Strategic Procurement Manager
Halma · London
Help grow a safer, cleaner, healthier future for everyone, every day.
About Halma
Halma is a global group of life‑saving technology companies, driven by our purpose to grow a safer, cleaner, healthier future for everyone, every day. Named as one of Britain's Most Admired Companies, our company provides innovative products and services that help solve many of the health, environmental and safety problems facing the world today.
Our operating companies are autonomous by design. They own their P&Ls, their customers and their decisions, and that closeness to market is the engine of our growth — not a problem to be tidied away. We are looking for an ambitious, curious and humble procurement professional who is energised, rather than frustrated, by that reality.
Halma employs over 9,000 people in more than 50 companies around the world, with major operations in the UK, Europe, USA, and Asia Pacific. Halma is an equal‑opportunity employer, and achieving diversity is a priority for us.
To find out more about our purpose, our people, our DNA and our impact, please visit: www.halma.com.
The Opportunity
We’re looking for a high-impact Procurement Manager who can unlock the collective buying power of a multi-billion-pound, 50-company group without ever taking control away from the companies that make it work.
This is deliberately not a centralisation role. You won’t be mandating processes, rolling out a single system, or pulling spend into the centre. Your job is to make group-scale value so visible, so easy and so commercially compelling that our companies choose to take it — not because they’re told to. You’ll work across a wide range of direct and indirect categories (materials, electronics, IT, services and capital equipment), creating leverage that operating companies opt into, as well as managing Group level, Enterprise wide procurement for Technology.
This is a fantastic opportunity for someone who thrives in a non‑hierarchical, collaborative, and decentralized environment, and is excited by the chance to drive and develop the procurement opportunities across the Halma Group.
How You’ll Work — Our Procurement Philosophy
This role lives or dies on a particular way of operating.
- Lead through influence, evidence and trust — never mandate. Adoption is earned, not enforced.
- Aggregate demand by invitation, not instruction — opt-in frameworks, lead-buyer arrangements and shared deals that companies join because the value is clear.
- Treat complexity as a feature, not a fault. Many ERPs, many processes and many ways of working are the price of autonomy; we create value inside that reality rather than trying to engineer it away.
- Enable, rather than replace. We make local buyers and engineers stronger — we don’t take ownership off them.
Earn the right to the next conversation by delivering the last one.
If your instinct is to consolidate, standardise and drive compliance, this isn’t the role for you. If your instinct is to build coalitions and let great value sell itself, read on.
What You’ll Be Doing
- Group Leverage by Consent: Spot where common spend exists across autonomous companies and build opt-in frameworks, aggregated deals and lead-buyer arrangements that companies voluntarily adopt — capturing scale benefits without central control.
- Category Strategy in Partnership: Co-create category strategies with operating companies, sharing market insight, strengthening supply resilience and respecting local context and constraints.
- Trusted Advisor & Enabler: Coach and equip local teams; share should-cost models, market intelligence and supplier insight that make them better buyers — building communities of practice, not control points.
- Influence Without Authority: Win voluntary buy-in through credibility, data and relationships across businesses that each have their own ways of working.
- Navigate Complexity: Create leverage across fragmented systems, categories and geographies without forcing standardisation — knowing when harmonisation genuinely adds value and when local difference should be protected.
- Innovation, Automation & AI: and propose automation and AI tools (including Copilot) to make sourcing, contracting and supplier management faster and more transparent — and to make participating in group initiatives effortless.
- Contracting & Supplier Value: Lead group-level contract activity that delivers measurable value, strong governance and improved supplier performance — offered as a proposition companies want, not a rule they must follow.
- Market Intelligence: Stay ahead of commodity movements, supply risk and innovation opportunities, sharing insight proactively to inform decisions and build the case for collaboration.
What We’re Looking For:
Top 5 Hard Skills
- Federated leverage — aggregating demand and leveraging volume across autonomous or independent businesses through opt-in frameworks, lead-buyer, consortium or category-council models, without centralising control.
- Strategic sourcing & category management across direct and indirect spend (materials, electronics, IT, services, capital equipment).
- Contracting & supplier performance management (governance, value delivery, risk/compliance) — designed as compelling propositions companies choose to adopt.
- Spend & market analysis / market intelligence — used to persuade, build the commercial case for collaboration, and strengthen supply resilience.
- Digital procurement tools (eProcurement, contract lifecycle management, automation/AI such as Copilot) — especially to make group participation easy, transparent and low-friction.
Top 5 Soft Skills
- Influencing without authority — building coalitions and voluntary adoption in a decentralised, non-hierarchical group.
- Comfort with deliberate complexity and ambiguity — thriving where there is no single process, system or reporting line, and creating value inside that.
- Stakeholder credibility across functions and seniority — from buyers and engineers to MDs and Presidents.
- An enablement mindset — making local teams better buyers rather than taking ownership from them; coaching, sharing and building networks.
- Ownership, curiosity and bias to action — a hands-on “do-er” who will raise a PO and build a strategy, and who keeps finding novel, innovation-led ways to unlock value.
Your Background
- A background in procurement, sourcing, category management or commercial roles — ideally gained in a multi-business, federated, M&A-heavy or otherwise decentralised environment.
- A persuader and coalition-builder, not a controller; someone who creates pull, not push.
- A self-starter who is comfortable with autonomy, ambiguity and complexity.
- A do-er willing to cover the whole range of procurement activity, from raising POs to building group strategy.
- Experience with eProcurement systems, contract management tools or automation/AI platforms is beneficial but not essential.
- Confidence engaging stakeholders at all levels, from buyers and engineers to senior leadership and MDs/Presidents.
Why Join Us?
- Autonomy & Impact: Your ideas and initiatives can directly shape procurement maturity across the Group.
- Influence over Authority: Success here is built on trust and value, not hierarchy — a genuinely different and more rewarding way to work.
- Innovation‑Driven: Be part of a team that fully embraces technology, AI, and continuous improvement.
- Career Growth & Global Reach: Strong performance opens doors to senior and international roles across Europe, the USA and Asia Pacific.
Career Progression & Global Exposure
We believe in growing talent from within. For the right person, this role offers a clear path into senior Group procurement, category leadership, or OpCo-based roles — plus international travel and collaboration with suppliers and operating companies worldwide.
Location
This a London based opportunity 3 days per week (Tues to Thurs) at the Halma Tech Hub near Liverpool Street Station. The role includes additional project‑dependent travel to our Operating Companies across the UK, Europe, USA and Asia Pacific, as well as travel to the UK Halma Head Office.
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