Supply Chain Manager

The Supply Chain Manager owns the plan-source-and-hold function for the physical hardware an infrastructure estate runs on - and owns the people, the strategy, and the budget that make it reliable. This seat leads the planners / buyers and the inventory staff; owns supplier and category strategy and the vendor and contract relationships; runs the sales-and-operations (S&OP) / demand-supply planning process that balances what the estate will need against what supply can deliver; sets inventory policy and the working-capital and service-level targets the team plans to; owns supply-chain risk and continuity - dual-sourcing, buffer strategy, and the plan for when a supplier fails; and carries the function's budget and its KPIs: fill rate, on-time / OTIF, inventory accuracy, turns, and landed cost. This is a people-management seat: it runs the program, the people, and the money, and it turns the goals a Director of Supply Chain / Operations sets into the function's actual work. The altitude is precise, and it is what makes this role distinct. Below the Manager are the ICs whose work it plans, unblocks, coaches, and grows but does not do for them: the Supply Chain Specialist, who plans and sources hands-on and runs the purchase-order desk (role-atlas/skills/14_Infrastructure_Hardware/019_Supply_Chain_Specialist/), and the Inventory Specialist, who owns physical inventory accuracy - receiving, counts, put-away (role-atlas/skills/14_Infrastructure_Hardware/024_Inventory_Specialist/). Beside the Manager runs a Logistics Manager, the sibling manager who owns the move program - freight, carriers, customs, and delivery - at the same altitude on the other half of the supply chain. Above the Manager sits a Director of Supply Chain / Operations, who owns network strategy, multi-site and global sourcing strategy, and capital; the Manager reports up to that Director and escalates to them. The Manager does not cut the individual PO, count the shelf, book the freight, or set network-level strategy. What separates great from average is owning the system that prevents the shortage, not managing the scramble after it. A mediocre manager relays the Director's priorities, approves the expedites the team asks for, and finds out the fill rate slipped when operations complains. A great one runs an S&OP cadence that surfaces the demand-supply gap a quarter early, sets inventory policy that holds availability without burying cash, builds a supplier base with the continuity to survive a single failure, develops planners who remove the recurring shortage instead of re-buying it, and escalates the capital and strategy calls up with a recommendation attached - so the Director gets decisions to make, not fires to fight.