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Solar Turbines

Strategic Sourcing Specialist

San Diego, United States

Career Area:

Supply Chain and Logistics

Job Description:

Your Work Shapes the World at Caterpillar Inc.

When you join Caterpillar, you're joining a global team who cares not just about the work we do – but also about each other. We are the makers, problem solvers, and future world builders who are creating stronger, more sustainable communities. We don't just talk about progress and innovation here – we make it happen, with our customers, where we work and live. Together, we are building a better world, so we can all enjoy living in it.

Role Definition

This role functions as a Strategic Sourcing Specialist III within the newly formed Strategy, Risk, and Compliance organization of Solar’s Global Supply Chain. The position serves as the subject matter expert for assigned commodity strategies and supplier sourcing activities. Additionally, the role is accountable for developing, documenting, and executing short and long-term strategic sourcing plans in close collaboration with assigned group-level Sourcing Specialist(s). These plans are designed to support key business initiatives across New Production, Balance of Plant (BOP), Construction Services, Customer Services, and New Product Introduction (NPI) programs.

Key responsibilities include:

Strategic Sourcing & Commodity Strategy: Lead the creation and implementation of commodity strategies that align with global and regional business objectives. Ensure sourcing plans support scalability, innovation, and resilience across the supply base.
Supplier Identification & Onboarding: Act as the sourcing focal point for identifying, evaluating, and onboarding suppliers that meet technical, commercial, and compliance requirements. Drive supplier qualification and readiness for new and existing programs.
Global Supply Chain Alignment: Support the development and execution of global supply chain strategies that enhance performance across People, Quality, Velocity, and Cost. Collaborate with cross-functional teams to ensure sourcing initiatives are integrated into broader supply chain goals.
Risk Management & Business Continuity: Proactively identify and mitigate sourcing risks that could impact operational execution or strategic goals. Communicate risk scenarios and develop contingency plans to protect business continuity.
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with internal stakeholders including Engineering, Operations, Legal, and Finance to ensure sourcing strategies are aligned with technical requirements, cost targets, and project timelines.
Project Management: Demonstrated ability to effectively manage multiple sourcing and strategic initiatives simultaneously, ensuring timely execution, stakeholder alignment, and measurable outcomes. This includes maintaining clear project documentation, proactively identifying risks and dependencies, and regularly reporting progress to leadership and cross-functional teams.

Planning: Tactical, Strategic: Knowledge of effective planning techniques and ability to contribute to operational (short term), tactical (1-2 years) and strategic (3-5 years) planning in support of the overall business plan.

Level: Extensive Experience

Develops, refines, and communicates tactical plans for own responsibilities.
Provides the right level of detail as input for strategic plan development.
Demonstrates the value and necessity of linking tactical plans to overall strategic plan.
Ensures attention to the detail and dependencies of existing departmental-level plans.
Plans for allocation of resources in line with unit goals, technical and business objectives.
Ensures the planning process is integrated with the overall business plan.

Decision Making and Critical Thinking: Knowledge of the decision-making process and associated tools and techniques; ability to accurately analyze situations and reach productive decisions based on informed judgment.

Level: Working Knowledge

Applies an assigned technique for critical thinking in a decision-making process.
Identifies, obtains, and organizes relevant data and ideas.
Participates in documenting data, ideas, players, stakeholders, and processes.
Recognizes, clarifies, and prioritizes concerns.
Assists in assessing risks, benefits and consideration of alternatives.

Negotiating: Knowledge of successful negotiation concepts and techniques; ability to negotiate successfully across the organization and with external vendors and clients in a constructive and collaborative manner.

Level: Extensive Experience

Ensures negotiators have awareness of complementary yet diverse interests.
Successfully completes significant negotiations, both internal and external.
Details the risks of negotiation breakdown from each party's perspective.
Protects own position, while demonstrating willingness to achieve win-win.
Identifies similarities and differences in position and assesses impact on discussions.
Detects and addresses lack of progress or a stalemate.

Leadership: Knowledge of leadership practices and processes; ability to use strategies and skills to enlist others in setting, embracing, and achieving objectives while having a long-term perspective of the future state of things and how to get there.

Level: Working Knowledge

Utilizes an appropriate style of leadership: autocratic, democratic, laissez-faire/free rein, etc.
Utilizes positive reinforcement to motivate & attain desired behaviors; increases productivity.
Demonstrates leadership qualities: intelligence, dominance, persistence, integrity, confidence.
Employs leadership theories, such as contingency and transactional, and associated techniques.
Manages own behaviors during interactions, such as feedback giving, to shape workplace events.

Project Management: Knowledge of effective project management strategies and tactics; ability to plan, organize, monitor, and control projects, ensuring efficient utilization of technical and administrative resources to achieve project objectives.

Level: Working Knowledge

Provides input for Gantt or PERT charts or their equivalent to track project progress and status.
Under guidance, plans and estimates simple projects.
Assists in detailed project plans including cost, schedule, and resource requirements.
Obtains information from stakeholders during the planning stage of a project.
Produces standard project status reports.

