Head- Sourcing Global USA (1St Shift)

First Solar reserves the right to offer you a role most applicable to your experience and skillset.

Basic Job Functions:

The Senior Manager Global Sourcing is responsible for developing the strategy and ensuring its execution, managing the sourcing and procurement plan for global module manufacturing raw materials. The Senior Manager is the leader that develops, guides, and measures these focus areas:

• Supplier management: The process of selection of suppliers, segmentation of supply base, contract negotiation and compliance, metrics management, conflict resolution, and supplier performance management.

• Proactive supplier risk mitigation and visibility: Ensuring business continuity planning, governance, and management for all types of supplier risk (including geographical, financial, performance related, financial, geopolitical, and corporate social responsibility/regulatory compliance risks).

• Business value: Provide supplier oversight to ensure business value (e.g., cost, service, quality, and reduced risk) and open communication on production improvement and new product introduction on all direct and indirect goods and services for continuous improvement.

• Talent and development: Ensure ongoing focus on developing the talent of the sourcing and procurement organization to manage the changing role of sourcing and procurement staff. This includes relationship management, conflict resolution, internal stakeholder needs, value creation with suppliers, innovation, and agility in a fast-moving business environment.

Education/Experience:

• Bachelor's degree in operations/supply chain management/business, or 10 years of experience - required.

• Master's degree in operations/supply chain management/business, or equivalent - desired.

• Membership in professional organizations, such as trade or user groups, and a pattern of regular attendance at industry conferences to enhance their knowledge of supply chain sourcing and procurement - desired.

• 10+ years with a high tech, preferably solar industry, global span with strong commercial exposure and understanding.

• Experience working directly with suppliers, understanding trade-offs for total cost to serve supplier and commercial needs, and collaborating with them to create a mutually beneficial joint business plan.

• Provided operational leadership with direct and indirect (as applicable) reports in sourcing and procurement.

• Hands-on experience working with multiple partners to resolve exceptions and negotiate best alternatives:

• Experience working within supply chain functions with proven leadership capability.

• Hands-on experience with modeling, analysis and simulation tools.

• Experience using PC-based applications (such as Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, Word and/or Access).

• Hands-on information gathering, analysis and management reporting.

• Has successfully worked in a team-based environment.

Required Skills/Competencies:

• Provide strong and visible leadership. The position will need to establish authority within the sourcing and procurement organization and influence other functions within the organization, such as quality, engineering, finance, product design/development and legal.

• Use strategic thinking to shape the plan and gain buy-in from the sourcing and procurement organization and other stakeholder functions.

• Enlist strong process and project management skills/ability to manage change.

• Employ strong people skills - an ability to envision, energize and enable the sourcing and procurement organization and other functions, and, where necessary, lead performance management decisions.

• Have an ability to work multifunctionally across organization boundaries in a collaborative manner.

• Be proficient using PC-based applications (such as Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, Word and/or Access).

• Understand enterprise technology tools that enable sourcing and procurement execution and reporting.

• Have mathematical/statistical abilities for cost optimization of the supplier portfolio while balancing trade-offs.

• Have proven negotiation, analytical, conflict resolution, collaboration, data-processing and problem-solving skills.

• Looks for trends across all categories, with an outside-in viewpoint of business trends and customer voice, and a constant focus on innovation to drive continuous improvement for larger sourcing and procurement teams with a global perspective.

• Creative problem solving and enable to drive innovative solutions.

• Systems-thinker

• Bring enthusiasm and sense of urgency to the role. Be comfortable with accountability to deliver major initiatives and financial targets with speed.

• Understands larger company strategy in order to select, govern and innovate with supply base.

• Meets deadlines and works well under pressure with limited supervision.

• Is well-organized and maintains a high level of attention to detail.

• Strong analytical and conceptual skills linking issue resolution to process improvement.

• Data gathering, and quantitative and qualitative data analysis skills, including business process metrics and measures linking to business key performance indicators (KPIs).

• Links the sourcing and procurement processes to improvement opportunities in planning, customer voice and the ability to address supplier constraints and opportunities.

