Commercial & Market Segment Manager- North America

Quapaw_ USA
Electro-Optic Materials
Sales & Marketing

Posted on 13-01-2025

Job Title: Commercial & Market Segment Manager- North America                                   Location: Quapaw, OK 

About Umicore                 

Reducing harmful vehicle emissions. Giving new life to used metals. Powering the cars of the future. As a global materials and technology group, we apply our specialist knowledge to offer materials and solutions that are essential to everyday life. We aim to be a clear world leader in materials for clean mobility and recycling and have turned our sustainability approach into an even greater competitive advantage. With ambitions like this, imagine what you could do? 

About Electro-Optic Materials 

Power in space. Vision at night. Coatings thinner than human hair. Umicore is a world leader in material solutions for the space, optics and electronics sectors – enabling every day cutting-edge technologies. We guarantee our customers secure access to supply, plus recycling technologies that give materials a new lease of life. To produce materials with even higher performance, and provide recycling to new markets, we cannot stand still. We need to find new ways to do things, discover new solutions and develop new processes. Which is where you come in. 

What you will be doing 

Grow the revenues, improve profitability and increase market share. Manage the multi-layered relationship with the customers. Represent the voice of customers and aligning with BU strategic ambitions, and structures complex and multi-site intercompany relationships to optimally create and execute commercial strategy and tactics. Will analyze market dynamics of a rapidly evolving North American market and contributes to the strategic and budgetary planning of top line revenues of the business line for the region. 

Sales Planning, Execution & Business Development 

• Take ownership of the revenue for North America region for IR Solutions - Optics + Umicore Coating Services (UCS) - contributing to business growth. 

• Setup technical & commercial dialogues with customers, managing sales activities to stimulate, encourage and establish long-term relationships with customers for maintaining current and developing new business  

• Provide business cases to support management, technical and R&D teams for current and future product portfolio developments and capabilities. 

• Contributes to long term planning by analyzing the North American market in the context of the worldwide market (leading to market reviews with market segmentations, application roadmaps, societal trends, competitor analysis). 

• Act as Program manager on key accounts/product introductions, working with manufacturing and R&D, technical teams to ensure effective time to market and follow-on support at all stages in the life cycle of the program 

• Define/position customer specific value propositions to win contracts/orders 

• Create and negotiate customer contracts and agreements – by taking into account necessary profitability – Gross Margin & EBIT targets  

• Coordinating delivery schedules with operations and customers to manage timely deliverables. 

• Provide timely reporting of commercial management data – sales pipelines, forecasts, sales report, key account management information and activity reports – for sales and operational planning 

• Monitor and manage customer credit lines, accounts receivables and invoicing. 

• Make use of the available tools and systems such as SharePoint, Qlik, SAP, Salesforce etc. for solid customer service, sales planning & execution. 

• Travel to customer facilities, meet with existing & potential new customers, participate in tradeshows and represent the company at various events. 

• Liaise with EOM’s Strategic Business Development team & external marketing consultancies to provide input for marketing activities of IR Solutions and UCS. 

• Actively involved in organizing trade shows (SPIE Photonics West, DCS) to promote IR solutions & UCS products and services. 

• Take a lead role in the Government market segments and act as an expert to collect input from customers and value chain partners to better understand and prepare market & competitive intelligence studies. 

• Assist with the development and maintenance of documented controls (policies, procedures, processes, and work instructions). 

Safety & Quality 

• Participate in the safety briefings, trainings, and activities that are mandatory & necessary as per site EHS requirements. 

• Participate in safety tours together with the EHS representatives at site and have a visible safety commitment. 

• Provide support in Quality & environmental management - ISO 9001 & ISO 14001 – systems and safety management systems. 

• Liaise with customers to understand their quality and systems requirements and convey to the QA and Operations team to meet customer’s demands. 

• Initiate and support internal quality improvement projects. 

Who we are looking for 

Personal Skills 

• Strategic thinker and Results driven 

• Strong networking, influencing and negotiation skills 

• Strong interpersonal and communication skills (both written and spoken) with ability to relate with different profiles and in different cultures 

• Positive and open minded with a strong can-do attitude 

• Creative with excellent problem-solving skills; strong listening skills and ability to identify and develop new ideas and initiatives 

• Demonstrated affinity with numbers and financial metrics 

• Affinity with the application domain of the products and their use. The range of products and application technologies are highly technical. 

• Ability to influence in a complex matrix organization 

Education and/or Experience   

• University degree in science, engineering, commercial sciences or business administration 

• At least 5 years relevant experience and/ or equivalent combination of education and experience in sales, business administration in a manufacturing field of B2B environment with experience in optics industry preferred 

What we offer 

We aim to lead the way. Not just for our customers, but for our employees too. That is why we strive to create a collaborative environment in which we can all succeed, and a culture through which we can all share ideas, develop our expertise and advance our careers. We engage in building an inclusive work culture that offers equal opportunities for all employees irrespective of their diverse backgrounds. As you would expect from a world-leading organization, we will also reward your contribution with a competitive salary and benefits. With all this and more, imagine what you could do? 

Umicore is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate on the basis of age, race, religion, color, sex, national origin, marital status, genetic information, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, disability, veteran status, pregnancy status, or other status protected by law. 

If you need assistance in applying for this position, please contact Monica Patrick at monica.patrick@am.umicore.com