Senior Director, Sourcing & Procurement Ops

Company: Northwestern Mutual
Location: Saint Francis
Posted on: February 15, 2026

Job Description:

The Senior Director of Procurement Operations is responsible for leading, directing, and optimizing the company’s procurement operations, ensuring efficiency, compliance, and strategic alignment with business and finance/risk objectives. This role oversees procurement technology, operational processes, procurement excellence initiatives, reporting and analytics, and procurement’s overall data and AI strategy. The goal of this position is to lead the procurement operations unit and its team to drive value, enable cost savings, and operational excellence across the organization. Primary Duties & Responsibilities: Ability to build strong relationships with business partners at all levels, in order to implement procurement best practices, increasing the influence/role of Sourcing & Procurement within various business teams. Direct management of people leaders and individual contributors aligned to the Procurement Operations and Procurement/Finance Centers of Excellence (COE). Perform constant evaluation of procurement processes across market research, planning/forecasting, strategic sourcing, contracting, third party risk management, and supplier governance for ongoing synergies, efficiencies, and improvements. Understand procurement best practices in order to provide process and system recommendations to sourcing and procurement leaders. Set a long-term strategic approach to enrich and maintain accurate and robust procurement data and information. Set a long-term vision to execute and transform the value realized from procurements ability to conduct data analytics and data visualization practices. Expand Procurement’s capabilities around reporting for the purpose of influencing business decisions and improving supplier-based ROI. Create, update, and maintain strategic roadmaps for S&P’s data/analytics strategies to drive project prioritization and create alignment across all procurement and finance functions. Develop and maintain S&P reporting dashboards to represent NM supplier spend, demand, supplier utilization, performance, and risks. Develop and maintain S&P’s measurements and reporting surrounding the function’s savings and value contributions. Develop a strong execution strategy for team members, business partners, and the broader function. Define and direct performance objectives and career path/building opportunities for each member of the team. Oversee day-to-day management of a broad portfolio of Procurement systems, tools, and programs. Evaluate opportunities to streamline the performance and administration of all procurement systems and tools. Influence leadership on best practices, process changes, market inputs, etc. Establish and monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) for procurement operations performance. Oversee procurement operational units (i.e. Sales/Use Tax and others) to ensure performance, delivery, and value. Consistently work with procurement stakeholders and partners across the company to ensure the team’s success and changing requirements/needs for compliance, risk, audit, and regulatory standards. Support procurement’s compliance with company policies, ethical standards, and regulatory requirements. Establish and lead ongoing initiatives to improve procurement agility, speed, transparency, and partnership with company stakeholders, leaders, and business owners. Qualifications: Bachelors Degree with an emphasis in Business, Information Systems, Supply Chain Management, Accounting/Finance, Engineering or related field, or an equivalent combination of education and work experience. Minimum of 10 years of work experience with a specific focus on, strategic sourcing or procurement, supplier management, finance, supply chain management, or other related field. Minimum of 5 years of management experience Minimum of 5 years of experience in leading the development and management of category plans or sourcing strategies. Proven ability to establish and maintain cross-functional relationships, influence change with diplomacy, and lead the decision-making processes. Strong customer focus, interpersonal, and communication skills. Excellent research, analytical, problem solving, planning and organization skills required as well as a high degree of personal initiative and motivation MBA, MS/ME is a plus. Consulting experience with global management consulting firm a plus. Previous strategic procurement operations, systems administration, data, analytics, and reporting experience preferred. Direct knowledge and/or training in formal strategic sourcing and procurement preferred. Strong understanding of procurement systems, analytics, and contract management tools (i.e Zip, SpendHQ, Peoplesoft, etc.) Experience operating in Financial Services, Banking, and/or Insurance industries preferred. Compensation Range: Pay Range - Start: $114,450.00 Pay Range - End: $212,550.00 Geographic Specific Pay Structure: Structure 110: Structure 115: We believe in fairness and transparency. It’s why we share the salary range for most of our roles. However, final salaries are based on a number of factors, including the skills and experience of the candidate; the current market; location of the candidate; and other factors uncovered in the hiring process. Grow your career with a best-in-class company that puts our clients interests at the center of all we do. Get started now! Northwestern Mutual is an equal opportunity employer who welcomes and encourages diversity in the workforce. We are committed to creating and maintaining an environment in which each employee can contribute creative ideas, seek challenges, assume leadership and continue to focus on meeting and exceeding business and personal objectives. Skills Storytelling through Data (NM) - Expert, Business Influence (NM) - Advanced, Business Automation (NM) - Advanced, Process Improvement (NM) - Advanced, Financial Acumen (NM) - Expert, Accountability (NM) - Advanced, Attention to Detail (NM) - Expert, Cross Functional Partnering & Planning (NM) - Expert, Learning Agility & Critical Thinking (NM) - Advanced

Keywords: Northwestern Mutual, Naperville , Senior Director, Sourcing & Procurement Ops, Accounting, Auditing , Saint Francis, Illinois