AI Tech Lead – Sourcing

Life. Unlimited. At Smith+Nephew we design and manufacture technology that takes the limits off living.

Join us as an AI Tech Lead – Sourcing, where you'll play a pivotal role in shaping the future of AI enabled procurement. Working at the intersection of Procurement, IT, Data and Enterprise Architecture, you will design and deliver innovative AI solutions that transform sourcing and source to pay processes across our global organization. This is an opportunity to influence enterprise wide strategy, accelerate intelligent decision making, and help deliver scalable, secure, and responsible AI solutions.

What will you be doing?

• Lead end to end solution architecture for AI enabled sourcing and procurement capabilities, including autonomous sourcing, category intelligence, negotiations, and payables.

• Translate business challenges and opportunities into scalable architecture designs, functional specifications, and delivery roadmaps.

• Define architecture patterns covering integrations, workflow orchestration, model selection, prompt design, grounding, and human oversight.

• Partner with stakeholders across Procurement, Finance, Legal, Compliance, Security, and Technology teams to ensure alignment and successful delivery.

• Drive AI governance, security, compliance, and responsible AI practices across procurement solutions.

• Provide technical leadership, architecture governance, and mentorship to product, engineering, and data teams.

• Act as a trusted advisor on procurement transformation and emerging AI opportunities.

What will you need to be successful?

• 10+ years of experience in Solution Architecture, Enterprise Applications, Digital Procurement, Supply Chain Technology, or related disciplines with meaningful exposure to Source to Pay processes.

• Strong expertise across sourcing, contracts, purchasing, supplier management, invoicing, and finance integration processes.

• Proven experience translating business requirements into architecture blueprints, integration designs, data flows, and implementation roadmaps.

• Experience designing enterprise AI solutions, including copilots, intelligent automation, knowledge assistants, document extraction, and AI governance considerations.

• Strong understanding of enterprise integration, data architecture, security, compliance, and non functional requirements.

• Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Procurement, Supply Chain, Business Administration, or a related field. Advanced degrees are preferred.

• Experience with technologies such as SAP S/4HANA, SAP Ariba, Microsoft Copilot, Azure AI Services, or similar enterprise platforms is highly desirable.