Senior Procurement Officer - Best Practice Delivery

Job Title: Senior Procurement Officer - Best Practice Delivery
Starting Salary: £48,226 progressing to £53,459 per annum
Hours: 37 per week
Location: Stevenage with hybrid working opportunitiess
Contract Type: Permanent
Directorate: Resources

About the team

Join our high-performing Procurement team at Hertfordshire County Council, where you'll play a key role in delivering strategic and technical procurement expertise, and tender management services across our departments.

You will be part of a team which acts as the Council’s strategic centre of excellence for procurement, providing advice on procurement and commissioning activities for all departments, technical support for above UK threshold tenders, and advice on national frameworks and quotation procedures.

You will be working closely with colleagues in the Commercial Law team, and Finance

The team provides best practice advice, training, templates, and manages procurement systems.

Our team has a significant track record of implementing successful contracts offering value for money outcomes while delivering quality services.

About the role

Reporting to the Head of Procurement:

• You will be responsible for disseminating procurement best practice advice across the authority, including organisation and operation of the Contracting Best Practice Group, which includes representatives from all departments.
• By reviewing, amending and developing new documentation, templates and processes in collaboration with the other members of the team, you will support procurement activities across the Council.

Compliance

• You will maintain, review and amend the council’s contract regulations (through discussion with the commercial law team) on a regular basis.
• You will work with the Shared Internal Audit Service (SIAS) to facilitate any procurement related audits conducted annually.
• You will ensure any new or amended procurement related legislation is implemented in the council’s procedures.

Training and Guidance

• You will ensure provision of succinct guidance materials to disseminated procurement best practice across the organisation.
• You will lead on the provision of general and specific procurement training in the council.

Collaboration

• You will collaborate with district and borough council procurement officers to foster a coordinated approach to procurement activities across Hertfordshire, including participation in the Supply Hertfordshire forum.
• You will contribute to any transition activity as part of the Local Government Reorganisation project in collaboration with district and borough colleagues.

Team Leadership & Support

• You will provide senior leadership to the team when required.
• You may on occasion be asked to support the wider Strategic Procurement Group in its other activities, particularly in periods of high work volume and/or resource shortage

About you

Essential

Qualifications

• Educated to degree/HND level (or equivalent);
• or have 2 ‘A’ levels (or equivalent) combined with at least 2 years relevant work experience

Interpersonal & Communication skills

• Ability to influence senior managers internally and externally on projects.
• Ability to resolve queries effectively

IT skills

• Ability to use standard IT packages, especially Microsoft Office 365.

Organisational & Team Management skills

• Ability to supervise and motivate team members, identifying priorities, delegating work effectively and ensuring performance.
• Commitment to working in a collaborative way
• Demonstrable commitment to staff development

Procurement skills and knowledge

• Up to date knowledge of local, national and international legislation and rules pertaining to public procurement
• Ability to provide professional advice and leadership to service managers, particularly but not exclusively in relation to procurement legislation and best practice
• Experience of designing and delivering presentations and/or training

Analytical Skills

• Ability to make balanced judgements based on all available information about procurement and contract proposals and options.
• Provide effective challenge to services about procurement and contract proposals ensuring maximum benefit to the public purse.

Commercial awareness

• Ability to understand business needs in order to assess, evaluate and recommend options.
• Ability to demonstrate awareness of wider implications (for example, political, managerial or equal opportunities) of advice/options in relation to procurement.

Desirable:

• Experience of running Public Sector procurement exercises

We welcome applications from candidates who currently reside in the UK with established proof of right to work documentation. We are not able to offer sponsorship at this time for this role.

This job role is within the Corporate Services, level 12 job profile. Please locate this via:

Job profiles - Corporate services

To hear more about this opportunity please contact Paul Drake on 01992 588747 for an informal discussion about the role.

Interview Date: Week commencing 1st December 2025

Benefits of working for us

How to apply

As part of your application, please upload your most recent CV. Ensure your CV is up to date with your employment history (including any employment gaps), and including any training/qualifications. We encourage you to include examples of where you have demonstrated the requirements/criteria in the advert / job profile to allow the panel to fully recognise your skills and abilities. You will have the opportunity to include a short covering paragraph within your application to give us a little more information about your skills, knowledge, and experiences.

Additional information

Disability Confident
We are proud to be a Disability Confident employer and guarantee an interview to anyone disclosing a disability whose application meets the minimum criteria for the post.