Vice President, Procurement

Vice President, Procurement

The Business

Our client is one of the largest wood product producers and distributors in the US and among North America’s top buyers of forest products, purchasing lumber and panel products directly from mills across multiple locations. This seat manages annual spend in the billions, making it one of the biggest procurement roles in the industry

This is a newly reshaped VP role sitting inside a large, sophisticated procurement organization. The company is not asking this leader to be the best trader in the room. It is asking this leader to build the next generation of traders and buyers, as the current bench of experienced commodity talent is aging out across the entire industry and there is no pipeline behind it.

The Opportunity

You’ll take ownership of a team of roughly 25, structured under 3 director-level direct reports, each managing 8-15 people, along with direct, mill-level purchasing relationships across the company’s core wood products categories, including lumber, panels, and other forest products, domestic and international. You’ll own landed cost and working capital performance across the buying and replenishment function, without sacrificing quality or reliability of supply, and you’ll build and formalize a training and development pipeline for buyers and traders, including people who may come from outside the industry entirely. You’ll design and run the supplier side of the business: vendor quotation evaluation, national and regional program negotiation, category reviews, supplier performance tracking, and program compliance, while identifying and capturing cost-reduction opportunities through smarter buying patterns and supply channels, including lumber reload and vendor-managed inventory (VMI) programs. You’ll also support sourcing of inbound truck and rail freight where the company manages it directly, applying the same cost and reliability lens as core product buying, and prepare and present market reports and supply chain performance updates to senior executive leadership. Expect to partner cross-functionally with logistics, finance, and sales leadership across a large, matrixed organization with a national and international footprint, and to represent the function with mills, operators, and customers in the field, roughly 30%.

Success in this role looks like a visible, credible bench of developed buyers and traders within 2-3 years, and strong, self-built relationships with mills and key accounts, even without industry tenure going in. It means a structured, disciplined function that still respects and channels the personalities and instincts that make good traders good, and trusted cross-functional partner status across a large organization, not just within the buying function.

What You Will Need to Be Successful

• Proven leadership of a team of 20+ people, with several leaders reporting up through you
• A track record of training, developing, and promoting people
• History of cross-functional leadership, operating inside a large, multi-stakeholder, matrixed organization
• Strong negotiation skills and experience running a formal vendor evaluation and supplier-alignment process, including national or regional program negotiations
• Strategic and process systems thinking beyond the transaction
• Ability to lead a Cultural Bridge: harnessing the cowboy, while installing the discipline