Procurement Specialist
Location: Pennington, NJ (Onsite – 5 days/week)
Term: Full-Time | Permanent
Salary: $60,000 – $90,000 base + up to 10% annual bonus
Industry: Biotechnology
About the Role
The Procurement Specialist supports site operations through sourcing, purchasing, supplier management, contract administration, and procure-to-pay execution. The role is responsible for procurement activities related to capital expenditures, facility maintenance services, general operational purchasing, and other assigned categories.
The position works closely with Operations, Engineering, Facilities, Manufacturing, Quality, Finance, Legal, Information Technology, and other cross-functional teams to understand business requirements, manage procurement activities, resolve operational issues, and ensure compliance with company policies and procedures.
The Procurement Specialist is expected to independently lead assigned sourcing and purchasing activities within delegated authority while coordinating with the Procurement Manager, Legal, Finance, and other stakeholders when additional review or approval is required. The successful candidate must be a self-starter who can manage multiple priorities, exercise sound judgment, and drive work to completion with limited day-to-day supervision.
This is a fully on-site position requiring attendance at the Pennington, New Jersey site five days per week. Remote and hybrid work arrangements are not available.
Essential Responsibilities
- Lead sourcing activities for capital expenditures, facility maintenance services, general operational purchasing, and other assigned categories.
- Independently manage RFIs, RFQs, RFPs, competitive bids, supplier evaluations, commercial analyses, negotiations, and award recommendations within delegated authority.
- Review purchase requisitions for complete and accurate scope, specifications, quantities, pricing, accounting information, approvals, and supporting documentation.
- Work constructively with requestors to clarify requirements and appropriately challenge incomplete specifications, unsupported supplier selections, unfavorable commercial conditions, and noncompliant purchasing requests.
- Create, amend, monitor, reconcile, and close purchase orders for assigned categories and projects.
- Evaluate and select suppliers based on cost, quality, technical capability, service, delivery, compliance, and risk.
- Identify and implement cost savings, cost avoidance, supplier consolidation, standardization, and process-improvement opportunities.
- Negotiate and administer Master Service Agreements, annual contracts, statements of work, and related commercial documents while coordinating final review and approval with the Procurement Manager, Legal, and applicable stakeholders.
- Support supplier onboarding, qualification, master-data maintenance, performance monitoring, relationship management, corrective actions, and issue resolution.
- Resolve purchase order, receiving, invoice, pricing, quantity, delivery, and three-way-match discrepancies in coordination with suppliers and internal teams.
- Maintain accurate material master records, supplier master data, pricing records, purchasing configurations, and other procurement information within ERP, SAP, Source-to-Pay, and related systems.
- Monitor supplier performance against contractual obligations, service levels, quality requirements, delivery expectations, and business needs.
- Partner with internal stakeholders to forecast requirements, support project planning, establish sourcing strategies, and address procurement risks and opportunities.
- Ensure required sourcing, approvals, contracts, and purchase orders are in place before suppliers begin work or receive commitments.
- Comply with global procure-to-pay procedures, procurement policies, delegated-authority requirements, approval workflows, documentation standards, and file-management requirements.
- Collaborate with Quality and other applicable functions to address supplier qualification, noncompliance, quality issues, corrective actions, and regulated-supplier requirements.
- Support internal and external audits by maintaining and providing complete procurement documentation, records, approvals, and justifications.
- Protect confidential, proprietary, personal, financial, and commercially sensitive information.
- Escalate unauthorized commitments, purchase splitting, conflicts of interest, insufficient competition, policy violations, and other material procurement risks.
- Support procurement projects, process changes, system improvements, and continuous-improvement initiatives.
Qualifications
- Ideally 1-3 years of experience, but open to someone early in their career who is eager to learn and has the right attitude. Even a recent graduate with relevant internship experience would be considered.
- Open to any industry, but biotech industry experience is a nice-to-have.
- CAPEX or Material procurement experience is not required as long as they are eager to learn and undergo training.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience in procurement, sourcing, purchasing, supply-chain, or contract-administration.
- Experience supporting capital expenditures, facility maintenance services, operational purchasing, or similar indirect procurement categories.
- Strong understanding of sourcing, supplier management, contract administration, purchase requisitions, purchase orders, receiving, invoice matching, and procure-to-pay controls.
- Experience independently conducting RFIs, RFQs, RFPs, supplier evaluations, commercial analyses, negotiations, and award recommendations.
- Strong contract-management, negotiation, analytical, problem-solving, project-management, and change-management capabilities.
- Strong verbal, written, presentation, influencing, and cross-functional collaboration skills.
- Ability to manage multiple priorities, projects, suppliers, and deadlines in a dynamic, fast-paced environment.
- Ability to work independently as a self-starter, take ownership of assigned activities, exercise sound judgment, and drive issues to resolution with limited supervision.
- Strong attention to detail and commitment to procurement compliance, data accuracy, documentation, and follow-through.
- Proficiency with Microsoft Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, and ERP or SAP systems.
- Willingness and ability to work on-site five days per week as an essential requirement of the position.
What’s Offered
- Competitive base salary plus performance bonus
- Comprehensive health, dental, and vision coverage
- 401(k) retirement plan with employer match
- Generous paid time off and company holidays
- Ongoing professional development and training opportunities