Fertilizer Procurement Strategy Associate

About the Role

• Seeking a procurement professional to lead fertilizer procurement, ensuring cost-efficient sourcing and reliable on-time delivery. Drive strong individual execution and contribute to team success. In this role, your focus will be dedicated to deep-dive data analysis to determine optimal purchasing windows, and managing and executing the entire procurement process independently.

Responsibilities

Execute Procurement with Excellence

• Strategy & Delivery: Support the creation and execution of seasonal procurement strategies to deliver +90% OTIF (On-Time, In-Full) delivery, market-competitive costs, and 5% year-on-year cost savings.
• Quality Assurance: Ensure absolute quality control, achieving 0 quality issues reaching the farmer, and maintain an +80% on-time payment rate for suppliers.
• Supply Chain Reliability: Proactively address future supply gaps by evaluating farmer needs against global market trends, supplier capacity, and current inventory levels.
• Process Optimization: Drive lead-time improvements through streamlined delivery and process automation. Regularly improve key operations like the goods receipt process and loading quality control.
• Data & Analytics: Spend time developing, maintaining, and continuously improving complex Google Sheets data models to track global market trends and landed costs. Use this data to provide crucial decision support on when to purchase (or not purchase) fertilizers to maximize cost savings.

Build Partnerships & Market Liaisons

• Strategic Relationships: Help build and maintain deep partnerships with fertilizer suppliers and industry organizations beyond seasonal procurement needs.
• Country Team Collaboration: Act as a critical business partner for our country operations teams, actively identifying and sharing opportunities to improve our offering to farmers.
• Industry Representation: Serve as a representative for One Acre Fund externally with suppliers and market actors to drive long-term, systematic supply chain improvements.

People Management

• People Management: Manage and mentor a small team, setting clear goals, providing timely feedback, and conducting high-quality career coaching and performance reviews.
• Team Growth:Contribute to staffing, recruitment, and succession planning to build a high-performing procurement unit.

Qualifications

Across all roles, these are the general qualifications we look for. For this role specifically, you will have:

Professional & Technical Competencies:

• Supply Chain Expertise: Solid foundational knowledge of global procurement processes, international shipping, and supply chain operations.
• Data Fluency: An advanced analytical mindset with high proficiency in Google Sheets to build pricing, forecasting, and decision-support models. Comfortable spending half of your time analyzing data to help make decisions.
• Language: Fluency in written and spoken English is required.

Management & Execution Skills:

• Relationship Builder: Exceptional collaboration and negotiation skills, with the ability to influence both internal stakeholders and external global suppliers.
• Project Management: Strong organizational skills with a proven track record of managing multiple projects simultaneously in a fast-paced environment.
• Solution-Oriented: An innovative thinker who approaches obstacles with a results-driven mindset and is comfortable making data-driven decisions under medium-risk conditions.