Buyer jobs in United Kingdom

Job Title: Procurement Assistant

Function: Commercial

Location: Hybrid working 2 days a week - Wakefield

Contract type: Permanent

Salary: £28,489 with potential to rise to £31,655 over 3 years

Closing Date: 24th December 2025

We have a great opportunity for a Procurement Assistant within our Diagnostics team.

The Procurement Assistant will work as an integral member of the category teams, ensuring the procurement processes are managed within identified KPIs. They will support the delivery of the end-to-end procurement process for our customers/stakeholders, working to always deliver a high level of customer service to all stakeholders ensuring that relationships and processes are managed effectively allowing overall targets to be achieved.

• Achieve specific procurement goals or provide support to others while following established procurement systems and protocols Explore and develop a strong understanding of external developments or emerging issues and evaluate theirpotential impact on, or usefulness to, the organisation.
• Gather and report on information on existing contract performance and provide as input to the new contract process.
• Carry out simple contract management tasks. Conduct research using primary data sources and select information needed for the analysis of key themes and trends.
• Prepare moderately complex documents using a variety of applications for technology devices such as standard office software. Also responsible for gathering and summarizing data for reports.
• Extract relevant data from information provided by others and input it into spreadsheets or standard formats.
• Develop working knowledge of the organization’s policies and procedures and of regulatory codes and codes of conduct relevant to own work, adhering to mandatory procedures to ensure own work is undertaken to the required standards.
• Support stakeholder engagement by arranging actions, meetings, and events.
• Collect and collate information on the key cost drivers, market dynamics and issues, areas of innovation, and alternative suppliers for more senior colleagues to provide solid market information for decision making.
• Provide a quality service to customers while identifying opportunities to secure new business or support retention. Responsibilities may include processing cases, dealing with complex queries and investigating and resolving customer problems.

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 VIP colleagues awards.
• 27 days holiday plus bank holidays, with the option to purchase an additional 5 days.
• 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.

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 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.

• Experience working on Microsoft Office.
• Experience working with Excel at an advanced level.
• Ideally previous experience within a commercial environment.
• Develops and delivers communications that convey a clear understanding of the unique needs of different audiences. For example, listens attentively and takes an interest. Keeps others well informed; conveys information clearly, concisely, and professionally when speaking or writing.
• Builds partnerships and works collaboratively with others to meet shared objectives. For example, finds many ways to add value to the team; probes to draw out richer input from others; is a valued resource who goes out of the way to help others.
• Works without supervision and provides technical guidance when required on analysing data from multiple sources to draw appropriate conclusions and make suitable recommendations.
• Uses clear and effective verbal communications skills without supervision and provides technical guidance when required on expressing ideas, requesting actions and formulating plans or policies.
• Communicates with other people without requiring supervision and provides technical guidance when required on speaking in a clear, concise, and compelling manner.

Want to develop your career with the NHS Supply Chain? Then apply below or reach out for an informal discussion about the role in confidence by emailing us atCareers@supplychain.nhs.uk

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 atcareers@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.

Job Family COM - Diagnostics, Equipment and Services