2024 Procurement Graduate

In fast changing markets, customers worldwide rely on Thales. Thales is a business where brilliant people from all over the world come together to share ideas and inspire each other. In aerospace, transportation, defence, security and space, our architects design innovative solutions that make our tomorrow's possible.

Together we offer fantastic opportunities for committed employees to learn and develop their career with us. At Thales UK, we research, develop, and supply technology and services that impact the lives of millions of people each day to make life better, and keep us safer. We innovate across five major industries; Aerospace, Defence, Ground Transportation, Security and Space. Your health and well-being matters to us and that’s why we offer you the flexibility to do what’s important to you; whether that’s part time hours, job sharing, home working, or the ability to flex your start and finish times. Where possible, we support a working pattern that suits your lifestyle and helps you reach your ambitions.

Procurement Graduate

We’re inventing the future, right here, right now, at Thales. By combining the curiosity to explore, the intelligence to question and the vision to create, we’re transforming the world around us.

The Procurement function is responsible for effectively acquiring the goods and services the company needs in order to win new business and deliver profitable projects, it is therefore uniquely placed to contribute to both the top and bottom line. It typically manages orders and contracts equating to over 60% of the company’s turnover, impacting on Thales product quality, performance, growth and reputation.

Being a Procurement professional means understanding the strategy of our businesses, working in a Global environment, conducting complex negotiations, co-ordinating multidisciplinary internal teams and working with external companies to improve their performance to us. The skills and experience you will acquire in the function are readily transferable, offering a wide variety of career opportunities both inside the function and with the many others with which we interface on a daily basis. No wonder one of our current Graduates described the Procurement function in five words: “challenging, dynamic, complex, strategic, teamwork” and concluded that “no two days are the same”.

You’ll be joining a world class procurement function that achieved ‘Advanced Platinum’ Certification status by the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply back in 2018. The work involved is Diverse, Cross Functional and you will have an opportunity to collaborate with many other areas of the business.

Location:

You’ll be expected to complete four six-month placements across various Thales sites and businesses in the UK so flexibility on your location is required for this role. Our main sites are; Crawley, Glasgow, Bristol, Belfast, Reading, Cheadle, London and Templecombe.

Key responsibilities:

• Helping define and implement sourcing policies for goods and services
• Negotiating and executing orders and subcontracts
• Working on must win bids to optimise the bought-in value
• Managing supplier performance and relationships

Skills, qualifications and experience:

You will be on track to or have achieved a bachelor’s degree in any subject; however subjects that require critical analysis such as Law, Business, Engineering, Finance, Politics, Psychology, Sociology and History are of particular interest.

We are looking for people who have the ability to work with and understand complex information, using an analytical approach to build and argue a case with clear rationale. You will need to be able to forge effective relationships with a large variety of people, sometimes Globally, and have the ability to draw on the strengths of others in order to negotiate with suppliers and stakeholders to achieve a competitive outcome for the company. Attention to detail and being comfortable with numerical data are also skills that are important for a career in procurement.

Please note that Graduate Development Programme (GDP) activities take place during the working week but may require the investment of some personal time for travel and follow-up activities. You may have the opportunity to travel to Thales and non-Thales sites throughout the UK when participating in GDP activities.

Please note, assessment centres for shortlisted candidates will be held between February and May 2024. Induction week for all Graduate and Apprentices will commence on Monday 2 September until Friday 6 September 2024

Closing date: Our applications will close at 11.59pm on Sunday 7 January 2024, this is the only time we will be accepting applications this year. Please note, we will be in contact by the end of January 2024 with details of next steps.