Contingency and Disaster Recovery Management: Knowledge of manufacturing contingency and disaster recovery approaches, practices, tools and techniques; ability to develop and administrate contingency and disaster recovery plans.

Level: Extensive Experience

Performs analysis on environmental and equipment configurations; develops disaster prevention plans and improves backup and recovery capabilities.
Participates in the development and distribution of procedures and practices regarding disaster recovery.
Delivers partial and full tests of the contingency and disaster recovery plan.
Coordinates the development, documentation and maintenance of contingency and disaster recovery plans for critical organizational functions.
Works with other functions and customers to coordinate contingency and disaster recovery planning.
Creates and tests a back-up environment; defines minimum operating requirements.

Supplier Management: Knowledge of processes and methods to effectively manage business relationships and transactions with suppliers of raw materials or product components; ability to apply related knowledge, experience and skills into real practice.

Level: Extensive Experience

Facilitates supplier partnering arrangements that share risk and reward.
Develops quality standards and controls for suppliers.
Builds and maintains partnerships with multiple and/or large suppliers.

Contracts Management and Administration: Knowledge of policies, standards and processes of how to manage and administer contracts; ability to use proper processes and practices for managing and administering a variety of contractual agreements.

Level: Extensive Experience

Supervises management and administration for a wide variety of contracts.
Advises on the practices and considerations for upgrading existing contracts and solving complex contract management problems.
Trains others on how to use advanced technologies and tools for contracts management.
Develops standard processes to maximize contracts efficiency and effectiveness.
Evaluates operational issues and considerations in contract enforcement.
Anticipates contract issues and manages risk regarding legal issues.

Strategic Sourcing: Knowledge of strategic sourcing methods, technologies and processes; ability to analyze, improve and re-evaluate organizational procurement process continuously.

Level: Extensive Experience

Participates in monitoring the execution for all stages of the strategic sourcing process.
Trains others on strategic sourcing in multiple and diverse environments.
Designs and develops standard supplier agreements and procurement policies with standardized terms and conditions.
Works with complex strategic sourcing components including but not limited to negotiations, contracting, and continuous process improvement and implementation.
Consults on strategic sourcing methods in relation to business relationships, inter-dependencies and integration.
Develops and explains strategic sourcing best practices and rationale for the organization and industry.

Supply Chain Management: Knowledge of functions, principles and techniques used in supply chain management; ability to develop and implement strategies, practices and tools for controlling the whole processes.

Level: Extensive Experience

Quantifies and evaluates benefits and risks of various supply chain strategies and approaches.
Participates in joint planning, process design/redesign with clients and partners.
Monitors the complete supply chain management process.
Manages supply chain finance activities and measurements of effectiveness.
Consults on supply chain network design projects or processes.
Advises others on capacity issues at various points in the supply chain.

Desired Qualifications

Bachelor’s degree with 12+ years or a Master’s degree with 10+ years of experience in Supply Chain.

Experience creating Sourcing & Commodity Strategies

Preferred Qualifications

Degree in Supply Chain

6-sigma Blackbelt

Partial relocation assistance may be offered.

This Job Description is intended as a general guide to the job duties for this position and is intended for the purpose of establishing the specific salary grade. It is not designed to contain or be interpreted as an exhaustive summary of all responsibilities, duties and effort required of employees assigned to this job. At the discretion of management, this description may be changed at any time to address the evolving needs of the organization. It is expressly not intended to be a comprehensive list of “essential job functions” as that term is defined by the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Summary Pay Range:

$140,964.00 - $211,446.00

Compensation and benefits offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factors, job level, market location, job-related knowledge, skills, individual performance and experience. Please note that salary is only one component of total compensation at Caterpillar.

Benefits:

Subject to plan eligibility, terms, and guidelines. This is a summary list of benefits.

Medical, dental, and vision benefits*
Paid time off plan (Vacation, Holidays, Volunteer, etc.)*
401(k) savings plans*
Health Savings Account (HSA)*
Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs)*
Health Lifestyle Programs*
Employee Assistance Program*
Voluntary Benefits and Employee Discounts*
Career Development*
Incentive bonus*
Disability benefits
Life Insurance
Parental leave
Adoption benefits
Tuition Reimbursement

These benefits also apply to part-time employees

This position requires working onsite five days a week.

Visa Sponsorship is not available for this position. This employer is not currently hiring foreign national applicants that require or will require sponsorship tied to a specific employer, such as, H, L, TN, F, J, E, O. As a global company, Caterpillar offers many job opportunities outside of the U.S which can be found through our employment website at www.caterpillar.com/careers.

Posting Dates:

September 16, 2025 - October 7, 2025

Any offer of employment is conditioned upon the successful completion of a drug screen.

Caterpillar is an Equal Opportunity Employer, Including Veterans and Individuals with Disabilities. Qualified applicants of any age are encouraged to apply.

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