Director, Cost Engineering

Job Description

Director, Cost Engineering

The LEGO Group, Singapore or Billund

Relocation support can be provided

An exceptional opportunity to join the Procurement team at The LEGO Group!

This is an exciting role within Global Procurement to drive best-in-class cost management at The LEGO Group.

The Director of Cost Engineering leads the development and deployment of enterprise-wide should-costing, cost transparency, and value engineering capabilities to improve commercial outcomes, supplier negotiations, product affordability, and cross-functional decision making.

The role combines deep technical cost understanding with strategic procurement leadership, enabling the organisation to:

• improve cost competitiveness,
• strengthen supplier negotiations,
• accelerate fact-based decision making,
• and drive sustainable margin improvement across direct material and operational spend.

The role will lead a team of Cost engineers across different categories in Procurement and work closely with teams in Finance and Categories to deliver on the agenda.

Core Responsibilities

Strategic Cost Leadership:

• Define and execute the global Cost Engineering strategy aligned to business and procurement objectives
• Establish a long-term capability roadmap covering tools, data, operating model, governance, and talent aligned to the business goals and with great awareness for how to bring others along the journey
• Exceptional leadership skills to lead an agile cost engineering team building capabilities in cost engineering. Ensure deployment of agile resources based on value and risk to the LEGO Group
• Embed cost transparency and should-cost methodologies into sourcing and category management processes
• Support leadership with fact-based cost intelligence and market insights
• Establish market forecasting approach and link to category dashboards: Build automated dashboards linked to cost driver model and define category critical metric
• Build category capabilities through “train-the-trainer” approach: Roll out cost models by category, working closely with category leaders and teams
• Project Cost management: Project or program specific design for cost. Drive for DfX (e.g. element costs, process costs)
• Run ongoing market monitoring process & flag risks / opportunities: Manage overall monitoring process as part of overall procurement governance
• Understand lean manufacturing and operations costs to drive operational efficiency and waste reduction opportunities in our suppliers

Procurement Partnership

• Partner with Procurement leaders to define suitable roadmaps for cost efficiency each year, strengthening supplier negotiations and target setting
• Support strategic sourcing, RFQ validation, and supplier cost challenge activities
• Support supplier performance and productivity programmes

Digital & Capability Development

• Liaise with external industry experts to develop AI/data-enabled cost engineering capabilities
• Lead implementation of digital costing platforms and analytics tools

Qualifications:

• A qualified Engineer with minimum of 10+ years of total working experience in Procurement, Finance or Supply Chain and a minimum of 8 years' experience in Cost engineering
• Successful, multi-year track record in product development or cost engineering
• Subject matter expert on cost engineering in 1 or more categories in Procurement (such as packaging, plastics, electronics, etc.)
• Exceptional problem-solving and analytical skills
• Advanced communication and facilitation skills with the ability to effectively influence decisions and collaborate across all levels of the organization.
• Executive reporting and insight generation
• Outstanding cross-functional leadership skills; viewed as credible by business unit/functional leaders.
• Willingness to “constructively dissent” and challenge senior management thinking on key procurement issues
• High energy and the enthusiasm to establish a new approach; Entrepreneurial and solution-priority working ways.
• Experience in developing and leading change in global/regional programs.
• Prior experience working as part of a high-perform leadership team within a global organization.
• Flexibility for global travel.

Nice to have:

• Experience in developing AI/ Agent based costing methods
• Ability to lead an enterprise wide global transformation programme

#LI-SG1

Applications are reviewed on an ongoing basis. However, please note we do amend or withdraw our jobs and reserve the right to do so at any time, including prior to any advertised closing date. So, if you're interested in this role we encourage you to apply as soon as possible.

What’s in it for you?

Here is what you can expect:

Family Care Leave - We offer enhanced paid leave options for those important times.

Insurances – All colleagues are covered by our life and disability insurance which provides protection and peace of mind.

Wellbeing - We want our people to feel well and thrive. We offer resources and benefits to nurture physical and mental wellbeing along with opportunities to build community and inspire creativity.

Colleague Discount – We know you'll love to build, so from day 1 you will qualify for our generous colleague discount.

Bonus - We do our best work to succeed together. When goals are reached and if eligible, you'll be rewarded through our bonus scheme.

Workplace - When you join the team you'll be assigned a primary workplace location i.e. one of our Offices, stores or factories. Our hybrid work policy means an average of 3 days per week in the office. The hiring team will discuss the policy and role eligibility with you during the recruitment process.

Children are our role models. Their curiosity, creativity and imagination inspire everything we do. We strive to create a diverse, dynamic and inclusive culture of play at the LEGO Group, where everyone feels safe, valued and they belong.

The LEGO Group is highly committed to equal employment opportunity and equal pay and seeks to encourage applicants from all backgrounds (eg. sex, gender identity or expression, race/ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, disability, age and religion) to apply for roles in our team.

The LEGO Group is fully committed to Children’s Rights and Child Wellbeing across the globe. Candidates offered positions with high engagement with children are required to take part in Child Safeguarding Background Screening, as a condition of the offer.

Thank you for sharing our global commitment to Children’s Rights.

Just imagine building your dream career.

Then make it real.

Join the LEGO® team today.