Materials Program Manager

Overview

Bruker is one of the world’s leading analytical instrumentation companies enabling scientist to make breakthrough discoveries and develop new application that improve the quality of human life.  Our high-performance products and high-value life science and diagnostic solutions are trusted by leading businesses, institutes, and scientists worldwide.  Today, more than 8,500 employees at over 90 locations are working on this permanent challenge to make the world a better place.

The Materials Project Manager (MPM) acts as the primary liaison between the Business Unit (BU) and Global Supply Chain (GSM), responsible for managing end-to-end material readiness, availability, and visibility across product development and sustaining activities. This strategic role ensures material execution aligns with project timelines, quality, and cost goals by collaborating closely with Commodity Managers and cross-functional partners. 

The MPM supports both New Product Introduction (NPI) projects and ongoing production requirements for existing product lines. The role is critical in ensuring continuous alignment between BU needs and global supply chain strategies and processes, delivering optimal material availability, risk mitigation, and supply continuity throughout the product lifecycle. The MPM drives visibility into supply risks, leads the development and reporting of clear-to-build (CTB) status, manages constrained material allocation strategies, and provides executive-level updates on supply chain health across assigned programs.

Responsibilities

Domestic travel required: up to 25%

International travel required: up to 10%

Business Unit Supply Chain Program Lead

• Serve as the designated Global Supply Chain (GSM) representative on all BU project teams, driving early engagement and lifecycle supply chain planning.
• Own material strategy development and execution to support all phases of product development through sustaining operations.
• Support supply chain requirements across both NPI initiatives and ongoing production for existing products.
• Define and report clear-to-build (CTB) status to key stakeholders, ensuring alignment between procurement activities and build schedules. Partner closely with the respective BU planners to align CTB projections with real-time build plans, demand shifts, and supply chain constraints.
• Partner cross-functionally with Engineering, Manufacturing, Quality, Finance, and Legal to resolve supply issues and maintain alignment on project milestones.

Tactical Procurement Execution:

• Coordinates demand signals through MRP to minimize inventory exposure.
• Forecasts and communicates engineering, materials, and manufacturing requirements to suppliers.
• Under some supervision, creates, releases and updates new project materials strategy.
• Works with engineering to identify preliminary critical parts, long-lead parts and inspection.
• Coordinates and provides product development process deliverables through matrix management of buyers such as:
• Actively manage RFQs, provide COGs estimate for new products or assemblies, and mitigate continuity of supply challenges both internally and externally.

Strategic Sourcing Support:

• Coordinates activities around source selection, specification creation and price negotiation with appropriate team members to receive materials at the right cost, quality, and lead time to improve our working capital goals.
• Collaborates with the engineering team to interpret engineering requirements for product development process as it relates to buying materials accurately, according to specifications, on time and on budget.
• Driving supplier price and delivery negotiations, NDAs, and assisting with the negotiation of contracts as necessary.
• Utilizes the preferred supplier selection and assessment process when selecting suppliers.
• Completes supplier risk assessment on critical and unique parts. Monitors supplier performance (delivery, quality, cost).
• Provides input to outsourcing decisions by performing make versus buy analysis Works with engineering to identify preliminary critical parts, long-lead parts, and inspection requirements. Assists in developing supplier and commodity road maps to engineering.
• Utilizes value analysis on build-to-print components in support of Should Cost analysis.

Supplier Relationship Management:

• Maintain day-to-day supplier relationships for Critical and/or High Value Suppliers, acting as the point of contact for supplier commercial issues.
• Actively mediates and partners with quality and engineering teams to resolve supplier quality issues for assigned product groups and drive appropriate corrective action(s).
• Escalate issues to the appropriate management when necessary.

Additional Knowledge, Skills, Abilities and other Characteristics:

• Background in supply chain management for complex, high-technology products in the life sciences or biotech sector, ideally supporting research tools such as molecular, cellular, or imaging platforms
• Highly motivated and self-driven with a focus on successfully delivering results for the team and meeting overall company goals. Demonstrated capacity acting as a resource for colleagues with less experience
• Extremely organized and detail-oriented with the ability to manage large amounts of data from various inputs and consolidate the information for critical business decisions (data analytics).
• Strong interpersonal, persuasion, influencing and collaboration skills required, working to build consensus. Ability to explain difficult or sensitive information in a cohesive and digestible way to broad audiences.
• Demonstrates flexibility and the ability to multi-task and balance competing priorities constantly and meet strict deadlines.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, including the ability to anticipate and identify issues or barriers and generate solutions, using a high level of personal discretion in decision-making.
• Demonstrates in-depth understanding of supply chain operations and financial acumen, with knowledge and proficiency across multiple supply chain functions, enabling effective coordination and communication across competing demands.
• Solves complex problems; takes a new perspective on existing solutions; exercises judgment based on the analysis of multiple sources of information.
• Agility to work within broad guidelines and policies to impact a range of customer, operational, project, or service activities within own team and other related teams.
• Knowledge of best practices and how own area integrates with others; is aware of the competition and the factors that differentiate them in the market

Qualifications

Required Education and Skills:

• Bachelor’s degree in Supply Chain, Engineering, Business, Economics or related field.
• 7-10 years of experience of supply chain, demand planning, purchasing, inventory control and /or supplier management.
• Strong working proficiency with Microsoft Office, including expert-level functionality with Excel.
• Minimum 3 years’ experience working with SAP S4/HANA and analytical software (PowerBI, Tableau, SAP Analytics Cloud, etc.).
• Knowledge of project management application tools and best practices.
• Strong written and oral presentation skills.
• Experience working with diverse, cross-functional teams.

Desired Education and Skills:

• Master’s degree (MS or MBA) – Management, Supply Chain, Engineering, Business or other related field
• Technical knowledge of operational and manufacturing processes (design, assembly, integration, and test)
• Certificate in CPIM or CSCP strongly preferred
• Certificate in DDPP strongly preferred
• Background in supply chain management for complex, high-technology products in the life sciences or biotech sector, ideally supporting research tools such as molecular, cellular, or imaging platforms strongly preferred

At Bruker, base salary is part of our total compensation. The estimated base salary range for this full-time position is between $97,200 and $$173,000 and provides an opportunity to progress as you grow and develop within a role. The base salary for the role will depend on a several job-related factors, including, but not limited to education, training, experience, the geographic location of the successful candidate, skills, competencies, job-related knowledge and travel requirements for this position. Full-time employees may also be eligible for a performance-related incentive in addition to a full range of benefits including 401(k) with company match, an employee stock purchase plan, medical and dental plans, life insurance, short-term and long-term disability insurance, employee assistance program and paid time off including vacation, sick time and holidays, and more.

Bruker is an equal-opportunity employer. We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, and other legally protected characteristics.

Certain positions at Bruker require compliance with export control laws and as a result, all interviewed candidates for all positions will be screened pre-interview to determine their eligibility in light of export control restrictions.

#LI-RM1