Job title - R&D Strategic Lead Buyer Location - Malvern - Hybrid - 2 Days per week on site Role benefits - Competitive Salary 25 days holiday Bonus Pension and more Partners in Discovery. Together, we achieve more. About the role Are you passionate about building sustainable, efficient supply chains that support cutting-edge innovation? As our Strategic Lead Buyer you'll be the key link between R&D and Operations, ensuring that our products are designed with supply chain excellence in mind from day one. You'll lead procurement strategies, onboard suppliers, and ensure that our Physical Centre of Excellence projects are delivered with robust, cost-effective, and scalable supply chains What you will bring to the role: Leading, developing, documenting and executing procurement strategic plans which drive, cost effective, efficient and quality material and services in support of the company's products and solutions. Develop and oversee an effective strategic sourcing and supplier management program with a strong emphasis on quality, cost, supply and innovates approaches and partnerships. Identifying and on-boarding new suppliers as needed aligned to prototype delivery or new product offerings ensuring healthy forward-looking partnerships across the commodity platforms. Leads complex contract negotiations and manages contractual agreements. Maximise part quality and supplier reliability throughout the product design process and delivery to Operations. Manufacturability: Ensure components are manufacturable, robust and cost engineered, with a clear managed asset register (Tooling), maintenance agreements in place for Operations deployment. Purchasing Excellence - Setting the standard ensuring continuity on transfers to Operations Work with all internal stakeholders to deliver smoothly from R&D to Operations and onwards to Service About you: You have a business degree or equivalent experience, ideally with a CIPS qualification. You bring 7 years of experience in procurement or strategic sourcing, ideally in a technical or R&D environment. You're experienced in supplier management, contract negotiation, and cost engineering. You understand the full supply chain lifecycle-from prototype to production. You're confident working with cross-functional teams and managing complex transitions from R&D to Operations. You're skilled in SAP (desirable) and have a strong grasp of quality and compliance standards. You're a clear communicator who can simplify complex supply chain challenges. You're proactive, collaborative, and driven to deliver results. Why you should join us: Be a part of an ambitious, fast-growing, international company with a friendly and inclusive culture. Drive growth within a leading global organisation whose purpose is to work with our customers, to make the world a better place Be a key member of our team in our amazing offices Gym discounts Volunteering days and much more LI-CS2