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About Umicore
Powering the cars of today and tomorrow. Reducing harmful emissions. Giving unique properties to high-end applications. Giving new life to used metals. As a global advanced materials and recycling group, we develop, produce, and recycle materials for a better life.
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About Support Functions
A global organisation. It’s not just those in our industrial sites and technical centres that are vital to Umicore’s growth. Across our support functions we ensure that we continue to grow and evolve – whether it’s by making sure our decisions are commercially viable, enhancing our reputation, building new customer relationships or finding the right people who can build on what we’ve already achieved. The variety of our work means we cannot stand still. We need to find new ways to do things, discover new solutions and develop new ideas. Which is where you come in.
The position can be based in Hoboken, Brussels, or Olen, with occasional travel to other sites for team meetings.
Your Key Accountabilities
As a Category Manager, you will play an important role in strengthening Umicore’s transition from transactional buying towards a more strategic, category-driven procurement organization.
Your main focus will be category management within the Chemicals domain, with an emphasis on building strategy, aligning stakeholders, and ensuring consistent ways of working across regions.
- Define and drive category strategies for Chemicals with a multi-year perspective
- Contribute to the standardization of sourcing approaches, governance rules, and contracting frameworks across regions
- Lead or support strategic sourcing initiatives and negotiations with key suppliers in the Chemicals category
- Build a global view of the category, leveraging best practices across business units rather than operating locally only
- Collaborate with internal stakeholders while balancing category strategy with business needs
- Ensure alignment with compliance, risk, and legal standards
- Support category management maturity growth within the organization
- Contribute to a collaborative team environment, proactively connecting with colleagues across locations
Who we are looking for
- An experienced Category Manager or Procurement professional, ideally with exposure to Chemicals or similar categories (nice to have, not mandatory)
- Strong background in category management
- Comfortable working in a matrix, multi-stakeholder environment with sometimes competing interests
- Able to operate with a global mindset and understand different regional approaches
- A confident negotiator with solid commercial and contractual awareness
- Analytical, structured, and data-driven in decision-making
- A team player who values collaboration
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What we can offer
We aim to lead the way. Not just for our customers, but for our employees too. That is why we strive to create a collaborative environment in which we can all succeed, and a culture through which we can all share ideas, develop our expertise and advance our careers. We engage in building an inclusive work culture that offers equal opportunities for all employees irrespective of their diverse backgrounds. As you would expect from a world-leading organisation, we will also reward your contribution with a competitive salary and benefits. With all this and more, imagine what you could do?
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