Category Manager (Band 7)

Partners Procurement Services (PPS) delivers end-to-end procurement and supply chain services across a group of NHS Trusts, operating under a modernised governance framework that supports collaboration, growth and high standards of assurance.

From April 2026, Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust (GOSH) will join PPS as a member. Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust (GOSH) is an international centre of excellence in child healthcare. GOSH is an acute specialist paediatric hospital with a mission to provide world class care to children and young people with rare, complex and difficult-to-treat conditions.

Great Ormond Street Hospital receives over 300,000 patient visits (inpatient admissions or outpatient appointments) every year. Most of the children we care for are referred from other hospitals throughout the UK and overseas. There are 60 nationally recognised clinical specialities at GOSH; the UK's widest range of specialist health services for children on one site. More than half of our patients come from outside London and GOSH is the largest paediatric centre in the UK for services including paediatric intensive care and cardiac surgery.

We are recruiting a Category Manager to support the delivery of clinical consumables and devices procurement for GOSH during its onboarding into PPS and as part of the wider shared service.

Please refer to the JD for the rest of the information

Main duties of the job

The role of Category Manager spans the following:

Support Senior Buyers and Buyers to ensure projects are delivered effectively, responsibly and in line with agreed policies and procedures.

Manage and develop the category work plan to drive workload and ensure effective coverage, incorporating national and collaborative priorities and contracts and applying appropriate sourcing strategies.

Identify and deliver savings against targets, ensuring savings are recorded accurately and regularly.

Work with PPS and NHS Supply Chain colleagues to ensure appropriate category contract coverage and benefit delivery.

Maintain awareness of technological developments within the category and support development of team market knowledge.

Support PPS staff in the consistent application of agreed processes and procedures.

Provide advice, expertise and support to stakeholders on product selection, market testing and related activities.

Initially focused on GOSH, the role will manage defined areas of the consumables and devices portfolio, leading sourcing exercises, contract reviews and supplier engagement. The role involves close working with clinicians, operational teams and senior colleagues to ensure products meet clinical needs, quality standards and value expectations.

The post will support catalogue management, P2P enablement, transition into PPS and collaborative procurement activity across the wider PPS membership.

Please refer to the JD for further information.

About us

As a PPS Category Manager, you will benefit from working within a shared service that values professional expertise, consistency and collaboration, while gaining exposure to highly specialist environments such as GOSH's paediatric services.

Whittington Health serves a richly diverse population and works hard to ensure that all our services are fair and equally accessible to everyone. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the way we look after our staff. We aim to employ a workforce which is as representative as possible of this population, so we are open to the value of differences in age, disability, gender, marital status, pregnancy and maternity, race, sexual orientation, and religion or belief. The Trust believes that as a public sector organisation we have an obligation to have recruitment, training, promotion and other formal employment policies and procedures that are sensitive to these differences. We think that by doing so, we are better able to treat our patients as well as being a better place to work.

Job responsibilities

Overarching Description and Requirements can be found in "Main Duties" & "Key Result Areas" within the Job Description.

Person Specification Experience

• Minimum 5 years' experience in working within a relevant NHS Acute or other comparably complex procurement environment.
• Knowledge of acute hospital sector buying and local buying procedures.
• Comprehensive knowledge and experience of Public Contract Regulations.
• Knowledge of NHS procedures, systems, legislation and guidance
• Experience of working with a range of suppliers and customers and with maintaining good and effective business relationships.
• Experience of working with multiple operating businesses or different customers at the same time

Education and Qualifications

• Educated and attained a pass in 5 GCE (A-C , including mathematics and English at this standard.K public procurement legislation.
• CIPS part or fully qualified or willing to study towards CIPS.

Other requirements

• Commitment to learning and self development
• Strong identity with the core values of the public service and the NHS
• Ability to deal with pressurised situations in terms of peak work-load periods
• IT Literate with working knowledge of key MS packages

Skills and Abilities

• Capable of undertaking analytical tasks and manipulation of spreadsheets
• Good and effective interpersonal and communication skills to enable effective team working
• Team player with the ability to contribute effectively at junior management level.
• Capable of demonstrating negotiation skills
• Capable of demonstrating problem solving skills (assessed prior to employment)

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

£56,276 to £63,176 a yearPer Annum Including HCAS