Category Manager (Chiyoda, Tokyo, JP)
About this opportunity
Job Title: Category Manager
Department: Sourcing and Purchasing, Procurement, Novo Nordisk Pharma Ltd. (Japan)
Location: Tokyo, Japan
Your impact begins here
As Category Manager, you will make sure the goods and services our business in Japan relies on deliver real value. Working with suppliers and internal stakeholders across development, commercial, warehousing and distribution, and indirect categories, you will turn market knowledge into savings, competitive prices, faster speed to market and new ideas for sustainability. Because much of our value comes from suppliers, your sourcing decisions help colleagues move with speed and focus on progress for people living with serious chronic diseases.
What you’ll bring
You know procurement creates value by connecting business needs with what suppliers do best. You will also bring:
A bachelor’s or master’s degree.
Indirect procurement experience in the pharmaceutical and/or FMCG industry.
Experience in strategic sourcing, combined with a solid understanding of procure-to-pay (P2P) processes.
Strong negotiation skills, grounded in good supplier and customer relationship management.
Respect for suppliers and an understanding that they bring capabilities and market value we do not have in-house.
Native or N1 level Japanese language skills and at least 1 year of experience working in Japan.
Strong business English, both written and spoken (a TOEIC score of 800 or above as a target).
The confidence to speak up at the right time, and respect for people of different backgrounds – suppliers, business partners and colleagues in other countries.
Curiosity about new ways of working and thinking, such as how AI can improve procurement.
Useful, but not essential:
Direct procurement experience, which can give you a wider view of the value chain.
Experience working abroad and across cultures.
Line management experience.
What you’ll do
You will own a broad category portfolio and work directly with suppliers in the market to bring the value internal stakeholders need – from hard savings and cost avoidance to innovation, optimised costs and better cash flow.
Manage categories across key areas of our business: development (such as contract research organisations and post-marketing surveillance), commercial (such as marketing and digital agencies, meetings and events, and public relations), warehousing and distribution, and indirect areas including rent, IT, HR and fleet.
Lead or take part in sourcing projects that match business objectives and timelines.
Deliver measurable value through savings, competitive prices, faster speed to market, improved Management Cash Flow and new ideas for sustainability.
Build supplier relationships that create sustainable value and stay strong during negotiation process and also after the negotiation is over.
Work independently towards objectives agreed with your manager, keeping stakeholders informed through open, transparent communication.
Who you’ll work with
You will join the Sourcing and Purchasing team, which shapes and drives the procurement strategy that meets our internal business needs in Japan. You will report to the Associate Director, Sourcing and Purchasing.
Your closest partners will be internal stakeholders across development, commercial, warehousing and distribution, and corporate functions such as IT and HR – together with the suppliers who serve them. You will also work in English with procurement colleagues in other regions and at headquarters, building relationships that help you share knowledge, align quickly and keep sourcing projects moving.
What you can expect here
With categories spanning development, commercial, distribution and indirect spend, you will see how procurement supports almost every part of the business – and build skills across the value chain as you do. You will be trusted to work independently against clear objectives, and encouraged to make your voice heard, bring new ideas to the table and explore how AI and new ways of working can raise the bar.
Start now
Your impact begins today. If you are ready to turn supplier value into progress for our business in Japan, apply for the Category Manager role by uploading your CV online (click Apply and follow the instructions). Applications are reviewed on an ongoing basis until the position is filled, so we encourage you to apply as soon as possible.
We commit to an inclusive recruitment process and equality of opportunity for all our job applicants.
Job details
How this role compares
Computed from every other active Procurement role in our database, not just this employer's listings.
We currently track 119 comparable Manager Procurement roles across 28 biopharma companies.
Salary context
18 of 119 peers report a salary range (USD, annualized)
Peers share this role's job function and a matching or adjacent seniority level -- not necessarily the same therapeutic area or country.
Where these roles are based
Top locations among the 119 comparable roles
+ 22 more countries
Seniority mix
119 of 119 peers have a known seniority level
Therapeutic area mix
0 of 119 peers have a known therapeutic area; the rest are genuinely unlabeled, not hidden
No peers with a known therapeutic area yet.
Similar opportunities
The closest matches from our peer group, ranked by how similar they are, not how well you'd qualify for them -- treat this as market context, not a guaranteed shortlist; a weak match is labeled as one below.
Notify me about similar jobs
Get an email when we spot other openings like this one – same job function, comparable seniority, roles you'd actually want to see.
Or follow a whole field: get every new Procurement job in Japan, and choose locations and companies.
How we calculate "similar"
No black box, no LLM guesswork: a deterministic score built from four normalized attributes. Here's this role's own peer group at different match levels, so you can see the mechanism, not just the result.
Every comparison starts from the same 100-point budget: 25 for working in the same function, 40 for the same therapeutic area, 20 for the same or adjacent seniority, 15 for the same country. A dimension we can't confirm on both sides contributes nothing, never a guess, never a free pass.
0 points, never a partial guess. A role we know almost nothing about beyond its function bottoms out at 25%; it never inflates to 100% just because there's little to compare against. Seniority uses a defined ladder (Associate → Manager → Associate Director → Senior → Principal → Director → Senior Director → Executive/VP) so "Director" and "Senior Director" count as adjacent, but "Director" and "Executive/VP" do not.