Direct Procurement Jobs in California (NOW HIRING)

Reporting to the Head of Procurement, the Sr. Director of Procurement – Marketing and Growth Categories is a senior leadership role tasked with advancing the NextGen Procurement transformation while helping fuel enterprise growth. This leader operates at the intersection of marketing, finance, technology, operations and external partners - shaping how marketing investments translate into measurable business outcomes.As a strategic leader with a “perform while transform” mandate, you will drive financial and operational impact by influencing senior stakeholders, architecting future-ready solutions, and building a high-performing team that consistently executes with excellence. Success in this role requires moving beyond traditional sourcing to act as a trusted advisor to the business partner and leadership - bringing commercial rigor, market intelligence, and innovation to fuel growth.In close partnership with brand and functional leadership, you will lead a portfolio of customer-centric spend categories critical to Gap Inc.’s growth, including digital marketing, omni-channel media, asset creative and production, talent, PR, and emerging growth channels. This role requires balancing top-line growth and margin expansion. You will need to gain buy-in and leverage scale across four distinct brands while aligning to their unique requirements. By driving functional excellence through deep category management, you will also elevate how marketing investments translate into measurable value - maximizing ROI, improving transparency, and strengthening overall spend effectiveness through leveraging P/L and optimizing the budgets. Forging strong partnerships is critical - both internally (Marketing Shared Services, Brand CMOs, Finance, Tech, Legal) and externally (agencies, platforms, and emerging partners). You will shape and govern a high-performing agency ecosystem that aligns incentives, drives accountability, and delivers measurable impact.

Specifically, you will:

• Develop and execute category strategies aligned to brand and enterprise growth priorities, delivering top-quartile value across a balanced scorecard of Profitability (P/L and Capital saving), Growth (budget optimization and revenue), Service, Supply Assurance and Sustainability.  
• Act as a strategic partner to Marketing leadership, bringing commercial fluency across brand and performance marketing, media mix, and customer acquisition to influence investment decisions and maximize ROI.
• Translate marketing spend into measurable business outcomes by advancing performance frameworks, benchmarking, and value-based commercial models (e.g., outcome-based pricing, performance incentives).
• Architect and continuously evolve the agency ecosystem (in-house vs. external, consolidation vs. specialization), ensuring alignment of capabilities, incentives, and business goals.
• Lead complex sourcing and go-to-market strategies that optimize value beyond cost—balancing quality, speed, innovation, and scalability.
• Continuously scan the external marketplace to identify and introduce innovative partners, emerging platforms, and new ways of working (including AI-enabled capabilities across creative, media, and production).
• Drive adoption of advanced sourcing and analytics capabilities (e.g., should-cost modeling, media transparency, spend analytics, design-to-value) in partnership with Procurement COEs.
• Lead enterprise change initiatives—challenging the status quo with a “What if?” and “Why not?” mindset while driving alignment across a highly matrixed organization.
• Build and develop a high-performing procurement team by fostering relevant capabilities, deepening of the category management expertise and effective resource allocation.
• Establish strong governance, performance management, and accountability frameworks across internal teams and external partners to ensure consistent delivery and continuous improvement.

You are a strategic, growth-oriented leader with a strong sense of ownership in the outcomes and a deep understanding of how marketing drives business performance. You bring curiosity, creativity, and commercial rigor—able to navigate complexity and influence at the most senior levels of the organization.

You’re creative, self-motivated and can navigate with ease a large matrix organization with strong cultural foundation. You are equally comfortable shaping long-term strategy and driving hands-on execution. You build trust quickly, challenge constructively, and lead through positive influence in a fast-paced, highly collaborative environment.

You also have:
 

• 12+ years of experience across marketing procurement and/or agency / consulting, with a strong track record of impact in senior leadership roles.
• Deep expertise across marketing categories, including omni-channel media, creative and production, influencers, talent, martech, and emerging channels. Experience in licensing and/or entertainment is a plus.
• Strong commercial understanding of marketing effectiveness, including ROI, attribution, media performance, and customer economics.
• Proven ability to partner with and influence senior marketing and business leaders within a complex, matrixed organization.
• Strong business and financial acumen, with the ability to connect category strategies to enterprise P&L outcomes.
• Demonstrated success in designing and managing agency ecosystems and supplier partnerships that drive performance and innovation, especially with Ai-powered capabilities.
• Apparel / Retail industry experience is preferred.
• Experience leading transformation—advancing category management, enabling new capabilities, and defining “what good looks like” in evolving environments.
• Inspirational leader with positive impact in mind, focus on the How as much as the What.
• Proven track record of building and developing high-performing team, developing long-term capabilities in others and helping to unleash talent’s full potential.
• Advanced collaboration, communication, and executive presence; able to influence across all levels internally and externally.
• Strong strategic thinking combined with hands-on execution capability in complex, ambiguous environments.
• Expertise in negotiation, contract structuring, and data-driven decision-making.
• High energy, ownership mindset, and a bias for action.
• Genuine affinity for the company and its portfolio of brands.

Salary Range: $211,800.00 - $285,900.00
Employee pay will vary based on factors such as qualifications, experience, skill level, competencies and work location. We will meet minimum wage or minimum of the pay range (whichever is higher) based on city, county and state requirements.