Procurement Officer

The Procurement Officer will serve as a senior procurement and contracting expert responsible for worldwide procurement of complex supplies and services, providing technical advice, developing contracts, and leading procurement activities within the UN Department of Operational Support in Entebbe, Uganda.

Responsibilities

• Serves as a senior procurement and contracting expert with responsibility for the worldwide procurement of a wide variety of supplies and services associated with highly complex (technically and legally) contracts and procurement activities; may lead procurement work for several large peace-keeping programs.
• Provides technical advice on procurement activities to officials of substantive units during all phases of the procurement cycle.
• Analyzes and evaluates procurement requests and ensures appropriateness of technical specifications.
• Develops and prepares highly complex contracts for procurement of non-routine and technologically advanced commodities or long-range services; issues international tender invitations; evaluates responses to tender, and makes recommendations for finalization of purchases and award of contracts; signs procurement orders up to the authorized limit, and, in cases where the amount exceeds authorized signature authority, prepares submissions to the Contracts Committee for review and subsequent approval by the authorized official.
• Develops new tactical approaches to contracts, as well as new methods for their application, based on market research.
• Contributes to development of category management strategy for the UN, institutional procurement policies and procedures; develops standards and criteria for the evaluation of goods, services, supplier capacity, etc.
• Maintains under constant examination production patterns in exporting countries; evaluates the productive capacities and performance of manufacturers to identify supply sources.
• Establishes approaches for negotiations and conducts or coordinates all phases of negotiations with all concerned parties, including the negotiation of disputes arising from contracts.
• May carry out consultancy missions to the field.
• May lead and supervise a team of procurement personnel.
• Provides direction and guidance to more junior staff.

Requirements

• An Advanced university degree (Master’s degree or equivalent degree) in business administration, public administration, commerce, engineering, law or a related field is required.
• A first-level university degree in combination with two additional years of qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.
• Professional certification in supply chain such as Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply certification (CIPS Level 4) or equivalent is required.
• A minimum of seven years of progressively responsible experience in procurement, contract management, contract administration or supply chain management or related area is required.
• A minimum of two years of experience in conducting international tender exercises to award contracts for procurement of complex goods and services during the last five years is required.
• A minimum of two (2) years of experience in supervising a team is required.
• Experience working with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems such as SAP or similar systems and/or working with e-tendering systems such as Ariba or similar system is desirable.
• Experience working in procurement process and procedures in support of a field operation (inclusive of peacekeeping operations, special political missions, agencies funds and programmes), or other similar international organization is desirable.
• Experience in developing strategy for category management is desirable.
• Experience in sourcing, cleaning and preparing data, selection and developing visualization/metrics in transportation, procurement, and/or supply chain management that enable easy communication/interpretation by the users is desirable.
• English is required at UN Level II for reading, writing, listening and speaking.

Skills

• Procurement Management
• Contract Management
• Contract Administration
• Supply Chain Management
• International Tendering
• Team Supervision
• Enterprise Resource Planning
• SAP
• E-tendering Systems
• Ariba
• Category Management Strategy
• Data Sourcing
• Data Cleaning
• Data Visualization
• Metrics Development
• Procurement Procedures
• Peacekeeping Operations Procurement

Languages

English