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Market Category Lead HR & Professional Services

Accenture

Barcelona, Krakow, Vienna, Madrid, Capital City of Prague, Brussels, Amsterdam, London
Full-time
5-10 years experience
On-site

Key Skills

Category management
Sourcing
Procurement
Project management
Strategic planning
Negotiation
Stakeholder management
Supplier management
Market analysis
Spend insights
Contract review
Performance management
Data analytics
Communication
Presentation skills
Relationship building

Job Description

Location: UK/Europe (any)

This role is responsible for providing regional category management leadership for the category of HR and Professional Services (Finance, Legal and Marketing). This person collaborates closely with Global, Regional and Market Unit (MU) colleagues to meet the objectives of Procurement and its stakeholders. Some expectations of the role include supporting the creation of category strategy and plans that align with internal stakeholder goals, reflect current marketplace conditions, and support Procurement initiatives. This role will also support the negotiations of agreements with key strategic suppliers while driving innovation with these partners.

Purpose & Overall Relevance for the Organization:

  • Lead the EMEA HR & Professional Services category strategy in alignment with Global Category Leads.
  • Identify opportunities through market analysis, spend insights, and contract reviews.
  • Drive Procurement value, innovation, compliance, and continuous improvement initiatives.
  • Support regional target setting, planning, and execution of category programs.
  • Engage key stakeholders and ensure alignment between business objectives and category strategies.

Strategy & Sourcing Execution

  • Lead regional sourcing initiatives and support global category activities.
  • Ensure negotiations and supplier engagements align with global strategies.
  • Promote adoption of preferred contracts and buying channels.
  • Coordinate resources and oversee implementation of category initiatives across the region.

Stakeholder & Supplier Management

  • Build strong relationships with internal stakeholders and strategic suppliers.
  • Act as a trusted business partner across functions and subcategories.
  • Manage supplier performance, stakeholder feedback, and category-related escalations.
  • Maintain a robust pipeline of sourcing opportunities and value creation initiatives.

Category Delivery

  • Drive supplier optimization, performance management, and fact-based negotiations.
  • Support sourcing projects and ensure delivery of business outcomes.
  • Leverage market intelligence to strengthen Procurement’s value proposition.

#LI-EU

Knowledge, Skills & Experience

  • Strong expertise in category management, sourcing, procurement, and project management.
  • Proven experience developing and executing category strategies.
  • Deep understanding of HR and Professional Services categories and commercial models.
  • Demonstrable working experience in similar or adequate roles in a Procurement environment, with international project and people management elements
  • Demonstrable experience working with senior executives to implement and manage initiatives in a highly complex matrix organization
  • Fluent in written and spoken English.
  • Strong negotiation, analytics, stakeholder management, and supplier management skills.
  • Ability to influence senior stakeholders and work across a complex global organization.
  • Innovative, action-oriented, and results-driven mindset.
  • Strong communication, presentation, and relationship-building skills.
  • Comfortable managing multiple priorities in a multicultural environment.

Education

  • A bachelor’s degree with emphasis on the areas of business, economics, Procurement, or comparable professional experience

About Accenture

Accenture is a leading global professional services company that helps the world’s leading businesses, governments and other organizations build their digital core, optimize their operations, accelerate revenue growth and enhance citizen services—creating tangible value at speed and scale. We are a talent- and innovation-led company with approximately 791,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Technology is at the core of change today, and we are one of the world’s leaders in helping drive that change, with strong ecosystem relationships. We combine our strength in technology and leadership in cloud, data and AI with unmatched industry experience, functional expertise and global delivery capability. Our broad range of services, solutions and assets across Strategy & Consulting, Technology, Operations, Industry X and Song, together with our culture of shared success and commitment to creating 360° value, enable us to help our clients reinvent and build trusted, lasting relationships. We measure our success by the 360° value we create for our clients, each other, our shareholders, partners and communities.

Visit us at www.accenture.com 

Equal Employment Opportunity Statement     


We believe that no one should be discriminated against because of their differences. All employment decisions shall be made without regard to age, race, creed, color, religion, sex, national origin, ancestry, disability status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, citizenship status or any other basis as protected by applicable law. Our rich diversity makes us more innovative, more competitive, and more creative, which helps us better serve our clients and our communities.

Core Responsibilities

The role involves leading the regional category strategy for HR and Professional Services while collaborating with global and market unit colleagues. Responsibilities include driving procurement value, managing strategic supplier relationships, and overseeing sourcing initiatives to ensure alignment with business objectives.

Requirements

Candidates must possess strong expertise in category management, procurement, and project management within a complex matrix organization. A bachelor's degree in business, economics, or procurement is required, along with proven experience in managing international projects and senior stakeholder relationships.

About Accenture

Industry: Business Consulting and Services

Company size: 10,001+ employees

Accenture helps the world’s leading enterprises reinvent by building their digital core and unleashing the power of AI to create value at speed for organizations across industries. Our strategy is to be the reinvention partner of choice for our clients and lead in the safe, widespread adoption of AI, and to be the most client-focused, AI-enabled, great place to work in the world. We bring together the talent of our approximately 814,000 people with proprietary assets and platforms, deep process and industry expertise, and leading ecosystem relationships to deliver end-to-end solutions and measurable outcomes at scale. Through our Reinvention Services, we offer broad expertise across Cybersecurity, Digital Core, Finance, Industry and Enterprise, Song, Supply Chain and Engineering, and Talent, with advanced capabilities in AI and Data, Industry and Process, and Technology. We serve approximately 9,000 clients and generated approximately $74 billion in FY26 revenue. Visit us at accenture.com. This LinkedIn company page is moderated. When engaging with Accenture, we encourage everyone to: - Use common courtesy and be respectful of others. - Create your own original content and avoid content that you know to be fraudulent. - Never repost someone else's copyrighted work, unless you have permission. - Never post personal, identifying, or confidential information. We reserve the right to delete comments or posts we deem to be: - Profane, obscene, inappropriate, offensive, abusive material. - Spam, repeated comments and commercial messages and personal advertisements. - Discriminatory or that contain hateful speech of any kind regarding age, gender, race, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability. - Threats; personal attacks; abusive, defamatory, derogatory, or inflammatory language; or stalking or harassment of any individual, entity or organization. - False, inaccurate, libelous, or otherwise misleading in any way.

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