Category Buyer

Do you want to help us improve human health and understand life on Earth? Make your mark by shaping the future to enable or deliver life-changing science to solve some of humanity’s greatest challenges.

Are you a proactive Category Buyer looking to take the next step in your procurement career? Do you thrive on building strong stakeholder relationships, shaping category strategies, and delivering real commercial value? If you’re motivated by collaboration, enjoy influencing outcomes across complex scientific and operational environments, and want to play a key role in supporting world-leading research and innovation, then keep reading. This could be the opportunity you’ve been waiting for!

About The Role

As a Category Buyer, you will:

• Build and maintain excellent relationships with stakeholders and suppliers.
• Share knowledge, build trust and credibility to enable influential communication.
• Establish good understanding of department strategy for allocated stakeholder areas, building this into mid/low risk Category planning
• Manage and prioritise project workload based on Procurement principles of adding value and mitigating risk

About You

To excel in this role, you will need the following competencies:

• Comfortable building strong and collaborative working relationships with relevant stakeholders and project team members
• A self-starter, able to work autonomously, but with full support of Partners where required
• Proven negotiator with suppliers and customers alike and can develop collaborative relationships both internally and externally
• Strong advocate for Procurement value proposition
• Demonstrable experience in category management and associated tools/techniques
• Ability to take underlying data and present narrative and recommendations to stakeholders
• Solution and output oriented with a willingness to take on challenges

About Us

The Procurement team are a friendly and supportive group. We’ve worked hard to establish ourselves as trusted and influential partners across the institute, which means that collectively we have excellent visibility of commercial activity across the Genome Campus.

Our team's mission is closely aligned with that of the wider organisation, and we believe that we add the most value through early and influential engagement; so, relationships (internal & external) are very important. World-leading science is in part delivered through the adoption of cutting-edge technology as well as an excellent physical environment – our beautiful Campus provides these in abundance, and the Procurement function plays a key role in supporting both.

Within the team, an environment of trust, empowerment and development is actively encouraged. People are expected to be bold, try new things, be accountable, but also feel supported when needed.

This is an exciting time to join Sanger as we welcome our new Director, embark on a vast Campus expansion and look to tackle the external challenges which face us over the coming years.

Additional Information

Please note: This is a hybrid role with 2-3 days per week onsite.

Applications: Please include a cover letter along with your CV. In your cover letter, include details on how your knowledge, skills and experience match the requirements of the role described.

Salary: £41,600 - £46,000

Closing Date: Sunday 01-MAR-26

Contract duration: Permanent

Role profile: For the full list of accountabilities and criteria, please click here.

Hybrid Working At Wellcome Sanger

We recognise that there are many benefits to Hybrid Working; including an improved work-life balance, with more focused time, as well as the ability to organise working time so that collaborative opportunities and team discussions are facilitated on campus. The hybrid working arrangement will vary for different roles and teams. The nature of your role and the type of work you do will determine if a hybrid working arrangement is possible.

Equality, Diversity And Inclusion

We aim to attract, recruit, retain and develop talent from the widest possible talent pool, thereby gaining insight and access to different markets to generate a greater impact on the world. We have a supportive culture with the following staff networks, LGBTQ+, Parents and Carers, Disability and Race Equity to bring people together to share experiences, offer specific support and development opportunities and raise awareness. The networks are also a place for allies to provide support to others.

We want our people to be whoever they want to be because we believe people who bring their best selves to work, do their best work. That’s why we’re committed to creating a truly inclusive culture at Sanger Institute. We will consider all individuals without discrimination and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees, where everyone can thrive.

Our Benefits

We are proud to deliver an awarding campus-wide employee wellbeing strategy and programme. The importance of good health and adopting a healthier lifestyle and the commitment to reduce work-related stress is strongly acknowledged and recognised at Sanger Institute.

Sanger Institute became a signatory of the International Technician Commitment initiative In March 2018. The Technician Commitment aims to empower and ensure visibility, recognition, career development and sustainability for technicians working in higher education and research, across all disciplines.