Procurement Manager

Be Applied Ltd; Eastleigh; Hybrid; GBP 40,000 - 80,000

Job description

Employment Type Contract 13-month Maternity Cover (June 2025 – July 2026)

Location Hybrid ·Didcot, UK 2 days minimum in Harwell office per week

Seniority Mid-level

• Closing:11:59pm, 7th Apr 2025 BST

Perks and benefits

• Work from home option
• Life Insurance
• Wellness programs
• Employee Assistance Programme
• Enhanced maternity and paternity leave
• Sabbatical Opportunities
• Salary sacrifice
• Team social events
• Extracurricular clubs
• Cycle to work scheme

Job Description

Job Title: Procurement Manager 13-month Maternity Cover (June 2025 – July 2026)

The Challenge: Ensuring procurement contracts are drafted, compliant, timely, allowing business and project schedules to be maintained and secure value for money. Providing professional procurement advice and support to all teams within the Catapult related to procurement. Maintaining a strategic procurement schedule, internal guidance documents and knowledge transfer on procurement policy & procedure.

This individual will work closely with the Procurement Business Partner to manage procurement at the Catapult, reporting to the Head of Commercial Services. The overarching responsibilities of the role may include:

1. Running end to end procurement processes in line with our procurement policy, often requiring compliance to the Procurement Act 2023 and taking responsibility for this compliance.
2. Safeguarding and managing Catapult procurement during the first year of the new Procurement Act 2023.
3. Monitoring updates to legislation and guidance issued by the government and working with the procurement business partner to implement any required changes to Catapult processes.
4. Determining route to market and providing clear advice for individual tender opportunities.
5. Drafting procurement documentation based on our existing templates, with the confidence to adapt and develop specifications and evaluation criteria, asking probing questions of requirement owners, ensuring all documentation is fit for purpose.
6. Drafting contracts and contract change notes with clear deliverables and performance metrics.
7. Maintaining pipeline of new procurement activity as well as contract renewals/expiries and ensuring all renewals are contracted compliantly and expired contracts are closed appropriately.
8. Reviewing, approving and requesting changes to non-standard terms and conditions, being able to clearly articulate any risks, issues and mitigating actions.
9. Scrutinising procurements that are going through our exception to the procurement policy (EPP) process, challenging where appropriate.
10. Running due diligence checks on new organisations the Catapult is looking to do business with via our credit checking software and due diligence capture form, able to clearly articulate any risks, issues & mitigations.
11. Confidently delivering ad hoc advice and procurement training to relevant stakeholders across the business.
12. Supporting expenditure and spend profile monitoring across frameworks and contracts.
13. Supporting shopping cart compliance in our SAP By Design system.

Not all spend at the Catapult is required to comply with the Procurement Act 2023 and is dependent on the source of the funding and the nature of the contract. The Catapult procurement policy has been designed in line with the Procurement Act 2023, with the flexibility to adapt but always maintain the principles of transparency and value for money outcomes. Understanding the funding mechanism is critical to ensuring success of the procurement function at the Catapult, so experience working across different funding types is desirable but can be taught. Strong public sector procurement experience is essential.

Ways of Working: We are a collaborative learning organisation where our ways of working are underpinned by coaching and feedback. Innovation is at the heart of everything that we do, therefore being highly adaptive and agile with a growth mindset will ensure your success at the Catapult.

Skills & Experience required:

• Knowledge and strong experience of working and running procurements under the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 and detailed understanding of the Procurement Act 2023.
• Experienced in drafting tender specifications and evaluation criteria, confident challenging gaps and asking probing questions to create a document that is fit for purpose.
• Confidence and experience reviewing contract clauses and terms and conditions, highlighting areas of risk.
• Strong communication skills, in verbal and written formats, tailoring to audience as required.
• Ability to manage multiple competing priorities and remain organised. Good time management skills.
• Experience working with Microsoft products and confidence using various IT systems once familiar.
• Desirable. Experience working across grant funding and commercial funding, as well as both public and private sector funding.
• Desirable. Experience developing processes within public sector procurement and demonstrable project-management skills.
• Desirable. Experience of working within technology or technical orientated organisations.
• Desirable. Experience working with finance systems.

Success factors: You know you have been successful when…

• The Procurement Function continues to run smoothly and compliantly with contracts awarded in a timely and compliant manner that delivers value for money outcomes for the business.
• Our business processes are understood & valued by all internal stakeholders.

The purpose of your new team:

What is the overall objective of your team?

Our Strategic Advisory Teams lead on contract management, legal and procurement support. We possess a breadth of experience from a variety of industries and drive early engagement with business leads, Mission teams and project managers to support them with the development of collaborative & commercial opportunities. We provide clarity of information, contract scrutiny, risk evaluation, legal support, guidance and compliance advice allowing the Catapult to leverage its position and ultimately deliver revenue, outputs and impact.

We support Business Development (Sales) Leads, Bids and Project Managers, Budget holders & their objectives - delivering best value, compliance & timely contract award. The team also facilitates compliant market & supplier engagement within internal control mechanisms & relevant procurement and public procurement regulations.

How we work….

We strive to create a high trust, high performance and inclusive environment that enables team members to bring their whole selves to work – this helps to create the foundations of an innovation culture. Our shared values are critical to this:

• We care - for our people, our partners, and our planet.
• We connect - and engage with people and ideas.
• We learn - and grow, as people and as an industry.

Underpinning this is our belief in great teams, our combined efforts will always deliver outcomes beyond that of anyone providing we are honest through debate, experiment and reflect, and create shared resolutions in support of our purpose. Live these values, work to our principles, take ownership to deliver, and we are certain you will thrive with us.

This job description sets out the skills and experience we think are needed to be able to perform in this job. However, if you believe you can deliver in this role then we want to hear from you.

Important notice for applicants: We use tools to detect plagiarism and the use of AI or chatbots for applicant answers. If plagiarism, AI use (such as ChatGPT) or similar software are found to have been used in your application you will not be considered for this or future roles within the Satellite Applications Catapult. If you need any additional support during the application process, please do reach out and connect. We also invite you to share feedback via Applied.

At Satellite Applications Catapult, we're committed to fostering an inclusive and diverse workforce. We welcome candidates from all corners of the globe, but due to legal and logistical considerations, we want to be transparent about the potential visa-related challenges that could arise. Our ability to offer sponsorship will depend on the level of interest for our roles and salary level.