Vice President of Procurement/Chief Procurement Officer

About this role

The Vice President of Procurement/Chief Procurement Officer leads enterprise-wide sourcing and procurement strategy for a $2B food manufacturing company. This role is accountable for building a world-class procurement capability that creates value through strategic sourcing, category management, commodity risk management, supplier partnerships, cost optimization, supply continuity, and procurement digital transformation. The role supports 30+ manufacturing sites and a diverse spending portfolio including commodity-based ingredients, packaging, external contract manufacturing, indirect spend, MRO, logistics, professional services, facilities, IT, capital, and corporate services. The Vice President, Procurement serves as a strategic advisor to the executive leadership team and partners closely with Operations, Commercial, Finance, R&D, Quality, and Supply Chain leadership to protect margins, improve resilience, accelerate supplier innovation, and support enterprise growth.

Location: San Antonio, TX Corporate Headquarters

Reports To: Chief Supply Chain Officer

Duties and Responsibilities:

Strategic Leadership • Develop and execute a multi-year enterprise procurement strategy aligned with company growth, margin expansion, supply chain resilience, working capital, and shareholder value objectives. • Serve as a key member of the Supply Chain leadership team, influencing enterprise strategy, operating model decisions, and cross-functional priorities. • Build and lead a best-in-class procurement organization across raw materials, ingredients, materials planning, packaging, external contract manufacturing, indirect procurement, and strategic sourcing. • Partner with Operations, R&D, Finance, Sales, Quality, and Commercial teams to align procurement strategy with product innovation, customer needs, commercial strategy, and manufacturing requirements. • Provide external market intelligence, commodity forecasts, supplier innovation insights, and risk perspectives that support pricing, product formulation, customer negotiations, and capital allocation decisions. • Lead the digital transformation of procurement through advanced analytics, AI-enabled decision support, predictive commodity intelligence, scenario planning, spend analytics and automation. Leverage data as a strategic asset to improve forecasting, sourcing decisions and supplier performance.

Category, Sourcing, and Indirect Procurement Management • Develop and govern enterprise category strategies across raw materials and ingredients, packaging, external contract manufacturing, indirect spend, MRO, logistics, services, capital, IT, facilities, and corporate services. • Lead competitive bidding, supplier selection, contract negotiation, sourcing governance, and total cost of ownership decisions across major spend categories. • Build an enterprise-wide indirect procurement function that establishes governance, category management, spend visibility, sourcing discipline, contract coverage, and measurable productivity across corporate functions. • Balance cost, quality, innovation, service, food safety, regulatory compliance, and supply assurance in all category strategies and supplier decisions.

Commodity Risk Management and Margin Protection • Develop and lead a sophisticated commodity risk management capability across grains, flour/wheat, edible oils, sweeteners, dairy, cocoa, and other key agricultural inputs. • Partner closely with Finance and Commercial teams to optimize hedging strategies, forward buying, supplier diversification, pricing mechanisms, customer pass-through strategies, and market intelligence. • Monitor commodity exposure versus policy and develop actionable recommendations to protect margins through volatile commodity cycles. • Lead supplier diversification, dual sourcing, geographic risk mitigation, and business continuity planning for critical materials and supply markets.

Cost Management and Value Creation • Deliver annual cost savings, cost avoidance, productivity, and EBITDA improvement targets through strategic sourcing, contract optimization, value engineering, should-cost modeling, benchmarking, and demand management. • Drive total cost of ownership optimization across procurement categories, including price, yield, quality, freight, inventory, service levels, payment terms, risk, and supplier performance. • Provide actionable market intelligence on commodity trends, supplier economics, cost drivers, capacity constraints, inflation/deflation, and category risks. • Partner with Finance to quantify procurement value, working capital improvements, procurement ROI, and operating efficiency.

Supplier Management, Innovation, and Risk Mitigation • Develop strategic supplier partnerships that improve reliability, accelerate product innovation, improve speed-to-market, unlock new ingredient and packaging technologies, and create competitive advantage for customers. • Implement robust supplier performance management, including KPIs, scorecards, service levels, audits, corrective action processes, and supplier business reviews. • Ensure business continuity planning and supply risk mitigation through dual sourcing, geographic diversification, supplier financial risk monitoring, and contingency planning. • Lead supplier diversity and sustainability initiatives in alignment with company strategy and customer expectations.

Quality, Food Safety, and Compliance • Ensure suppliers meet company standards for food safety, quality, traceability, transparency, regulatory compliance, and responsible sourcing. • Partner with Quality Assurance, Regulatory, and Operations teams on supplier approval, audit readiness, issue resolution, continuous improvement, and compliance with applicable food safety requirements. • Maintain procurement practices that support the highest standards of quality, safety, ethics, and regulatory compliance across the supply base.

Digital Transformation and Operational Excellence • Lead the digital trans

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