Senior Buyer

Role overview:

Senior Buyer
London
Currys London Campus at Waterloo
12 month Fixed Term Contract / Secondment
Full Time
Grade 5

At Currys we’re united by one passion: to help everyone enjoy amazing technology. As the UK’s best-known retailer of tech, we’re proud of the service our customers receive – and it’s all down to our team of 25,000 caring and committed colleagues. Working as one team, we learn and grow together, celebrating the big and small moments that make every day amazing.

The Senior Buyer will work on growth opportunities to bring our big brands new product development to market and ensure that Currys are at the forefront of their innovation.

Positioned within the commercial team, you will be centred in a fast-paced team, working hand in hand with the go to market team and building strong relationships with our largest SDA supplier partner.

As a Senior Category Buyer, you need to have extensive buying and management experience as you will be responsible for high turnover, complex categories leading an assistant buyer.

Commercial acumen is a must as you will be required to support our analysis of trading performance, providing recommendations of actions to drive our business.

Role overview:

As part of this role, you'll be responsible for:

• Working closely with one of our big brands to understand their new product development (NPD) roadmap, develop the right ranges and promotions to capitalise on their launches and full product ranges to ensure we have the best proposition in the
• Harnessing credible relationship with external stakeholders as a key strategic partner to develop a strong understanding of the future technology roadmap, enabling the category to adequately plan ahead
• Negotiating product ranges – cost pricing, additional terms, exclusivity, distribution, stock availability
• Negotiating additional fixed and variable financial terms related to ranging, activity and performance
• Negotiating promotional funding support to drive sales while maintaining margin in line with financial objectives
• Securing adequate product and promotional differentiation from competitors to support market share growth objectives
• Working with the returns team to ensure adequate supplier returns agreements are in place contractually to both meet customer service requirements and minimise cost exposure after sale
• Work closely with the category planner to secure supplier support to drive additional sales and margin
• Working with merchandising to ensure forecasting at the right level to maximise sales and stock
• Reviewing customer and market data provided by the Go To Market team to ensure correct ranges and promotional plans are in place to drive commercial objectives
• Working with the Head of Merchandising and central Finance teams, reviewing all financial targets (Trade & Supplier)
• Remedy all supplier issues relating to cost price, product, stock, financial claims, contractual issues and other.
• Manage, coach and develop direct reports to deliver category targets and to ensure compliance with the Commercial critical path and processes.
• Provide and regularly review team members’ objectives, priorities and performance.

You will need:

• Substantial buying experience working within a FMCG or Hard Goods fast paced retailer
• Strong negotiation skills and ability to manage all supplier partnerships at differing levels of seniority.
• Good judgment and strong decision-making skills to enable the right actions for the category.
• Excellent numerical and analytical skills to review data and provide recommendations/actions plans to drive sales, profit and cash
• Good planning, organisational, working to deadlines and multitasking skills
• Excellent inter-personal and communication skills, capable of presenting to senior stakeholders as well as working cross functionally to achieve the desired results
• Good working knowledge of SharePoint, Teams, Excel, Word and PowerPoint as well as MS Office workflow tools
• Leadership experience of one or more direct reports
• Educated to degree standard or equivalent in relevant field
• Ideally experience of both the electricals market and products.

We know our people are the secret to our success. That's why we're always looking for ways to reward great work. You'll find a host of benefits designed to work for you, including:

• Holiday benefits - 25 days of annual leave (plus bank holiday entitlement)
• Private medical insurance
• Life Assurance
• Competitive pension scheme
• Access to discretionary bonus
• Hybrid working; our primary Currys Campus is at Waterloo (WeWork)

Why join us:

Join our team and we'll be with you every step of the way, helping you develop the career you want with new opportunities, on-going training and skills for life.

Not only can you shape your own future, but you can help take charge of ours too. As the biggest recycler and repairer of tech in the UK, we’re in a position to make a real impact on people and the planet.

Every voice has a space at our table and we're committed to making inclusion and diversity part of everything we do, including how we strengthen our workforce. We want to make sure you have a fair opportunity to show us your talents during our application process, so if you need any additional assistance with your application please email [email protected] and we'll do our best to help.