Summary
Where: The Automotive Campus in Helmond, part of Brainport: the heart of Europe's innovation
Domain: Procurement
Experience: 2-5 years of relevant experience
Degree: Bachelor's degree
Working at Lightyear is a unique experience. You get the opportunity to work for a company with a pure and meaningful mission. A mission that will make a positive and lasting impact on future generations.
What will you do as a Category Buyer at Lightyear?
As a Category Buyer you’ll become part of our Procurement team. While our engineers make sure we’re able to engineer our required technology, it’s up to this team to make sure we realize delivery through collaboration with suppliers and building strong relationships with partners.
While you’ll be coached by our VP Strategic Sourcing & Procurement you become part of a small-scaled team including Category Managers, Operational Buyers and a Procurement Assistant. Primarily, it’s your responsibility to maintain an adequate quantity of essential materials or services required for the business to operate.
This will result in managing stock inventories, creating extensive and detailed requirements specifications for the required products/services, tendering and maintaining (potential) suppliers relationships. Besides, you’ll evaluate competing bids and negotiate on pricing.
Additionally, it’s essential to carry out sourcing strategies as set by the Category Manager you intensively work with. You’ll co-identify and co-select suitable partners and suppliers for the materials/services within the scope of our category manager.
To give you an idea more staccato, we’d like to refer to the bullets displayed below;
- You’ll translate projects needs to supply chain
- You will act as an expert in the area of your responsibility both commercially and market wise
- You understand technical feasibility of products, materials and processes within your portfolio
- You’ll steer and execute supplier selection processes and manage all stakeholders
- You’ll administratively support the Supplier Selection process and add value throughout contracting and embedding new partners
We’re aware of the fact that just some staccato bullets are slightly lame. That’s why we’d like to give you some insights on what your job will look like. After your coffee to start your day, you efficiently deal with some mails regarding the project, mainly from and to partners about deliverables, timelines and technical discussions. You attend the stand up meeting of the project (sprint) and report the result of last days efforts in regard to roadblocks for the team irt. ’your’ product portfolio. Then you finalise your one-pager presentation for tomorrow’s stand up meeting in which you will inform the team about the outcome of your negotiation and deal you have finalised including a time plan for the next steps. Before lunch you catch up with one of the lead engineers to discuss the outcome of a recent technical discussion and check if your intervention is needed. There might have been openings for commercial consequences in the project due to this. Just after lunch you sit down for the appointment with yourself and consume your blocked agenda to investigate 2 new potential suppliers which were recently introduced. You investigate a recent article which exposed new nearby future technologies and try to get in contact with the company mentioned. At the end of the day, you replan some appointments, plan your future trip in 2 weeks to Italy and deal with your last inbox items and leave late afternoon.
Now, let’s see if you have what it takes to fulfill this exciting role!
What do we expect from a Category Buyer?
In order to succeed in the dynamic world of Lightyear; pro-activity, professionalism, communication and adaptability are crucial. We are looking for someone with an ambitious attitude who learns from the past but who is especially open to transforming new developments or ideas into the ‘tried and tested’ of the future! You thrive on working team based, but working independently every now and then shouldn’t be an issue.. You are flexible and can work under pressure. Furthermore, we are looking for someone with:
- At least a Bachelor’s degree within a relevant field
- Strong passion with high-end products and technology
- 2-5 years of relevant experience
- The ability to build trustworthy, strong relations with external partners
- The capability to translate mid term strategic plans for the (sub) system/parts you are responsible for
- Excellent negotiation skills
- Fluent in English
- The skills to balance out technical and commercial skills
On a personal level you can relate to the following characteristics; you’re able to work in multidisciplinary teams and you’re someone who starts & finishes projects. You’re result driven and relation minded.
What can you expect from Lightyear?
In addition to a challenging role we also offer:
- A high degree of freedom and independence in your role
- A role within a multidisciplinary team consisting of highly motivated, inquisitive and talented people with a broad diversity of experience
- A role at one of the fastest growing technical companies in the Netherlands with tremendous potential
- 40 vacation days per year
- An interesting and balanced pension through Zwitserleven that is in line with the mission of Lightyear
- The ability to participate via shares and to be involved in the growth and success of Lightyear
- In addition to a dynamic working environment, there is time for relaxation during our already epic Friday afternoon drinks
About Lightyear
Lightyear is an innovative and progressive scale-up with one mission: clean mobility for everyone, everywhere.
Lightyear originates from the legacy as a multiple world championship of the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge® Cruiser Class. Officially established in 2016 by 5 visionaries with the dream to make this groundbreaking technology accessible to everyone, everywhere. In order to accelerate the transition towards a truly sustainable solution for mobility, we believe that it is necessary to completely rethink automotive design by starting from scratch, not limited by industry conventions.
At Lightyear, we all strive for the same goal. We have a team with diverse skill sets and backgrounds; all working tirelessly towards clean mobility for everyone, everywhere. We’re proud of our culture and live up to our core values: think independently, be bold, deliver the change, put people first and take responsibility. Our shared vision is what unites and drives us.
Want to join?
