Manager, Strategic Sourcing and Planning

Carnival Corporation•Miami, FL

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

We are seeking a forward thinking and results driven Manager, Strategic Sourcing & Planning to play a critical leadership role within the NASC Strategic Sourcing Food & Beverage organization. In this highly visible role, you will shape and advance sourcing strategies that support Carnival Cruise Line, Princess Cruise Line, Holland America Line, and Seabourn, with a particular focus on high impact protein categories. As a strategic leader, you will partner closely with executive level stakeholders across Supply Chain, Culinary Operations, Finance, and Sustainability teams to build multiyear category strategies, unlock enterprise value, and safeguard supply continuity across the fleet. You will interpret business needs, translate insights into actionable sourcing plans, and drive initiatives that elevate cost competitiveness, quality, innovation, and supplier performance. In this role, you will serve as the category leader, responsible for influencing key decisions, strengthening supplier partnerships, anticipating risk, and ensuring strategic alignment with brand and corporate priorities. You will be accountable for managing complex project pipelines, communicating progress and impacts, and consistently delivering favorable outcomes that support long term business objectives. As a people leader, you will manage and develop a team of 2–5 sourcing professionals, ensuring consistent application of best-in-class procurement methodologies including the 7 Step Strategic Sourcing Process to drive breakthrough value creation. You will coach the team to think strategically, proactively identify opportunities, and execute with discipline and clarity. This role requires a blend of strategic mindset, strong analytical capability, supplier relationship acumen, managing a sourcing team, and the ability to influence senior stakeholders in a dynamic operating environment.

Requirements

7-10 years of experience in strategic sourcing, procurement, contracting, supply chain, and/or category management
Strong Microsoft Office skills (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Outlook)
Experience with sourcing tools (Ariba, Coupa, CrunchTime, MXP)
Category level commodity sourcing experience
3-5 years of leadership experience managing 2-5 team members
Strong people management skills: clear expectations/feedback, consistent coaching, and development. Ability to effectively lead in a cross-functional team environment and manage multiple priorities. Identify and resolve problems efficiently and effectively
Well-developed influencing skills and stakeholder management. Experience with supplier relationship management.
Master of specific categories and/or ability to develop knowledge of new categories
Master negotiation skills and solid business judgement
Master leadership and organization management skills
Courage and conviction to hold suppliers and distributors accountable during challenging times, events, or periods of change
Master technical sourcing process knowledge
Ability to conduct analysis required during a sourcing initiative
Ability to build strong relationships with suppliers
Ability to perform analysis and interpret results into actional steps
Ability to manage multiple initiatives and priorities at once
Strong attention to detail and process orientation
Excellent written/verbal communication and presentation skills

Responsibilities

Development of an effective long-term strategic sourcing plan for highly complex categories and projects that create long term value while meeting brand objectives, including value creation, supply continuity, risk mitigation, and innovation.
Effective collaboration on strategic sourcing categories and projects within the organization and stakeholders; Developing relationships to become a trusted sourcing partner.
Ensuring cross-functional engagement and support of category projects and initiatives.
Remains connected to key stakeholders and solicits input from them at appropriate times to stay aligned with the needs of the business, as well as run meetings providing key supplier and product updates and/or address specific needs of key stakeholders.
Apply spend category management best practices, tools and techniques in the development and implementation of an integrated strategic sourcing strategy to assesses the overall opportunity within the categories for projects.
Serving as a subject matter expert on strategic sourcing categories with the stakeholders and fostering effective relationships.
Maintain focus on project timelines and deliverables to ensure business goals and objectives are met.
Strong partnership with Finance team to accurately forecast impacts of category strategy, including scenario modeling.
Manages annual initiative plan by creating realistic timelines and meeting contracting deadlines, communicates initiative status
Provide oversight, performance manage, coach, and develop highly skilled team of 2–5 category leaders able to drive strategic approaches and cultivate their own strong business relationships with both internal stakeholders and external partners.
Researching best practices and conducting baseline due diligence to best understand opportunities for savings, reducing TCO, improve efficiencies, quality improvement and service of the sourcing teams.
Lead supplier qualification, segmentation and certification programs.
Well informed about commodity markets and uses information to report trends, pricing fluctuations, provides forecast detail and product cost shifts to brands.
Effective supplier relationship management; leveraging data, metrics, and internal feedback.
Providing and reviewing score cards to improve supplier results.
Developing early supplier involvement to ensure suppliers are utilized to their full capabilities and proactively providing input to provide low cost, efficient, and quality goods and services.
Effectively influencing change and buy-in across the stakeholder group and leadership.
Oversees portfolio of contracts, builds and maintains supplier relationships, holds suppliers accountable to deliver contractual requirements.
Implement gold-standard contracts across strategic supplier base.
Negotiate strategic supplier contracts, develop innovative pricing models and agreements to deliver value to brands.
Leads supplier negotiations, manages RFP/RFQs, utilizes 7-step sourcing process where applicable, and development and execution of category strategy.

Benefits

Annual cash bonus program
Cost-effective medical, dental and vision plans
Employee Assistance Program and other mental health resources
Company paid term life insurance and disability coverage
401(k) plan that includes a company match
Employee Stock Purchase plan
Paid holidays (8 company-wide holidays, plus 2 additional floating holidays)
Vacation Time (starts with 14 days/year for manager and below level)
Sick Time (80 hours of sick time each year)
Complementary stand-by cruises, employee discounts on confirmed cruises, plus special rates for family and friends
Personal and professional learning and development resources including tuition reimbursement
On-site Fitness center at our Miami campus