Procurement Manager Aerostructures

Job Description: In order to support Procurement Airbus Defence and Space is looking for a Procurement Manager Aerostructures - Fast Track & Special Programmes (d/f/m) The Procurement Manager for Fast-Track & Special Programmes is an autonomous, high-impact procurement role designed to drive maximum speed, agility, and cross-functional integration during early-stage aerospace development. Operating in a streamlined, fast-paced environment, the job holder is empowered with delegated authority from the standard Commodity Procurement teams. You act as the direct, hands-on procurement lead for the programme—managing early supplier evaluations, market scouting, design-to-cost, and supplier selections independently. By operating within pre-aligned strategic guardrails set by the Commodity Heads, you eliminate organizational friction and ensure rapid programme execution while safeguarding long-term industrial logic and corporate compliance. This role is also available with reduced weekly hours and an adapted scope of tasks.

Your location: Located about an hour’s drive north of Munich, Manching is an up-and-coming market town that offers a wide range of leisure and cultural activities. Here, you can enjoy the quality of life in the countryside while the pleasures of near-by cities are still within easy reach.

Your Benefits for You

• Fair Compensation & Extras: Attractive remuneration and individual additional benefits, such as company pension schemes, mobility offers (e.g., bike leasing), or corporate discounts with partner companies in accordance with our current guidelines.
• Time for You (and Your Loved Ones): 30 days of annual leave based on our collective agreement (35-hour week); work-life balance through flexible working hours (flextime), mobile working, part-time options, job sharing, and sabbatical opportunities.
• Growth Made Easy: Excellent professional development opportunities and international, group-wide career perspectives.
• Feel Good at Work: On-site company doctor; comprehensive health programs (sports courses, preventive care, etc.), canteen and cafeteria, and local childcare facilities at selected locations.
• Diversity Connects: Work in a diverse environment with more than 140 nationalities, where exchange, mutual support, and inclusion are part of our DNA.

Your tasks and responsibilities

• Delegated Sourcing & Rapid Execution
• Empowered Supplier Scouting & Evaluation: Independently lead the scouting, evaluation, and capability assessments of potential suppliers for new work packages, ensuring rapid turnaround times without waiting for multi-layered commodity reviews.
• Delegated Tender Management: Drive the end-to-end early sourcing process (RFIs, RFPs, downselections) under delegated authority from the respective commodity teams. Ensure supplier selections align with pre-agreed commodity strategies, roadmaps, and quality baselines.
• Early Contract & NRE Structuring: Negotiate development agreements, Statements of Work (SoWs), and Non-Recurring Engineering activities, balancing the immediate schedule requirements of the development team with commercial risk protections.
• Upstream Architecture & Make-or-Buy Execution
• Agile Make-or-Buy Driver: Represent Procurement directly in early-stage Engineering and Industrial Architecture meetings. Actively participate in shaping Make-or-Buy choices and Core vs. Non-Core package definitions to fit the specific timeline and budget constraints of the programme.
• Design-to-Cost & Early Budget Control: Drive early-stage target costing and Design-to-Cost (DtC) activities. Challenge engineering assumptions directly to keep both Non-Recurring Costs (NRC) and future recurring unit costs aligned with the programme’s business case.
• Streamlined Commodity Alignment & Strategy Guardrails
• Strategic Guardrail Management: Establish up-front "sourcing boundary conditions" with Commodity Heads before launching tenders. Operate autonomously within these boundaries, escalating only exceptions, high-value decisions, or strategic deviations.
• Single-Point Procurement Leadership: Act as the dedicated, single face of Procurement within the Programme Multi-Functional Team (MFT). Own both the strategic direction and operational execution of procurement activities for the project.
• Asynchronous Milestone Governance: Keep commodity teams informed through lean, milestone-based reviews (e.g., sourcing strategy approval and final contract award endorsement), minimizing meeting overhead while preserving corporate alignment.
• Operational Bundling & Hands-On Delivery
• Supplier Risk & Ramp-Up Monitoring: Monitor early supplier development, tooling fabrication, and industrial readiness, proactively solving bottlenecks before components reach the assembly line.
• Seamless Series Transition Clean Package Maturity Transfer: Prepare