Commercial and Vendor Specialist

About us

Every day we deliver safe and secure energy to homes, communities, and businesses. We are there when people need us the most. We connect people to the energy they need for the lives they live. The pace of change in society and our industry is accelerating and our expertise and track record puts us in an unparalleled position to shape the sustainable future of our industry.

To be successful we must anticipate the needs of our customers, reducing the cost of energy delivery today and pioneering the flexible energy systems of tomorrow. This requires us to deliver on our promises and always look for new opportunities to grow, both ourselves and our business.

National Grid is hiring a Commercial and Vendor Specialist in our Warwick office.

Job Purpose

We are recruiting a Commercial & Vendor Specialist to join the Commercial & Vendor Management Team within National Grid’s Enterprise Business Services function. As a Commercial & Vendor Specialist you will be responsible for managing a portfolio of up to 3 strategic Managed Service Agreements, as well as collaborating with Procurement teams to provide strategic support and insight during key tender processes. Using your experience as a Commercial professional you will apply commercial, Contract Management and Vendor Management best practices to deliver value effectively and innovatively so that business outcomes and objectives are met. 

Key Accountabilities

•    Build and sustain effective relationships with suppliers to deliver exceptional performance in cost, quality, time and compliance.
•    Lead the contract management activity for a portfolio of up to 3 strategic Managed Service Agreements.
•    Lead the negotiation and agreement of new call off contracts as and when required.
•    Prepare contract documentation in collaboration with stakeholders during the contract lifecycle, for example contract change notices.
•    Build effective relationships with internal customers and act as point of contact for commercial and contract support, ensuring policies and procedures are correctly adopted and applied. 
•    Provide advice and recommendations at the appropriate level (including Senior Leadership) on commercial risks, issues and governance across your contract portfolio. Develop and execute plans to mitigate service delivery and value leakage.
•    Provide strategic support and insight to Procurement teams in RFP shaping, commercial strategy, negotiations and contracting.
•    Lead the onboarding of new supplier contracts.
•    Develop insights to continually improve contract and vendor management processes, through research and analysis of supply markets and emerging supplier trends.
•    Use tools such as Power BI to develop supplier scorecards and metrics to measure, monitor and drive insights in performance.
•    Manage invoicing administration to ensure financial governance and control, creating spend reports / analysis when required.

Qualifications

•    Comprehensive experience in contract management, from negotiation and onboarding, through to renewal and exit. 
•    Experience of managing outsourced Managed Service Provider contracts and offshore suppliers (across BPO, Learning, IT or similar categories). Experience of Build Operate Transfer contracting models is highly desirable. 
•    A deep knowledge of supplier management practices to build strong, performance and value driven relationships.
•    Confidence in managing complex supplier portfolios and commercial contracting models.
•    Commercial acumen – ideally, you will have worked in corporate environments, managing significant supplier spend, with the ability to balance commercial priorities with risk management and regulatory compliance.
•    A solid understanding of contractual documentation, with the ability to review, interpret and advise on contract rights and obligations.
•    Excellent interpersonal and stakeholder management skills; able to communicate effectively at all levels including senior leaders within the internal business and supplier organisations.
•    Formed positive working relationships with colleagues, customers and suppliers and is comfortable challenging to gain the best outcome.
•    Good influencing and negotiation skills to drive optimum value throughout the life of a contract.
•    Experience in defining, driving and overseeing commercial and contract governance.
•    A continuous improvement mindset, having delivered improved ways of working and efficiencies to contracts and supplier relationships which has resulted in lasting change.
•    Proactively identified risks and issues and managed plans to mitigate.
•    Your analytical approach enables you to interpret commercial and performance data, giving you the ability to prepare reports and collate information to make insightful recommendations, as well as presenting this in a concise manner for a range of stakeholders to support decision making.
•    An understanding of Energy & Utilities or another regulated environment would be useful, but not essential.
•    Industry standard and/or professional body accreditations e.g MCIPS or IACCM are highly desirable.

What You'll Get

A competitive salary between £46,415 – £58,760 – dependent on capability

As well as your base salary, you will receive a bonus based on personal and company performance and a competitive contributory pension scheme where we will double match your contribution to a maximum company contribution of 12%. You will also have access to a number of flexible benefits such as a share incentive plan, salary sacrifice car and technology schemes, support via employee assistance lines and matched charity giving to name a few.

More Information

This role is offered on a Full-Time, Permanent basis
We are also offering hybrid /flexible working where travel to the office will be as per business need. Base location for this role will be National Grid House, Warwick

This role closes on 6th June 2025 however we strongly encourage candidates to submit their application as early as possible.