Operational Buyer
Confirmed on the employer's own hiring board on Oct 20, 2026. First seen by Alion on Sep 16, 2026.
Operational Buyer | Bugle, Manchester/Halifax or Rochdale
Driven by operational excellence and supplier collaboration, you will play a crucial role in managing local purchasing activities, securing seamless material flow and driving cost-efficiency across our UK sites.
What you will be doing
As an Operational Buyer, you will serve as the key procurement point of contact on site, managing daily purchasing activities to ensure materials and services arrive on time, within budget and to the required quality standards.
- Call-off & inventory management: Execute call-off orders using established framework agreements, maintaining optimal inventory levels while bundling orders to optimise financial performance.
- Daily procurement operations: Process requisitions, verify pricing and specifications, create purchase orders across relevant buying channels (SAP/JAGGAER) and confirm goods receipts.
- Supplier & issue resolution: Act as the primary escalation point for delivery, quality or price discrepancies, managing supplier claims and facilitating dispute resolution before escalating to Category Managers.
- Cost improvement & compliance: Challenge material costs to contribute directly to savings targets, while ensuring full adherence to procurement policies, procure-to-pay (P2P) processes and quality management systems.
- Cross-functional collaboration: Partner closely with internal teams across operations, logistics, finance and quality assurance to align procurement activities and support site goals.
What you will bring
We are looking for a proactive, detail-orientated professional who thrives in a dynamic environment and brings both commercial focus and collaborative energy to our team.
- Experience: Demonstrated experience in operational procurement, ideally within a large, matrix-structured business environment.
- Soft skills: Highly structured and organised with strong task-prioritisation skills, excellent conflict-resolution abilities, a natural curiosity and a proactive, results-driven mindset.
- Hard skills: Proficiency with procurement systems such as SAP and JAGGAER, strong MS Office skills (including Excel), a solid understanding of procure-to-pay processes and sound technical or commercial insight.
Why join us
At Danish Crown UK, you will enjoy the autonomy to take ownership of site-based procurement while benefiting from the support and scale of an established international food business.
You will work in a supportive environment where your proactive ideas and problem-solving abilities directly impact site performance and financial success.
We offer a full-time, permanent position with structured working hours (Monday to Thursday 08:00 to 16:30, Friday 08:00 to 15:00), alongside clear opportunities to develop your commercial expertise and career within our growing team.
About us
Danish Crown UK is a business built on trust, teamwork and ambition. We exist to deliver food that people believe in, and we know that takes strong leadership and collaborative cultures.
Our leadership principles guide us. We act for the good of the whole organisation. We hire brilliant people and help them grow. We are ambitious, curious and open to new ideas. We build trust by accepting mistakes as part of development. We believe real leadership is earned through example, not title.
Whoever joins us will help create a workplace where people feel safe to speak up, share ideas, challenge old ways of working and stretch themselves to achieve more. If that sounds like the environment where you thrive, we would love to hear from you.