Location: London
Contract Type: FTC (Initially 12 months)
Work Pattern: Full Time
and Hybrid (2/3 days a week in the office)
About The Role
MS Amlin is part of MS&AD, a global top‑10 insurance group, comprising four distinct businesses: Global Reinsurance, Lloyds Franchise, Local Specialty Insurer, and Business Services. MS Amlin Business Services (MS ABS) supports the organisation through Sourcing and Supplier Management, Legal, HR, Facilities Management, IT, Risk Management, Compliance, and Finance. Our vision is to be a trusted partner and solution provider of choice.
We are appointing a Head of Procurement Strategy & Enablement to shape how Procurement delivers value across MS ABS and the wider Amlin Legal Entities. Reporting directly to the Chief Procurement Officer, this role will have a broad strategic mandate aligned to the Procurement Target Operating Model, while remaining a highly hands‑on, delivery‑focused leadership role.
The role leads the Procurement Strategy & Enablement team, comprising two Category Managers and one Category Buyer, and is accountable for setting direction, enabling delivery, and ensuring sourcing activity is driven by strategy, insight, and outcomes rather than transactional demand. As a “player‑coach”, the role holder will remain directly involved in priority sourcing initiatives, complex category strategies, supplier negotiations, and problem‑solving, particularly where scale, complexity, or senior stakeholder engagement is required.
You will partner closely with the Chief Procurement Officer and senior stakeholders across ABS and Legal Entities to define supplier strategy, enable adoption of new ways of working (including procurement technology), and provide the analytics, frameworks, and governance that underpin consistent, value‑led procurement delivery. This is not a purely conceptual or oversight role; it requires active ownership, practical execution, and visible leadership in embedding new capabilities and ways of working across the organisation.
What You’ll Spend Your Time Doing
Leadership of Strategy & Enablement Team
- Provide clear leadership, direction, and coaching to 2x Category Managers and 1x Category Buyer, setting priorities and expectations aligned to Procurement strategy and the TOM.
- Ensure category resources are deployed effectively across ABS and Legal Entities, balancing strategic focus with delivery requirements.
- Build capability across the team in category strategy, commercial analysis, stakeholder engagement, and outcome ownership.
Procurement Strategy & Roadmap
- Define and maintain the Procurement strategy and multi‑year roadmap aligned to business priorities and Legal Entity need.
- Translate enterprise objectives into clear category‑level outcomes, priorities, and plans.
Category & Vendor Strategy Frameworks
- Lead the development and quality assurance of category strategies produced by Category Managers, ensuring they are insight‑led, outcome‑focused, and commercially robust.
- Maintain and apply vendor strategy postures (Invest / Optimise / Stabilise / Divest / Sunset) to guide sourcing, renewals, and supplier engagement.
- Address scale, leverage, and value considerations as Legal Entity sourcing models evolve.
Data, Insight & Analytics
- Own procurement MI, analytics and insight, ensuring Category Managers have the data required to drive informed decisions.
- Establish consistent value tracking (savings, TCO, risk reduction) in partnership with Finance.
- Capability, Methods & Tooling
- Define procurement standards, playbooks, templates, and training for use across the category team and wider function.
- Support adoption of procurement technology (e.g. Ivalua) from a category strategy, process and capability perspective.
Stakeholder Engagement
- Support the CPO in strategic discussions on sourcing models, supplier strategy, and operating model evolution.
- Act as a senior procurement advisor to ABS and Legal Entity stakeholders, providing clarity on category direction, priorities, and trade‑offs.
You’re Going To Enjoy This Job If You…
- Thrive in a dynamic environment where you can lead transformational initiatives and drive significant change within the Procurement function.
- Want to lead a small, high‑impact team while shaping procurement direction at an enterprise level.
- Enjoy moving procurement away from transactional sourcing toward strategy‑led, outcome‑based delivery.
- Like working with data and insight to drive category decisions.
- Are comfortable balancing people leadership, strategic thinking, and practical enablement.
- Enjoy influencing senior stakeholders across a federated organisation.
What We Need From You
- Senior procurement experience, ideally having led category strategy or sourcing teams within a complex, multi‑entity environment.
- Strong understanding of category management, commercial strategy, and supplier economics.
- Proven ability to lead and develop high‑performing procurement professionals, setting direction rather than micromanaging execution.
- Strong analytical capability, with experience using data to shape category plans and investment decisions.
- Experience enabling procurement transformation through standards, governance, and technology, rather than direct operational control.
- Deep understanding of IT and technology‑enabled procurement, recognising that technology underpins approximately 70% of procurement activity. Able to partner closely with IT, translate business needs into technical requirements, and leverage platforms, data, and automation to drive efficiency, compliance, and value.
- Confident communicator, able to operate credibly with senior stakeholders and influence outcomes.
We are stronger together because of our common interests and rich differences. You may be the strength we didn’t know we needed. Believe in yourself, and click apply today!
What Can You Expect From Us?
- Competitive Base Salary
- Performance Related Discretionary Bonus
- Holiday: 28 days core annual leave, and you can buy up to 5 days
- Pension: A minimum 2% employee contribution plus 7% MS Amlin contribution (9%) up to a maximum of 5% employee contribution plus 13% MS Amlin contribution (18%)
- Private Medical: cover for yourself. Family members/dependants can be added
- Flex Fund: £1,000 (pro-rated based on start date) to spend on flexible benefits
- Life Assurance: 5 x annualised base salary
Each one of us is unique because of our backgrounds, what we have learned so far and how we express that. Establishing an inclusive attitude helps us, organisationally, to ‘think outside the box’ because it calls on that diverse range of ideas, perspectives and lived experiences.
We commit to continuing our work towards a more diverse and inclusive future by recognising that our business, our teams and every colleague has a part to play in driving the positive change we all want to see.
Our values demonstrate our commitment to providing an environment in which each and every colleague is respected for who they are and what they can contribute to the business, regardless of nationality, race, ethnicity, religion/faith, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, disability, socio-economic background, sex or age.
