Senior Procurement Manager

About us:

Every refrigerated truck and trailer moving goods across the country has relied on diesel for decades. It's polluting, expensive, and the technology has not changed. Two companies have dominated the market, selling the same legacy technology with minor updates.

Sunswap makes the electric refrigeration that's replacing it: zero emissions, lower operating costs, built from the ground up for how fleets actually operate. Endurance runs frozen goods for 24 hours on a single charge and chilled goods for up to two months. Those numbers matter on the road, and getting them right took years of obsessive engineering from a team drawn from automotive, aerospace, and motorsport.

We have gone from founding to manufacturing at scale globally in just six years. We built our own production facility in Surrey. Today we are 200 times larger by square footage than when we started. We operate on three continents, with units running across the UK, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Chile, and Australia. And we are trusted by major brands like Tesco, Ocado, Birds Eye, and Happy Eggs every single day.

We have been named Sunday Times Best Place to Work in 2024, 2025, and 2026. We have won awards for innovation, technology, and marketing excellence. In 2025 we were named Winner in the Excellence in Procurement category at the Made in Britain Impact Awards. We have backing from leading investors including BGF, Barclays, Clean Growth Fund, Shell, and Rabobank.

We have got the customers, the traction, and the momentum. Now we are taking this British engineered product global, scaling manufacturing, opening new markets, and building the team that will make legacy polluting technology obsolete across the world.

If you want to be part of a company that is setting new standards for the industry and scaling internationally, this is it.

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Our benefits:

• 30 days of annual leave (includes a Wellbeing Day)
• Sabbatical (after 3 years of working with Sunswap)
• 5 free counselling sessions per year
• Family leave ranging from 4 weeks to 4 months
• Free Monthly Lunches & Quarterly Socials!
• Cycle to Work Scheme
• Sunswap merch

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Job overview:

The Senior Procurement Manager is a senior role within the Supply Chain function, accountable for the commercial performance of our electrical system commodities and the strategic suppliers behind them, the end to end transport and logistics operation across the UK, EU, and China, and the development of a small but growing buying team.

This is a role for someone who thinks several steps ahead. As Sunswap moves from low volume build to serial production, you will own category strategies that secure capacity, protect margin, and reduce supply risk. You will lead complex negotiations and long term agreements that underpin these strategies.

You will act as the commercial voice of Supply Chain to Engineering, Quality, and Operations. You will bring the seniority and judgement required to operate independently, making sound commercial decisions without close direction and holding suppliers accountable when it matters.

This role is a great opportunity to shape the supply chain of a high growth business at exactly the point where the decisions made today define the cost, quality, and scalability of the product tomorrow.

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Key responsibilities:

Strategic sourcing & commodity ownership

• Own and drive categories and their strategies for a portfolio of electrical system commodities (e.g. power electronics, harnesses, solar panels, fans, motors, chargers, HMI, compressors), aligned to Sunswap’s volume ramp and cost targets.
• Own the relationship, commercial performance and development roadmap of a portfolio of strategic suppliers, including performance improvement plans, business reviews and escalation.
• Build and maintain a strategic supplier pipeline. Lead complex sourcing events end to end from RFI and RFQ through to award, contract signature, and onboarding, defining the approach and driving the outcome with full autonomy.
• Lead complex commercial negotiations covering piece price, tooling and NRE, payment and delivery terms, and long term agreements, working with Legal and the Head of Supply Chain on contract structure.
• • Take accountability for delivering annual cost reduction targets across the portfolio, using should cost modelling, teardown analysis, and detailed quotation analysis to challenge supplier pricing on a factual basis.
• • Identify, assess, and mitigate supply risk, including single source exposure, capacity constraints, financial health, geopolitical risk, and tariff risk, and maintain contingency plans for critical parts.
• Partner with Engineering and Quality from concept stage onwards to influence design for cost, availability and manufacturability, and to manage the commercial impact of engineering changes.

People leadership & development

• Line manage the Indirect Buyer — setting objectives, running one-to-ones and quarterly reviews, and actively developing their capability.
• Build and lead the team as the business scales, expected to include additional direct buying resource; define the structure, recruit and onboard.
• Set clear standards for commercial rigour and process discipline within the team, and create the conditions for people to take on more responsibility over time.
• Lead cross functionally with maturity, handling challenges constructively and proactively, communicating professionally under pressure, balancing challenge with collaboration, and fostering a positive, innovative, and solution focused culture.

Wider supply chain leadership

• Represent Supply Chain in cross-functional forums and internal decision-making, presenting the commercial position with clarity and authority.
• Contribute to the overall supply chain strategy, including make-vs-buy, supplier footprint, inventory policy and the supply chain roadmap to serial production.
• Optimise and redesign procurement processes for scalability and efficiency, including the effective use of our ERP system (Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central) and associated tooling.
• Align procurement with demand: work with production planning to translate forecasts into supply plans, scheduled deliveries and appropriate inventory cover.
• Produce advanced spend, supplier performance and savings analysis, and present clear commercial insight and recommendations to the leadership team.
• Support other parts of the business as and when required.

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Qualifications & experience:

Essential:

• 8+ years’ procurement experience in a manufacturing environment, including demonstrable ownership of strategic commodities and suppliers.
• Experience line managing or formally mentoring procurement staff.
• Proven track record of leading complex negotiations and delivering measurable cost savings against target.
• Strong commercial and contractual understanding, including long-term supply agreements, tooling arrangements and supplier risk.
• Solid understanding of key cost drivers in manufacturing processes, with the ability to build and defend a should-cost position.
• Excellent analytical ability and confidence working with data to drive decisions.
• Experience with an industry standard ERP system.
• Excellent interpersonal and relationship management skills, with the credibility to influence senior internal and external stakeholders.
• Excellent organisational skills and the ability to work with complete autonomy.
• Strategic mindset, with the experience and self-sufficiency to take ownership of significant commercial decisions and see them through.
• Willingness and ability to travel internationally to meet suppliers as required.

Desirable:

• Experience in the automotive industry or another high-volume, engineering-led manufacturing sector.
• Experience sourcing electrical or electronic commodities (harnesses, power electronics, HMI, PCBAs, solar).
• Experience supporting a business through a transition from prototype/low-volume build to serial production.
• Working knowledge of international logistics and import/export requirements (Incoterms, customs, freight forwarder management) across UK, EU and China.
• Experience of sourcing from and managing suppliers in China.
• CIPS qualified or working towards.
• Experience with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.

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