Director, Procurement - Remote

At Eagle Foods we are builders. We are builders of brands, categories, and people. Eagle Foods enjoys a rich heritage with brands that have proven category leadership for more than 150 years. Eagle is a diversified food company producing and marketing sweetened condensed and evaporated milk, snacks and convenient meal solutions products. As a company, Eagle Foods is passionate about fostering an entrepreneurial spirit that boldly builds better people and better brands while focusing on the positive impact our company, our products and our people have on the world. Eagle Foods has a bold family of brands that consumers have come to rely on for decades, including Eagle Brand Sweetened Condensed Milk and Evaporated Milk, Magnolia Sweetened Condensed Milk, PET Milk, Popcorn Indiana, Cretors Popcorn, Helper and Suddenly Salad. Eagle Foods products are marketed and distributed across all U.S. retail channels, including grocery stores, club stores and mass-merchandisers, as well as foodservice and export, U.S. military, and private label business.

Responsibilities

Job Description Summary

This role focuses on developing and executing sourcing strategies for direct materials, indirect materials, and contract manufacturing at Eagle. It involves optimizing total value across cost, cash, quality, and service to meet production needs across all business segments. Key responsibilities include standardizing contracts, identifying cost-saving opportunities, supporting innovation in material solutions, managing budgets and hedging activities, nurturing supplier relationships, and engaging with industry trends. Additionally, the role includes overseeing team development and supporting long-term business objectives through strategic partnerships and acquisitions diligence.

Essential Functions

• Developing a sourcing strategy for direct materials, indirect materials and contract manufacturing and managing systems, process and people in the execution of the strategy
• Ensuring sourcing strategies and tactics support best total value for Eagle (cost, cash, quality, service) and meet production needs across all business segments
• Identifying where value can be delivered by centrally vs. locally sourcing indirect materials/sundries and setting up programs to capture that value where the opportunity exists
• Developing and deploying contract templates/T’s and C’s for use across the organization
• Reviewing contracts developed by others to ensure they align with company standards and objectives
• Acting as bridge between the Eagle supply planning teams and suppliers as those teams work to identify:
• Required material ordering/release lead times
• Optimal inventory strategies/safety stocks to ensure no production disruptions inclusive of leveraging the ability of a supplier to hold inventory
• Optimal order quantities to deliver best total value thru the lens of cost tiering but also obsolescence risk (aka Economic Order Quantities)
• Constantly seeking cost savings opportunities and presenting them to the business for consideration (supplier changes, material changes, down weighting/gauging, etc.)
• Supporting innovation and change management needs by working upstream with marketing and R&D, sitting on innovation teams and partnering with suppliers to identify affordable material solutions that will bring R&D and marketing concepts to life reliably and affordably
• Coordinating change management activities with the supply planning teams, plants and suppliers to ensure changes are delivered on time, at cost, with no service disruptions and minimal obsolescence
• Supporting quality assurance team members in their efforts to ensure suppliers meet all pertinent regulatory requirements for use in our products
• Providing second level support to the plants on material quality issues via our dispute resolution/escalation protocol
• Developing the annual material budget and quarterly reforecasts, and managing cost to budget/PPV thru the year
• Managing the milk hedge and identifying areas where hedge activities may be leveraged to provide cost certainty
• Setting up suppliers in M3
• Supporting accounts payable in resolving invoicing issues
• Staying connected with industry trends by identifying and participating in a limited number of industry groups/associations
• Setting up mechanisms to stay connected to market trends and commodity markets where those trends/markets are key drivers to Eagle Foods input costs. Examples: Class IV milk and price drivers, oil and sugar markets, laminate feedstock price drivers, etc
• Manage and develop direct reports to deliver objectives and grow their contribution to the business
• Developing relationships with partners/potential partners in support of long-term business objectives
• Conducing diligence, with 3rd party support as needed, on potential acquisitions
  
  

Qualifications

Desired Experience

• 10+ years of procurement experience
• Experience on both tactical buying but also strategic sourcing and supplier relationship management
• Experience leveraging supplier capabilities to support innovation and cost take out
• Experience managing commodities and a hedge program
• Experience building an annual budget and managing cost vs. budget
• Proficient in Microsoft Office, specifically strong in Excel.
• Experience managing others as both a direct line manager and thru influence
• Consumer products experience preferred.
  
  

Education

Bachelor’s degree in business, engineering or supply chain/logistics preferred.

Critical Skills, Attributes & Other Requirements

• Travel: must be able travel to visit plants and suppliers as needed typically short trips a few times per month as well as one trip to Cleveland each month for our Monthly Business Review
• Sourcing and negotiation skills
• Collaboration: demonstrated ability to partner with cross functional partners (marketing, finance, R&D, other supply chain functions) to drive outcomes
• Dispute resolution skills – an ability to get in the middle of a situation and leverage facts and data vs emotions to come to a reasonable outcome
• Data and Analytics – experience personally building dashboards to regularly assess operational performance and identify loss recovery opportunities. Strong desire to manage thru metrics and data.
• Innovative – an out of the box thinker who strives for excellence.
• Act with Intensity – must be urgent and positively engage others, be visible and confident.
• Display Influence – able to lead others that do not directly report to you to positive outcomes for the business
• Continuous Improvement – never satisfied with the status quo. Always seeking to identify and drive further opportunity for improvement.