Procurement Manager – Marketing and Media – Al-Futtaim Group

Al-Futtaim Group runs marketing and media spend across a wide portfolio of businesses, from automotive to retail, which means procuring those services well requires both commercial negotiation skill and a solid handle on procurement compliance and risk. A Procurement Manager in this role owns sourcing, vendor management and compliance for marketing and media category spend across the group.

Day to day, the work involves running vendor selection and negotiation processes for marketing and media services (agencies, media buying, production, and related categories), managing supplier relationships and performance over time, and making sure every procurement activity complies with Al-Futtaim’s internal policies and applicable regulations. There’s a genuine risk management layer to the role too, since marketing spend can be significant and vendor arrangements need proper governance.

It suits someone with procurement or category management experience, ideally with specific exposure to marketing, media or agency-related sourcing, who’s comfortable balancing commercial negotiation with strict compliance requirements. Al-Futtaim’s scale means marketing and media spend across the group is substantial, so the role rewards people who can manage vendor relationships strategically rather than purely transactionally.

The appeal is category depth combined with genuine group-wide scope: this role gets to shape how marketing and media procurement is done across one of the region’s largest conglomerates, rather than for a single business unit.

Marketing and media spend across a conglomerate the size of Al-Futtaim is substantial, and how well it's procured directly affects both cost efficiency and the quality of vendor relationships that marketing teams across the group depend on to execute campaigns. A Procurement Manager who negotiates well and manages vendor performance consistently protects the business from both overspend and underperforming agency or media relationships, either of which can quietly erode marketing effectiveness without careful oversight. Because this role also owns procurement compliance and risk management for the category, it protects Al-Futtaim from the genuine exposure that comes with large, recurring vendor commitments, things like contract terms that don't hold up to scrutiny or vendor relationships that haven't gone through proper governance. Getting this category right at group level also means consistency: rather than each business unit separately renegotiating similar marketing and media contracts, a well-run central procurement function can apply learnings and leverage across the whole group, which compounds into real commercial advantage over time.

Procurement for marketing and media categories is a genuinely specialised niche within broader procurement, and building expertise here, especially at the scale Al-Futtaim operates at, is a distinctive and marketable skill set, since most procurement professionals specialise in more conventional categories like IT, facilities or raw materials. The role builds both hard negotiation skills and a working understanding of how marketing and media businesses operate commercially, which is valuable because it bridges two functions, procurement and marketing, that don't always understand each other well, making someone who can speak both languages genuinely useful to future employers. The compliance and risk management component of the role also builds governance skills that are increasingly valued across procurement functions generally, as organisations pay closer attention to vendor risk and contract governance. Working at group level across Al-Futtaim's diverse portfolio of businesses also means exposure to a wider range of marketing and media procurement scenarios than a single-business-unit role would offer, which is a strong credential for anyone aiming toward category management leadership, strategic sourcing, or a broader procurement director path later in their career. It's also a genuinely scarce specialism in the regional job market, since most procurement professionals have deep category expertise in more conventional areas, which makes marketing and media procurement experience stand out on a CV.

• Experience in procurement or category management, ideally in marketing, media or agency-related categories
• Strong vendor negotiation and relationship management skills
• Solid understanding of procurement compliance and risk management practices
• Comfort managing significant category spend across multiple business units
• Bachelor’s degree in business, procurement, or a related field
• Experience with procurement systems and vendor performance tracking
• Strong stakeholder management skills across marketing and business teams
• Ability to balance commercial outcomes with policy and regulatory compliance