standardization, reliability, innovation, and total cost. • Assess operational, financial, labor, capacity, geographic, concentration, and supply-continuity risks and develop mitigation or contingency plans. Stakeholder Partnership and Procurement Leadership • Build trusted relationships with plant leadership, Maintenance, Reliability, Operations, Engineering, Finance, HSE, Legal, and other functions across the Americas. • Translate operational needs into sourcing strategies and commercial solutions that protect safety, reliability, service quality, and business continuity. • Facilitate cross-site alignment on specifications, supplier requirements, sourcing timing, award decisions, contract deployment, and implementation actions. • Present category strategies, sourcing recommendations, analytical findings, supplier performance, risks, and value-delivery results to senior leaders and nontechnical audiences. • Serve as the procurement subject-matter resource for assigned maintenance categories and contribute to procurement transformation, capability building, and continuous improvement. Procurement Analytics, Predictive Insights, and Transformation • Develop dashboards, scorecards, and self-service tools that improve visibility into spend, demand, sourcing pipeline, savings, contract coverage, price compliance, supplier performance, risk, and category trends. • Integrate and analyze procurement, ERP, contract, supplier, finance, and operational data; identify data-quality issues and establish practical cleansing, classification, and reporting rules. • Use SQL, Power BI, Python, advanced Excel, Power Query, or comparable tools to rapidly analyze large datasets and convert findings into sourcing and category actions. • Automate recurring reports and analytical workflows to reduce manual effort, accelerate decision making, and improve consistency. • Develop models for bid normalization, rate benchmarking, price variance, demand patterns, supplier concentration, sourcing prioritization, contract compliance, benefits tracking, and risk management. • Apply statistical methods, forecasting, machine learning, and scenario analysis to anticipate spend, demand, supplier performance, capacity constraints, price movements, sourcing opportunities, and emerging risks. • Creat