Procurement Category Manager - Direct

Job Introduction

An exciting opportunity has arisen within our Procurement team at HCRG Care Group as we continue to grow and expand our services across the organisation. We are seeking a motivated and commercially minded Procurement Category Manager (Direct Spend) to take responsibility for planning and managing direct procurement activity across both existing and new organisational requirements. This includes leading tenders, conducting direct negotiations, and ensuring our procurement activities deliver maximum value.

The focus of this role is to make the best use of economies of scale, securing the right suppliers, goods, and services while maintaining high quality standards. With our organisation operating in a dynamic and developing landscape, strong forward planning is essential to help reduce reactive procurement and drive more strategic decision‑making.

You will work closely with operational teams and the Head of Procurement, playing a key role in our ongoing transformation. The procurement function is currently mid‑journey in its maturity, having evolved in recent years from a reactive, transactional service to a strategic, proactive function. While agility will always be required, we see significant opportunities to enhance supplier control, forecast spend, and further embed strategic procurement across the organisation.

This position is not subject to public contract regulations

, offering an exciting level of autonomy and flexibility for a passionate procurement professional eager to make a meaningful impact.

What You'll do:

• Plan, manage, and deliver procurement activity across direct spend categories
• Lead competitive tenders, evaluations, and direct supplier negotiations
• Consolidate organisational requirements to maximise economies of scale
• Drive strategic procurement practices while supporting a fast‑paced operational environment
• Influence supplier performance and support stronger commercial governance
• Work collaboratively with internal stakeholders and operational teams
• Contribute to the development and evolution of a more proactive procurement function
• Support forecasting, spend analysis, and supplier relationship management
  
  

About You:

You will thrive in this role if you meet the following essential criteria:

• Minimum 4 recent years of Procurement experience, ideally including at least 2 years delivering procurement within clinical settings, healthcare supply chains, or similar environments (primary, secondary, tertiary, public, or private)

• We will also consider applicants from senior clinical/healthcare roles who have been heavily involved in major procurement activity and can demonstrate strong transferable skills. Additional procurement training can be provided on the job.

Commercially driven with a strong track record of successful procurement outcomes

Experience working with senior stakeholders, ideally in clinical delivery roles

Ability to respectfully influence senior personnel

Strong negotiation skills, including the ability to gain leverage in challenging supplier markets

Broad commercial understanding beyond base pricing

Excellent customer‑focused communication style, with a friendly and professional manner

Excellent telephone and email communication skills

Strong attention to detail

Ability to work independently and as part of a wider team

Willingness to go the extra mile to support colleagues across the HCRG Care Group

Strong problem‑solving skills with the ability to use initiative

Good system skills and strong information retention capability

What we offer:

• Hybrid working – Work from home 95%+ of the time, with occasional travel to our Runcorn head office, service sites, or supplier meetings.

37.5 hours per week, Monday to Friday, with flexibility around school times, appointments, and start/finish times

Mentoring opportunities – Support junior colleagues and help shape the future of the Procurement function

Wider category exposure – Contribute to Clinical and Indirect/Estates procurement during periods of surge demand or absence

Package Description

You will feel valued as a Procurement Category Manager - Direct (Healthcare & Clinical) within HCRG Care Group, receiving access to exclusive rewards and benefits including: 

• £50,000 annual salary with group pension
• Private medical insurance with fast access to the most used specialists including for musculoskeletal problems and for mental health support – at locations across the country
• Free tea, coffee and milk at your base location in Runcorn
• Membership of My Reward Hub, giving you access to discounts on every day purchases like grocery shopping as well as cashback and voucher offers for treats for you and those special to you
• Access to your wages as you earn them to help cover life’s emergencies and avoid overdraft fees or high interest rates

Online and face to face help with your mental and physical wellbeing – from healthy recipes and activity challenges through to post trauma support, legal, debt and life management help, as well career coaching and counselling

Access to eLearning, bespoke career pathways and opportunities for continuing professional development through our ‘Outstanding’ learning and development team, The Learning Enterprise

An open, just culture where you’re encouraged to have and implement ideas which can help us deliver our purpose: changing lives through transforming health and care – backed up by at least £100,000 of ringfenced innovation funding each year

The pride of working for an organisation committed to the highest clinical and quality standards: with the majority of our rated services holding “good” or “outstanding” ratings from the Care Quality Commission

About The Company

We change lives by transforming health and care.

Established in 2006, we are one of the UK's leading independent providers of community health and care services, working with health and care commissioners and communities to transform services with a focus on experience, efficiency, and improved outcomes. We deliver and transform adult and children community health services, primary care services including urgent care, sexual health, dermatology and MSK services as well as adult social care and wellbeing services. Across England, we sup

port communities of many millions and directly help more than half a million people each year - guided by our simple values: we care, we think, we do .

We're committed to equal opportunities and welcome applications from a broad, diverse range of people who want to join our team. We’re a Disability Confident Committed company, so we work to provide facilities, work environment adjustments and technical solutions to be as inclusive of everyone .

While it doesn’t happen often, sometimes a role is very popular, and we’ll need to close it earlier than the date we’ve shown here. If you’re keen to join our team, we’d love to hear from you so please apply as soon as you can.

As you’d expect, safeguarding and protecting the children, young people and vulnerable adults that we work with is of the utmost importance so we have policies and procedures in place to promote safeguarding and safer working practices and everyone who joins the team is subject to a safer recruitment process, including the disclosure of criminal records and vetting checks.

Finally, we need to let you know that the company you’ll work for is part of HCRG Care Group Holdings Limited and by applying for this job we’ll need to process and hold information about you. If you would like to know a little more about how we use your information, please see our website's privacy policy.

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