Contracts Manager (Travel & Workplace Services)

Guide Dogs - Where Every Role Makes a Difference

Come and join us as self‑motivated and purpose‑driven Contracts Manager and be part of something life‑changing - helping people with sight loss live the life they choose.

As a Contracts Manager at Guide Dogs, you’ll play a key role in delivering effective contract management and commercial oversight, ensuring our services are delivered efficiently, sustainably, and represent excellent value for money. You’ll work in close partnership with Directors, senior managers and wider teams to provide specialist advice that supports the best use of donor funding. The Contracts Manager will be an expert in contract management, commercial strategy, supplier performance, and value for money delivery. Our Contracts Managers play a huge part in ensuring everything we do enables us to deliver on our purpose and exceed expectations.

Key Responsibilities

• Vendor Management: To manage a range of large, complex contracts for Guide Dogs ensuring contract service levels are delivered, each contract is performing in line with expectations and value for money is achieved.
• Relationship Management: Building and maintain good working relationships with the Business Owner and the Supplier representatives. Proactive identification of opportunities to work with Suppliers to make contracts more effective, efficient and sustainable.
• Continuous Improvement: Identifying opportunities for process improvement or cost savings and implementing best practices to enhance efficiency, effectiveness, and compliance in contract management.
• Contract Monitoring and Reporting: Communicating with stakeholders to ensure they are up to speed with contract milestones and deliverables. Managing regular contract management meetings, preparing and filing correspondence including briefs, letters, emails and reports. Developing regular reports on the status of all contracts for senior management as and when required.
• Risk Mitigation: Early identification of risks and issues that may impact delivery always aiming to resolve issues as soon as possible or escalate where appropriate.
• Compliance: Working closely with the Procurement Business Partners, the wider Procurement department and organisation, including Finance, Legal, IS and the Data Protection Officer (DPO) to ensure contracts are delivering as envisaged and remain compliant.
• Training: Providing Contract Management advice and training to others within the organisation as and when required.

You

You’ll have a proactive and detail-oriented approach to managing complex contracts and supplier relationships. You’ll enjoy working in a fast-paced, multi-project environment with a dedicated focus on delivering value for money, maintaining quality standards, and ensuring compliance with legal and contractual requirements. You’ll act with integrity and honesty in everything you do.

Skills and Competencies

• Educated to A level standard (QCF Level 3 / SQCF Levels 6-7)
• Achievement of 5 GCSE passes or equivalent with at least a grade C in Maths & English (QCF level 2 / SQCF level 5)
• Demonstrable evidence of managing different types of large, complex contracts including contracts for goods services and capital works.
• Demonstrable evidence of managing contracts in different industries including Travel, Facilities & Workplace services.
• Demonstrable evidence of dispute resolution and supplier performance management.
• Demonstrate a solid understanding of legal terminology, contract law and other applicable legislation e.g.: GDPR, Modern Slavery.

Benefits

We wouldn’t be able to change the lives of people with sight loss without our people. That’s why it’s important for us to provide a variety of benefits that reward our colleagues in a way that suits them and recognises the hard work and contribution that they make.

• 26 days annual leave. After three years of continuous employment, this increases to 28 days plus bank holidays.
• Real Living Wage Employer
• Flex pot - equal to a proportion of your annual salary to use on our wide variety of flexible benefits
• The option to buy and sell annual leave
• Discounts and cash-back scheme
• Excellent pension scheme (We will match your pension contributions plus 2% up to a maximum of 9% employer contribution)
• And lots more!

For high volumes of applications, we reserve the right to close adverts earlier than advertised.

Our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

Behind Every Guide Dog Is Someone Like You - We’re passionate about creating an inclusive workplace that celebrates and values diversity. Bring your whole self to work regardless of age, disability, gender identity or reassignment, marital or civil partner status, pregnancy or maternity, race, nationality, ethnic or national origin, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation. We don’t want you to ‘fit’ our culture, we want you to enrich it. 

How to apply

Further details on the full role are attached below. When you are ready to apply, submit an online application form via this page.  Please note - If you are successful you will need to provide evidence of your right to work in the UK via our digital ID checking supplier.  We cannot offer visa sponsorship at this time.

As part of your application ensure you provide evidence and examples of how your skills & experience meet the criteria as set out in the attached job description. You will also be asked to complete a few job-specific questions, so please be prepared to write your answers to these questions.

If you choose to use AI tools to assist in completing your application, please use them appropriately.  We value authenticity. If you want to stand out, using a generic AI-generated response isn’t going to separate you from the crowd. This is your time to shine and showcase your unique skills, personality, and thought processes!  You can find our full statement on the use of AI to complete applications on our careers website.

If you would like to have an informal conversation about the role before applying, or require any accessibility support to apply, our friendly recruitment team is ready and waiting to help. Call them on 0118 3540345 or drop an email to [email protected].

Safer recruitment

Guide Dogs follow Safer Recruitment practices to ensure we are safeguarding the vulnerable people we work with. As part of this, we require a full work history with any gaps accounted for & a minimum of 2 professional referee details fully covering the past 5 years. If you are applying for a disclosure role, please note that you will be required to undergo an enhanced DBS check and sign up to the DBS update service.

At Guide Dogs, we believe in fair and equitable hiring practices. A criminal record will not automatically disqualify an applicant from consideration for a position. Each case will be evaluated individually. We encourage all candidates to disclose relevant information, and we assure you that it will be handled confidentially and fairly.