For instance, good buyer purchasing jobs in the technical buyer field might demand that you have experience working in a high-tech environment already. You may need to be familiar with things like large rotating equipment, electrical pumps, aerospace equipment, and motors. You might also need particular special expertise in a certain industry so that you are already familiar with the laws, rules, and regulations governing the purchasing process in that field.
Some of these buyer purchasing jobs also require extensive travel, and if they do you will have to be comfortable being away from home a lot.
To be a successful technical buyer you will have to handle supplier selection and supplier negotiations, run the bidding process and negotiating prices, and be responsible for on-time delivery by setting schedules and terms conditions. This all means that you will have to know how to monitor the entire supply chain. Part of this means you may also may have to be able to set up subcontract terms and conditions and maybe special terms and conditions as might be required in certain circumstances. You will have to oversee pricing, quality, performance, and delivery requirements.
Technical buyer purchasing jobs will also likely mean you have to identify potential new sources of materials and services needed to meet supply-base goals materials and services. You should be able to dynamically promote supply-chain sourcing goals with a production-transaction integrated organizational approach as you develop and put into action commodity sourcing strategies. Likewise, you will have to be able to take subcontract information and clearly communicate about it with program managers, the engineering department, the finance department, quality control, and the contract administrators. Your buying activities will need to be coordinated with other units within the business you work for so that the greatest possible buying leverage is realized while you maintain or enhance quality at the same time.
Even more specifically, you will likely have to possess knowledge about prevailing wage bids, export control mechanisms, and ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations), and know how to comply with departmental ISO 9000 Quality Procedures.
Technical buyer jobs will require that you have at least a bachelor’s degree. Some companies may specify that you to have this bachelor’s in a technical subject like engineering. Companies looking for this kind of buyer want people who can handle technical jobs, not people who bought for Macy’s department store.
In addition, the educational and experience requirements may very well come with certification requirements. Professional certification in contracts discipline or supply chain management (CPM, CPIM, and/or CPCM) may be demanded or strongly preferred by the prospective employer.
As a technical buyer purchaser, you will have to deal with reading, hearing, viewing, and analyzing many proposals from potential and established suppliers of your company’s materials. You will be the one who decides if one of these suppliers has met the basic technical qualifications necessary to serve your company with their latest proposal. You will be the one who measures their proposed technical solution against the metrics of the requirements and specifications that your company demands in order to make the best products and serve its client base.
So, part of your mindset should be that of the skeptic. You should always first approach a new proposal skeptical of the presenter’s solution working for you. You must understand yourself to be the (or one of the) high-tech hotshot(s) in of the company’s entire supply chain. Your mindset must be to make the presenters prove themselves to you. If you cannot do this, you will be wasting company money or costing the company money with faulty or misplaced materials and services.
Therefore, you will have to watch carefully to see if those you choose to purchase from have insights into your special issues beyond just the general technical aspects of your company’s field. You must demand of them to show you to your satisfaction how to apply their solution to your specific project(s). You will also have to have a keen mind for risk assessment and resolution. You will have to be very good at comparing and contrasting risk vs. reward, and will especially have to be able to assess whether or not the proposer has mitigated any risks to the fullest reasonable extent.
Buyer purchasing jobs in the technical industry are paying people across the board an average of $69,000 per year in the United States as of this writing, representing a level of compensation 8 percent higher than the national average for all jobs in all fields, industries, and businesses. People with holistic minds that can be technically analytical, clearly communicative to average business persons, economically savvy, and leadership oriented can make themselves very good money while applying their abilities in a business setting.
