Senior Procurement Manager - Ingredients, Packaging & Strategic Sourcing

About the Company

Levels ranks among the fastest expanding sports nutrition brands in the United States, producing premium protein powders without relying on marketing gimmicks or shortcuts. Their high-quality products are distributed through direct-to-consumer channels, Amazon, Costco, Walmart, Target, and an increasing number of retailers across North America. As Levels grows its core protein powder business and launches its Ready-to-Drink beverage line, procurement becomes a pivotal, strategic function to support this expansion.

Role Overview

The Senior Procurement Manager will develop and implement sourcing strategies for Levels’ growing spend in ingredients, packaging, and contract manufacturing across both Protein Powder and Functional Beverage product lines. Reporting to the Chief Supply Chain Officer, this role oversees supplier negotiations, strategic sourcing, commodity purchasing strategy, cost control, supplier relationships, and procurement risk mitigation. This strategic leadership role is crucial to building a robust supplier network capable of supporting one of North America's fastest-growing premium nutrition brands.

Key Responsibilities

• Create and lead sourcing strategies covering ingredients, packaging, and contract manufacturing.
• Oversee supplier selection, qualification, and ongoing management.
• Identify improvements to reduce costs, enhance quality, improve service, and increase supply chain resilience.
• Foster long-term supplier partnerships aligned with future growth goals.
• Drive commercial negotiations for ingredient, packaging, and manufacturing agreements, including pricing, payment terms, lead times, service levels, rebates, and long-term contracts.
• Conduct supplier business reviews and evaluate supplier performance.
• Develop alternative suppliers to minimize risk and ensure supply continuity.
• Track commodity markets and purchasing trends to develop adaptive buying strategies based on market conditions, forecasts, inventory, and demand.
• Collaborate with Finance on commodity forecasting and procurement planning.
• Lead initiatives for cost savings and value engineering without compromising product quality.
• Assess ingredient substitutions, packaging optimizations, and supplier productivity improvements.
• Support new product launch activities in collaboration with Product Development, Commercialization, Supply Chain, and Operations, including new supplier sourcing, qualification, commercial readiness, capacity planning, cost modeling, and launch support.
• Create strategies to proactively manage procurement risks by monitoring commodity volatility, tariffs, capacity limits, sole-source suppliers, supplier financial health, business continuity, regulations, and geopolitical events.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with teams including Supply Chain, Product Development, Commercialization, Quality, Regulatory, Finance, Operations, and Manufacturing.
• Provide executive leadership with procurement intelligence, reporting, market analysis, and sourcing advice.
• Enhance procurement operations by optimizing processes and workflows, building supplier scorecards and KPIs, developing dashboards and market updates, improving inventory efficiency and working capital management, and supporting scalable procurement planning for rapid growth.

Success Indicators

• Strong, strategic supplier partnerships continually improve.
• Ingredient and packaging costs remain competitive despite commodity price fluctuations.
• Supply disruptions are minimized by proactive sourcing methods.
• Procurement efficiently supports swift new product commercialization.
• Annual savings initiatives consistently surpass goals.
• Supplier performance improves across quality, service, cost, and responsiveness.
• Procurement offers insightful strategic guidance to the executive team.
• Levels establishes a resilient global supply network aligned with ongoing rapid growth.

Qualifications

• Minimum 7 years of escalating experience in procurement, sourcing, or supply chain roles.
• Hands-on procurement experience in Food & Beverage CPG, Sports Nutrition, Functional Beverages, Dietary Supplements, Functional Foods, or closely related consumer product sectors.
• Adept at navigating ambiguity, shifting priorities, and evolving specifications.
• Experience sourcing dairy ingredients, proteins, functional ingredients, sweeteners, flavors, vitamins/minerals, packaging, processing ingredients, beverage ingredients, or contract manufacturing services.
• Proven track record in negotiating complex supplier contracts and managing strategic supplier relationships.
• Experience facilitating new product commercialization and national retail launches.
• Skilled in commodity purchasing strategies and managing procurement risk.
• Strong analytical, financial, and negotiation capabilities.
• Proficiency with ERP and procurement software.
• Advanced Microsoft Excel expertise.
• Excellent communication and cross-functional leadership skills.
• Experience in a fast-growing, high-performance consumer products environment is highly favorable.