Category Manager - Maintenance & Services with French Location: Paris, France Industry: Manufacturing / CPG / FMCG
Role Overview The Sourcing Category Manager - Maintenance & Services is responsible for leading Global strategic sourcing and category management for Maintenance & Services in the FMCG/CPG/Manufacturing domain. This role drives cost optimization, service quality, supplier performance, and risk mitigation while ensuring compliance with Global regulatory, labor, and safety standards. The position partners with Operations, Facilities, Engineering, Finance, Legal, EHS, and quality stakeholders.
Key Responsibilities: Category Strategy & Spend Management - Develop and execute category strategies for following services, aligned with business and operational goals:
- technical (energy management, thermal control, heat generation, water processing & treatment like services),
- soft facility management (cleaning, security, catering, soft building services), waste management
- Manage end-to-end category lifecycle, including spend analysis, and total cost of ownership (TCO) optimization
- Identify opportunities for consolidation, standardization, and preferred supplier programs across sites
Strategic Sourcing - Lead large sourcing events (RFP, RFQ, RFI) for maintenance and technical service categories
- Drive category plan alignment across the regions ensuring seamless integration of category-led, proactive-regional, local or reactive (eg contract renewals) events
- Negotiate commercial terms, pricing models, service levels (SLAs), and master service agreements (MSAs)
- Help regional buyers drive sourcing projects
- Drive continuous improvement, cost reduction, and cost avoidance initiatives with services suppliers
Stakeholder Collaboration - Act as a strategic business partner to Procurement teams at the client, Facilities Management, Engineering, Operations, EHS, Finance, and HR
- Translate business requirements into sourcing solutions that balance cost, quality, safety, and service continuity
- Provide market intelligence and benchmarking insights to internal stakeholders
Financial & Value Delivery - Deliver and report annual cost savings, cost avoidance, and value creation metrics
- Leverage should-cost models, rate benchmarking, and market analytics
Qualifications - Approximately 8-10 years' experience in handling category management activities in the Maintenance & technical Services space
- Business or Engineering school graduate is a must
- Professional certification (CPSM, CPSD, CIPS, PMP) preferred
- Exposure in drafting category strategy, sourcing planning, business case creation, sourcing execution and contract closure
- Good client facing & client management skills
- Demonstrated experience with maintenance and services procurement in multiple geographies
- Experience working with global, regional and local suppliers at different levels, within multiple geographies
- Very good communication skills
Soft Skills & Competencies - Strong customer-centric mindset (client-facing experience preferred)
- Transformation mindset with ability to identify improvement opportunities
- Highly organized, proactive, and goal-oriented
- High integrity, attention to detail, and strong prioritization skills
