Ontic, a leading licensor and manufacturer of complex engineering parts for the global aerospace and defence industries, are recruiting for a Buyer to join our growing team. This role will be based at our Bishops Cleeve site.
Ontic is a more than just a business, we’re a community of innovators who pride ourselves on fostering a culture where talent thrives, ideas flourish, and careers are built. We’re committed to excellence, driving us to continuously improve and adapt, ensuring that we remain at the forefront of our industry.
The Role:
As a buyer you will be responsible for the quality and cost for suppliers allocated to you, ensuring the purchased parts and/or services are supplied on time to support OE production and spares requirements in line with business needs.
You will be required to lead specific supplier relationships, assess and manage supply risks by identifying and implementing countermeasures to mitigate or eliminate any risks to supply. You may also be required to manage the introduction of new suppliers with the support of the Strategic Sourcing and SQA teams in line with the business Source Change process.

Main Responsibilities:

• Accountable for managing the RFQ process and negotiations to convert purchase demand into purchase orders after appropriately evaluating vendor capability, price, delivery needs, and vendor performance.
• Accountable for supplier selection and negotiation to eliminate unfavourable PPV and identify material cost savings.
• Keep the business ERP system up to date with supplier initial delivery commitments to allow system planning accuracy.
• Responsible for ensuring purchasing master data is maintained within ERP for the team’s suppliers.
• Working with engineering and quality to resolve issues impact purchased parts.
• Resolve invoice queries with accounts payable team.
• Undertake supplier site visits as and when required to ensure accurate orderbook management and supplier engagement.
• Project and communicate cost variances, positive or negative, and deliver opportunities for total cost of acquisition reduction suggestions and plans to support business financial budgets.
• Accountable for managing Purchase Order Actions for allocated Suppliers, utilising cross functional resources to ensure purchase orders are placed in-line with customer needs.
• Work alongside Planning, Strategic Sourcing and Programmes to identify opportunities for savings through analysis of current and future customer demands. Feeding into the site SIOP process and developing long term agreements with suppliers.

About you:
At Ontic, our culture is integral to making sure we enjoy our work and deliver for our customers. While we look for the right skillset, we’re also looking for someone who will thrive within our recognition and empowerment culture.
To be successful in this role you’ll need to have experience working within a purchasing role previously, ideally within a manufacturing environment.

Knowledge, Skills & Experience:

• 3+ years of transactional experience in a purchasing role
• Excellent negotiation, organisational and communication skills
• Commercially minded with an ability to deliver “outside of the box” solutions to commercial problems.
• Positive can-do attitude
• Total cost of acquisition analytical skills desirable
• Strong IT skills, including working knowledge of MS office and ERP systems (Visual and/or Syteline preferred but not essential)
• Ability to be self-motivated and a confident decision maker within business approval guidelines
• Capability to work independently and as part of a team cross functionally and within the function demonstrating respect and understanding.

Benefits
At Ontic we care about your financial, physical, and mental wellness so we offer a range of benefits to support this, we care about what matters to you and have a valued culture of recognition and empowerment, accompanied by benefits that support work/life balance.

Our benefits package highlights include:

• Up to 29 days paid holiday plus Bank Holidays
• 10 hours paid volunteering time
• Annual goal share bonus scheme for all employees
• 24/7 Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
• Discounts and offers from a range of retailers

Best place to work

We are more than the sum of our parts. And we’ve been recognised internally and externally for being so:

• We were ranked #9 in Best Companies’ Q3 leaderboard for Best Manufacturing Company based on our employee feedback
• 72.5% of employees who took part in our 2023 employee satisfaction survey said they are proud to work at Ontic

We are a fast-paced business with ambitious growth plans; so if you are dedicated, enthusiastic and always seeking ways to improve, you’ll enjoy a career with us

• Accountable for managing the RFQ process and negotiations to convert purchase demand into purchase orders after appropriately evaluating vendor capability, price, delivery needs, and vendor performance.
• Accountable for supplier selection and negotiation to eliminate unfavourable PPV and identify material cost savings.
• Keep the business ERP system up to date with supplier initial delivery commitments to allow system planning accuracy.
• Responsible for ensuring purchasing master data is maintained within ERP for the team’s suppliers.
• Working with engineering and quality to resolve issues impact purchased parts.
• Resolve invoice queries with accounts payable team.
• Undertake supplier site visits as and when required to ensure accurate orderbook management and supplier engagement.
• Project and communicate cost variances, positive or negative, and deliver opportunities for total cost of acquisition reduction suggestions and plans to support business financial budgets.
• Accountable for managing Purchase Order Actions for allocated Suppliers, utilising cross functional resources to ensure purchase orders are placed in-line with customer needs.
• Work alongside Planning, Strategic Sourcing and Programmes to identify opportunities for savings through analysis of current and future customer demands. Feeding into the site SIOP process and developing long term agreements with suppliers