NHS Supply Chain
Category Manager
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Job Title: Category Manager
Function: Commercial
Location: Hybrid - 2 days within one of our offices (Wakefield or Sheffield)
Contract type: Permanent
Salary: £47,874 with the potential to rise to £56,322 over 3 years
Closing Date: 2nd Sept 2026
We have an exciting opportunity for a Category Manager to join our Orthopaedics, trauma and spine team.
As a Category Manager, you will play a critical leadership role in transforming and managing nationally significant product categories. Working closely with Category Lead colleagues, you will help shape the vision, direction and culture of the team—driving growth, embedding best practice, and delivering world-class category management.
This is a pivotal role within our strategic delivery. It requires agile thinking, a proactive and creative mindset, and the ability to operate at pace in a complex and evolving healthcare environment, ultimately supporting the NHS to deliver outstanding patient care.
You will lead the development and delivery of category strategies that improve the supply chain, reduce risk, create competitive advantage and deliver measurable savings. By focusing on product range, route-to-market and stakeholder collaboration, you will create category solutions that maximise value for both NHS customers and NHS Supply Chain.
You will also build strong cross-functional and external relationships, identifying opportunities to improve ways of working, drive efficiencies and enhance value and service for NHS organisations.
Every day you will…
- Manage a category plan/program in line with the organisations' commercial strategy ensuring realisation of synergies, like cost savings and risk-reduction, and optimisation of the category delivery, while reporting to senior colleagues.
- Explore and develop a strong understanding of external developments or emerging issues and evaluate their potential impact on, or usefulness to, the organisation.
- Resolve queries from internal or external customers or suppliers by providing information on complex processes and the related policies, referring to others where necessary for interpretation of policy.
- Set clear objectives for each category; use standard materials to make a presentation to the customer; and ask relevant questions to evaluate the customer's level of interest and to identify and respond to areas requiring further information or explanation.
- Conduct research using primary data sources and select information needed for the analysis of key themes and trends.
- Work collaboratively across key functions to deliver a cohesive category approach, including:
- Inventory Management – aligning demand planning, stock levels and availability
- Customer Engagement – supporting NHS Trust communication and responsiveness
- Resilience – contributing to national preparedness and supply continuity planning
- Supplier Relationship Management – supporting supplier performance and risk mitigation
- Sustainability – embedding environmental and social value considerations.
- Build and maintain strong relationships with internal and external stakeholders, including senior leaders, suppliers, NHS organisations and regulatory bodies.
- Support the delivery of nationally coordinated supply strategies aligned with Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) priorities.
- Lead category resilience and continuity planning, identifying potential risks within global supply chains and working proactively to mitigate disruption.
- Continuously improve category processes, identifying efficiencies and enhancing ways of working.
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What can we offer you?
We want to reward you for your passion, enthusiasm, and hard work so we offer much more than a competitive salary:
- Hybrid working opportunities, giving you the flexibility to work collaboratively in the office and remotely.
- We recognise our employees' hard work and contributions with annual bonus schemes, long service, and colleague recognition awards.
- 27 days holiday plus bank holidays
- We are dedicated to your development, through in-house training, support, and access to external qualifications to maximise your potential.
- A focus on your well-being offering 1 day of paid well-being leave and free access to the 24/7 Employee Assistance Programme
- Generous pension scheme (with us contributing 12% when you contribute 6%)
- Access to our Flexible Benefits Scheme, where you can choose from a variety of benefits such as Life Insurance, Critical Illness Cover, Income Protection, Health Cash Plan, Dental Insurance, and additional pension contributions that suit you.
- 2 days of paid volunteering leave allowing you to give back to your community.
- Access to many discounts from the Blue Light Card to NHS Discounts.
NHS Supply Chain, who are we?
Our role is to support the NHS to save lives and improve health. We are a part of the NHS family, and our role is to source, deliver and supply healthcare products, services and food for NHS trusts and healthcare organisations across England and Wales.
We serve every NHS Trust and operate a national network of distribution centres, managing relationships with more than a thousand suppliers and delivering more than 8,000,000 orders each year to more than 17,000 locations. Doing all of this on behalf of the NHS gives NHS staff more time to focus on their main priority of providing excellent patient care.
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What skills will help you thrive in this role?
- Proven experience in category management, procurement or supply chain within a complex, fast-paced environment.
- Strong commercial acumen, with the ability to develop and deliver category strategies that drive value, savings and performance.
- Analytical mindset, with experience using data to identify trends, inform decisions and shape strategy.
- Excellent stakeholder management skills, with the ability to build trusted relationships and influence at all levels.
- Strong communication and presentation skills, able to clearly articulate complex information and engage diverse audiences.
- Ability to manage competing priorities and deliver results under pressure in a rapidly changing environment.
- Collaborative approach, working effectively across multiple functions to deliver aligned outcomes.
- Proactive and solution-focused, with the confidence to challenge, innovate and drive continuous improvement.
- Understanding of supply chain resilience, risk management and supplier engagement.
- Commitment to ongoing professional development and staying informed on industry best practice, technology and regulatory changes.
Our Inclusive Commitment
At NHS Supply Chain, we are committed to building an inclusive environment where difference is not only valued, but celebrated, giving everyone the opportunity to thrive in their career. Developing our people is key to our success, so if this role sounds like the right next step in your career but your experience doesn’t match perfectly with the job advert, we encourage you to still apply.
Struggling to complete our application form, and require additional support? Reach out to our Talent Acquisition team at careers@supplychain.nhs.uk who will be happy to help you with alternative ways to apply.
We reserve the right to close any vacancy from further submissions when we have received sufficient applications from which to make a shortlist. Please apply without delay if you wish to be considered for this role.
SCCL is a company Registered in England and Wales, with company number 10881715, to act as the management function of the NHS Supply Chain.
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