• Ability to incorporate applications and tools to enable, improve and scale sourcing and procurement processes. Benchmark and institute world class procurement and sourcing techniques, processes and practices

• Ability to clearly communicate analysis results verbally and in written form.

• Proven capability of managing internal and supplier communication with results-driven mentality.

• Proficient use of all Microsoft Office suite programs.

Essential Responsibilities:

Establish the right organization structure, and lead the coaching of the team, specifically:

• Implement talent development and staffing and succession routines.

• Drive an aligned, focused culture through clear performance targets and regular one-on-ones focusing on culture, mindset, negotiation process, stakeholder alignment and supplier development/conflict resolution.

• Promote a clear associate engagement strategy

Develop the strategy and execution plan to deliver target supplier service levels, costs, innovation, and proactive risk mitigation, specifically:

• Lead the process of sourcing and procurement strategy development and deployment (five/seven-year vision/annual refreshing of plans).

• Implement rigorous daily management routines across the organization and hold people accountable to deliver. Implement diligent root cause identification of issues and clear actions to correct.

• Ensure governance oversight for supplier metrics and performance management. Drive the development of sourcing and procurement system improvements (working with IT as needed), processes and resources to reduce cycle times through increased automation

Identify and execute value creation opportunities in the supply chain with key suppliers:

• Own the supply agenda. Establish strong personal relationships with supply chain leaders in key suppliers for cost optimization, innovation, and proactive risk mitigation.

• Ensure that joint value creation activities with key suppliers are captured and commercialized.

• Influence the industry agenda; get involved in industry groups to shape initiatives

Ensure that supply chain requirements are supported by supplier portfolio:

• Define and deliver service-level agreements with suppliers.

• Define balanced scorecard for quantitative and qualitative metrics.

• Work with suppliers to define and implement the right proactive risk mitigation strategies.

• Collaborate with quality, engineering, operations, product management and key suppliers to ensure the successful launch of new products and continuous improvement on production goods, as well as the phasing out of existing production goods at end of life.

• Drive robust supplier and product data governance and regular audits supported by data management systems.

• Ensure data synchronization with suppliers using industry best practices and standards, where relevant

Establish the New Equipment / Component / Material Technology strategic sourcing model to enable capacity expansion:

• Process & System

• Market research

• Internal & External Data Analysis (Technology, Supplier database & Cost structure)

• Other duties as assigned.

• Job description subject to change at any time.

Reporting Relationships:

• Directly leads global sourcing team.

• This position will be responsible for interacting and collaborating with peers across most groups in the company, including operations, engineering, development, finance, planning and business development.

• This is a management position with direct reports and significant fiscal responsibility.

Travel:

• Domestic and international travel required.
• 20% - 30%
• If hiring to a new plant prior to plant start, associate will be required to spend extended time (60-80%) in another plant in either Ohio or Alabama for training until their assigned plan starts equipment installation.

Estimated Salary Range:

• $182,800 - $265,000, Annually

US Physical Requirements:

Office Physical Requirements:

All positions in our office require interaction with people and technology while either standing or sitting. To best service our customers, internal and external, all associates must be able to communicate face-to-face and on the phone with or without reasonable accommodation. First Solar is committed to compliance with its obligations under all applicable state and federal laws prohibiting employment discrimination. In keeping with this commitment, it attempts to reasonably accommodate applicants and employees in accordance with the requirements of the disability discrimination laws. It also invites individuals with disabilities to participate in a good faith, interactive process to identify reasonable accommodations that can be made without imposing an undue hardship.

Potential candidates will meet the education and experience requirements provided on the above job description and excel in completing the listed responsibilities for this role. All candidates receiving an offer of employment must successfully complete a background check and any other tests that may be required.

Equal Opportunity Employer Statement: First Solar is an Equal Opportunity Employer that values and respects the importance of a diverse and inclusive workforce. It is the policy of the company to recruit, hire, train and promote persons in all job titles without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, veteran status, disability, sexual orientation, or gender identity. We recognize that diversity and inclusion is a driving force in the success of our company.