Your Job
The Senior Buyer is responsible for managing supplier execution, purchase order coverage, material availability, supplier performance, and cost competitiveness for direct and/or indirect materials.
This role ensures alignment between demand, MRP signals, supplier commitments, inventory targets, production requirements, and customer delivery expectations. The Senior Buyer must demonstrate strong ownership, analytical capability, negotiation skills, supplier management discipline, and the ability to manage escalations in a fast-paced automotive manufacturing environment.
What You Will Do
- Execute purchasing activities to ensure material availability according to production schedules, customer requirements, inventory targets, and MRP signals.
- Manage purchase orders, confirmations, delivery dates, expedites, reschedules, cancellations, and supplier follow-up.
- Monitor supplier performance including on-time delivery, responsiveness, lead time adherence, quality support, and escalation management.
- Coordinate with Planning, Customer Service, Logistics, Warehouse, Engineering, Quality, Finance, and Operations to resolve material risks.
- Identify shortages, delivery gaps, supplier constraints, and potential customer impact; escalate proactively with recovery plans.
- Support inventory optimization through PO alignment, excess and obsolete reduction, MOQ review, lead time validation, and supplier flexibility initiatives.
- Negotiate price, delivery, payment terms, MOQ, lead time, and service improvements within the scope of purchasing authority.
- Maintain accurate purchasing master data, supplier information, lead times, and PO parameters in ERP systems.
- Support cost reduction, localization, supplier development, and continuous improvement projects.
- Participate in supplier business reviews, corrective actions, and escalation meetings.
- Ensure compliance with Molex purchasing policies, ethical standards, internal controls, and automotive customer expectations.
- Support new product introductions, engineering changes, project launches, and end-of-life material management.
Who You Are (Basic Qualifications)
- Bachelor's degree in Supply Chain, Business Administration, Industrial Engineering, International Business, or related field.
- 4-6 years of experience in purchasing, procurement, materials, or supplier management.
- Experience in manufacturing, electronics, automotive, or maquiladora environments.
- Strong knowledge of MRP, ERP, purchase order management, supplier follow-up, and inventory control.
- SAP experience required.
- Strong Excel and analytical skills.
- English proficiency required.
What Will Put You Ahead
- Experience supporting automotive customers or IATF 16949 manufacturing environments.
- Knowledge of supplier scorecards, contract management, cost reduction, and sourcing processes.
- APICS, CPIM, CSCP, Lean Six Sigma, or procurement certification preferred.
- Experience with global suppliers, long lead-time components, electronics, connectors, cables, or mechanical components.
At Koch companies, we are entrepreneurs. This means we openly challenge the status quo, find new ways to create value and get rewarded for our individual contributions. Any compensation range provided for a role is an estimate determined by available market data. The actual amount may be higher or lower than the range provided considering each candidate's knowledge, skills, abilities, and geographic location. If you have questions, please speak to your recruiter about the flexibility and detail of our compensation philosophy.
Who We Are
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At Koch, employees are empowered to do what they do best to make life better. Learn how our business philosophy helps employees unleash their potential while creating value for themselves and the company.
Additionally, everyone has individual work and personal needs. We seek to enable the best work environment that helps you and the business work together to produce superior results.
