This job vacancy is only available to internal applicants of Save the Children International. Unfortunately, external candidates will not be considered for this opportunity. Please check our job listings page for other vacancies that are open to external applicants.
This position has been re-advertised due to change in contract length
Job Title: Global Supply Chain Planning Manager (maternity cover)
Team: Global Supply Chain
Reports To: Global Head of Supply Chain Planning and Capability
Contract Length: Fixed Term (maternity cover until Dec 2025/ Jan 2026)
Grade: P4
Location: Any approved Save the Children International office location.
Time Zone: Any
Right to Work: The successful candidate must possess the unrestricted right to work in their current or preferred location for the duration of employment.
Language Requirements: English
International Travel Requirements: Yes, up to 10%
Team and Job Purpose
To provide guidance and support to country offices in supply chain planning, procurement, warehousing, distribution, and fleet management, enabling effective and efficient operations while ensuring compliance with regulatory and donor requirements. To deliver training and development opportunities in supply chain expertise for staff in country offices and partners, enhancing local capabilities and fostering supplier sustainability and CO2 emission reduction programs. To support country offices with international procurement, supplier registration, and emergency response management, strengthening overall supply chain resilience and performance.
Role purpose
Under the strategic leadership of the Global Head of Supply Chain Planning and Capability, this role will manage the delivery of continuous improvement of supply chain demand forecasting and supply planning. The Supply Chain function (Planning, Procurement, Warehousing, Distribution and Fleet) at Save the Children supports programmatic annual spend of c. $400m across >55 diverse and complex Countries in 5 regions. This role will establish standardised supply chain planning processes, proactively driving progressive strategic and tactical decision-making to enable enhanced responsiveness globally. The planning processes will be applied for both developmental and emergency response programmes and will standardise the ways of working with senior stakeholders in Country Offices and cross-functional global teams in these areas to develop robust and comprehensive end-to-end supply chain planning approaches.
In the event of a major humanitarian emergency, the role holder may be expected to work outside the normal role profile and be able to vary working hours accordingly.
Principal Accountabilities
- Building on existing approaches within Save the Children, best practice and emerging trends in peer organisations and the private sector, develop appropriate, robust and comprehensive supply chain planning procedures, tools and guidance to strengthen programme delivery at Country/Implementing Office level and across the organisation, driving innovation and breakthrough solutions and promoting a culture that embraces new ideas and learns from failures.
- Ensure transparency of demand and supply requirements at program, country and regional, and consolidated global level to providing a framework for tactical decision making and address root causes of long-term problems and ensure sufficient capacity is in place to meet the needs of our programmes.
- Consult internally with functional leads Head of Procurement, Head of Supply Chain Planning and Capability, Head of Warehousing, Distribution and Fleet, Head of Humanitarian Supply Chain fostering collaboration to support integrated, full-spectrum planning and cross-functional coherence.
- Collaborate with the Humanitarian Supply Chain team to ensure developed processes are tailored appropriately for use in humanitarian context (preparedness and response).Develop methodologies to strengthen consultation with the stakeholder community (such as Awards, Programs, Finance, IT) at all levels (Country Office and Global Teams) to obtain relevant data and develop insights on, and drivers of, emerging demand.
- Coordinate cross-functional research activities to reconcile significant variances and refine forecast models to reflect updated information.
- Defines, together with the supply chain leadership team, supply chain planning business requirements as input for any systems changes required to improve the management of our planning activities. This will include working with the PPM PRIME (SCIs project management system) project team and other such teams to define requirements, aligned with strategic priorities, and assess solution options to deliver against these requirements.
- Engages with peer organisations and partners to ensure supply chain planning best practice is integrated into Save the Children International ways of working at all levels, delivering influential advice and building support for planning initiatives.
- Develops and maintains relevant learning materials for Supply Chain Planning.
- Engages with Supply Chain and Programme Ops staff across the organisation to build capacity in Supply Chain Planning through communities of practice and other fora.
