Category Manager (Band 7)

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Please note in order to progress your application, your data will be processed by our 3rd party recruitment providers - North London Partners Shared Service, who conduct recruitment activities on behalf of Whittington Health NHS Trust.

For our current apprenticeship vacancies, please go to https://www.gov.uk/apply-apprenticeship and use Keyword 'Whittington'

By applying for this role, you accept in the event you are successful that your personal data may be transferred from the Trust to another NHS organisation where your employment transfers within the NHS. This is in accordance with the streamlining programme which is aimed at saving you time and improving efficiencies within the NHS when your employment transfers.

Job overview

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:

1. Support Senior Buyers and Buyers to ensure projects are delivered effectively, responsibly and in line with agreed policies and procedures.
2. 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.
3. Identify and deliver savings against targets, ensuring savings are recorded accurately and regularly.
4. Work with PPS and NHS Supply Chain colleagues to ensure appropriate category contract coverage and benefit delivery.
5. Maintain awareness of technological developments within the category and support development of team market knowledge.
6. Support PPS staff in the consistent application of agreed processes and procedures.
7. 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, service transition into PPS and collaborative procurement activity across the wider PPS membership.

Please refer to the JD for further information.

Working for our organisation

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.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

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

Person specification

Experience

Essential criteria

• 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

Essential criteria

• 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

Essential criteria

• 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

Essential criteria

• 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)

SAFEGUARDING CHILDREN AND ADULTS

To comply with the Trust's Safeguarding Children and Adults policies, procedures and protocols. All individual members of staff (paid or unpaid) have a duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults This will require you to:

• Ensure you are familiar with and comply with the London Child Protection Procedures and protocols for promoting and safeguarding the welfare of children and young people.

• Ensure you are familiar and comply with the London Multi Agency Safeguarding Vulnerable Adults Pan London Procedures.

• Ensure you are familiar and comply with local protocols and systems for information sharing.
• Know the appropriate contact numbers and required reporting lines.
• Participate in required training and supervision.
• Comply with required professional boundaries and codes of conduct

Whittington Health is committed to safeguarding all children and vulnerable adults and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.

Your application form -

1. Provide only business email address for your referees - we are unable to request references from yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail accounts.
2. Make sure you to include all evidence of where you meet the essential requirement on the jobs description as this forms the base of our shortlisting criteria.

Our processes -

1. Closing dates are given as a guide; we are within our right to close adverts early so please ensure you submit your application as soon as possible to avoid delay.
2. If you do not hear from us up to 3 weeks after the closing date of the job unfortunately this means you have not been successfully shortlisted for interview. If your require feedback on your application please contact the appointing manager detailed in the body of the advert.
3. Please check your emails regularly as all correspondence from us will be via trac.systems - occasionally these emails will go into your Junk folder.
4. Employment at Whittington Health is offered subject to successful completion of a 6 month probationary period for all staff with the exception of GMC Registered Doctors.

Other important information -

• Applications from job seekers who require sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. Before submitting your application and to avoid disappointment please check that you are eligible under the UKVI points based system.
• Applications are welcome from people wishing to job share or work flexible patterns. We are committed to equal opportunities.
• In submitting an application form, you authorise Whittington Health NHS Trust to confirm any previous NHS service details via the Inter Authority Transfer (IAT) process should you be appointed to the post.

If you are offered a role with one of the NLPSS partner trusts, as part of pre-employment checks your identity and right to work documentation will be verified remotely (in most circumstances), using a certified identity verification service provider TrustID. You will be asked to capture an image of the relevant documents as well as a "selfie" using your smartphone/tablet (if available) for facial matching. TrustID will also perform a digital address check using Trunarrative and Equifax, which is a soft check and does not leave a footprint on your credit rating. For more information, visit www.trustid.co.uk

Please note that during the recruitment process your Identity Documentation (i.e. passport, driving licence, visa, etc.) will be scanned using a device which recognises UV, Infrared and Machine Readable Zone security features of the documents provided

The Trust uses electronic new starter forms on Trac to collect personal details. Information collected is securely stored and used to set up the employee record on the ESR HR system.

We would welcome applications from individuals who are from underrepresented groups in the organisation

For further support on submitting an application please refer to the NLPSS Applicant Toolkit: https://royalfree.pagetiger.com/cuuomnr/1

Employer certification / accreditation badges

Applicant requirements

The postholder will have access to vulnerable people in the course of their normal duties and as such this post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service to check for any previous criminal convictions.

Application numbers

This vacancy may close early if it receives a high number of applications. Please complete and submit your application in good time to avoid disappointment.
Documents to download

• Category Manager - Clinical (PDF, 280.4KB)
• Whittington Probationary Policy (PDF, 298.0KB)
• Whittington Employment Promise (PDF, 22.4KB)