Senior Buyer

Job Title:                     Senior Buyer

Location:                     Ashton Vale, Bristol + Hybrid Working Arrangements

Compensation:           Competitive Salary + Benefits

Role Type:                   Full time / 2-year Fixed Term Contract

Role ID:                       SF76831

Shape the supply chain behind critical defence and technology programmes

At Babcock, we’re working to create a safe and secure world, together. If you join us, you can play your part as a Senior Buyer at Ashton Vale, near Bristol, Gloucestershire.

This is an exciting opportunity to join our Mission Systems business, supporting high-profile programmes that help deliver cutting-edge capabilities for defence and national security. As a Senior Buyer, you'll play a key role in driving procurement performance, building strategic supplier relationships, and creating value across complex projects. You'll work closely with programme and project leaders while helping to shape supply chain success, making a tangible impact on business outcomes and your own professional development. This is a two-year fixed-term contract offering the chance to develop your career within a collaborative and growing team.

The role

As a Senior Buyer, you'll be a key member of the Procurement and Supply Chain team, working alongside operational and strategic procurement leaders to support major programmes. You'll influence sourcing strategies, supplier performance, and commercial outcomes across a dynamic portfolio of projects, helping ensure the right products and services are delivered safely, efficiently, and on time.

Day-to-day, you’ll be required to:

• Manage end-to-end purchasing activities including sourcing, supplier selection, negotiation, and contract placement.


• Lead supplier relationship and performance management activities to achieve business objectives.


• Manage complex and high-value purchase orders through to successful delivery.


• Build collaborative relationships with internal stakeholders to align procurement strategies with business needs.


• Drive continuous improvement initiatives and delivering operational excellence against key performance indicators.

This role is full time, 37 hours per week and provides hybrid working arrangements once a week.

Essential experience of the Senior Buyer

• Experience in a procurement, purchasing, sourcing, or supply chain role, ideally within a defence, engineering, manufacturing, or highly regulated environment.


• Demonstrated ability to build and maintain effective relationships with internal and external stakeholders.


• Experience using Enterprise Resource Planning systems within a procurement environment.


• Strong commercial awareness with the ability to manage competing priorities and deliver solutions.


• Experience working with supplier performance management, sourcing activities, and contract negotiations.

Qualifications for the Senior Buyer

• Membership of a relevant professional body e.g. CIPS is advantageous but not essential, CIPS training can be provided

Security Clearance

The successful candidate must be able to achieve and maintain Security Check (SC) security clearance for this role. Must be Sole UK National.

Many of the positions within our company are subject to national security clearance and Trade Control restrictions. This means that your eligibility for certain roles may be affected by your place of birth, nationality, current or former citizenship, and any residency you hold or have held. Further details are available at United Kingdom Security Vetting: clearance levels - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).

What we offer 

• Generous holiday allowance


• Matched contribution pension scheme, with life assurance


• Access to a Digital GP, annual health check, and nutritional consultations through Aviva DigiCare+


• Employee share scheme


• Employee shopping savings portal


• Payment of Professional Fees


• Reservists in the armed forces receive 10-days special paid leave


• Holiday Trading is a benefit that allows the majority of employees to buy additional leave or to sell up to one working week of annual leave from their annual entitlement


• ‘Be Kind Day’ enables employees to take one working day's paid leave a year (or equivalent hours) to undertake volunteering work with their chosen organisation or registered charity


• Flexible working – we give people more options to better integrate their work and personal life, whilst ensuring that business needs are met


• A dynamic working environment

Babcock

We’re Babcock — a global FTSE 100 organisation with over 29,000 people working together to make a difference.

Here, you’ll be part of something bigger. From initial design to final decommissioning, your work will contribute to products and services that are essential to national security and public infrastructure. Together, we’re building a future that lasts — not just through the impact we make, but through meaningful careers that respect your work-life balance.

We call that lifetime engineering.

Join us and see how far we can go, together.

We are a disability confident, committed employer. If you have a disability or need any reasonable adjustments during the application and selection stages, please email [email protected] with the subject header ‘Reasonable adjustments requirement’. We’re committed to building an inclusive culture where everyone’s free to thrive. We are happy to talk about flexible working – please ask about alternative patterns of work at interview.

Closing date: 12/11/2026

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