- Works with Analytics team to drive systemisation of planning methodologies, defining data needs, approaches to data collection, analysis, and visualisation, and opportunities for continuous improvement.
- Sets standards for supply chain planning across a range of standard methodologies, including Sourcing Pipelines with a total value of approximately $400m, annual Country Health Checks, and Country Supply Chain Strategies.
- Leads periodic integrated business planning sessions at Country and Global levels, gathering and analysing data to gain insight into organisational demand and supply capacity, to identify performance improvement actions, particularly for high-risk, high-value commodity categories.
Experience and Skills
Essential
- Substantial expertise in supply chain planning in a global, multicultural organisation – whether public, private or charity sector. Knowledge of industry standards and best practice in supply chain planning.
- Strong project management skills with experience of transformation or change management
- Experience designing and implementing supply chain planning systems and processes.
- Experience in technical areas of supply chain, procurement, distribution, warehousing including the use of appropriate tools.
- Ability to synthesise and analyse complex information, and make clear, informed, decisions.
- Pragmatic and solution oriented with the ability to identify and resolve a range of issues/problems
- Ability to work well with figures, undertake research and gather information from various sources.
- Excellent planning, management and coordination skills, with the ability to organise a substantial workload comprised of complex, diverse tasks and responsibilities.
- Strong communication (written and spoken), and interpersonal skills in English, with experience in working in multicultural environments. Ability to select the appropriate style of communication to situation and context to achieve the desired outcome.
- Comfortable working autonomously and as part of a team. Establishes and maintains productive partnerships with stakeholders by gaining their trust and respect; Identifies stakeholders’ needs and matches them to appropriate solutions; Monitors ongoing developments inside and outside the stakeholders’ environment to keep informed and anticipate problems.
- Able to travel to operational country programs (on occasion remote and insecure) and attend external meetings.
Desirable
- Experience with demand and supply planning, integrated planning processes, and/or sales and operations planning in the private sector is a highly valued.
- Operations/Field Office Management Experience including project management methodology, implementation and evaluation, programme delivery and budgeting in NGO sector is a plus.
- Experience of working in the INGO sector, and knowledge of institutional donor grant requirements, including experience with proposals, implementation, technical advice, reporting across supply chain, stocks and distributions.
- Working knowledge of French or Spanish is a plus.
Key Relationships
Internal (excluding direct team and manager)
- Supply Chain Functional Leads, Supply Chain Business Partners, CO Supply Chain Leads, DPOs/CDs and other CO SMT members, Humanitarian Team Technical Sector Leads, Global Humanitarian Ops, PPM PRIME.
External
- Supply Chain Planning leads in peer organisations, private sector partners (HELP Logistics / Amazon), service providers and consultants.
Education and Qualifications
Essential
- MBA, bachelor’s degree or equivalent relevant experience, in Business, Finance, Engineering, Procurement, Supply Chain Management, or Forecasting and Planning, with relevant technical experience at managerial level.
Competencies
Cluster: Leading
Competency: Leading and inspiring others
Level: Leading Edge
Behavioural Indicator: Creates and engages others in a shared vision and strategy that will deliver more for children.
Competency: Delivering results
Level: Leading Edge
Behavioural Indicator: Aligns ideas and solutions to strategic imperatives to support delivery of our long-term strategic objectives .
Cluster: Thinking
Competency: Innovating and adapting
Level: Leading Edge
Behavioural Indicator: Drives innovation and breakthrough solutions to improve outcomes for children .
Competency: Problem solving and decision making
Level: Leading Edge
Behavioural Indicator: Identifies and addresses root causes of long-term problems facing the organisation .
Cluster: Engaging
Competency: Working effectively with others
Level: Leading Edge
Behavioural Indicator: Opens up hidden areas of organisational disagreement and drives for collaborative resolution .
Competency: Communicating with impact
Level: Leading Edge
Behavioural Indicator: Delivers influential advice and briefings to internal and external audiences to build the call for action