Supply Chain Associate Visa Sponsorship Jobs in Minnesota

INTRODUCTION

At Nextern, we inspire with passion, impact with significance, and act with integrity. Nextern partners with OEMs, clinicians, and innovators to design, develop, and manufacture world-class medical devices across the full product lifecycle. From single-use disposables to fully integrated systems to precision components, our teams work as an extension of yours to solve patient needs and improve lives worldwide. The Director, Global Supply Chain provides global functional leadership for Nextern’s end-to-end supply chain organization. This role is responsible for building and leading an integrated global supply chain capable of supporting Nextern’s growth, manufacturing network, customer commitments, and increasingly complex global operations. The Director will have end-to-end responsibility across strategic sourcing, procurement, supplier management, supply planning, inventory management, materials management, warehousing, logistics, and supply-chain risk. The role will establish the organizational capabilities, processes, systems, governance, and infrastructure necessary to operate as a cohesive global function while maintaining strong connectivity to Nextern’s manufacturing sites. A key priority will be advancing Global Supply Chain as a core element of the Nextern Operating System (NOS). The Director will lead the maturation and integration of supply-chain processes, systems, data, management routines, and capabilities across the global network, creating greater consistency, transparency, accountability, and scalability. This position requires a leader who can build organizations and capabilities, develop strong functional leaders, establish clear standards and operating mechanisms, and partner effectively across sites and functions. Success will require balancing global functional leadership with the needs and realities of local manufacturing operations.

Responsibilities

Global Supply Chain Leadership

- Provide functional leadership and direction for Nextern’s global supply chain organization, including teams supporting the United States, Costa Rica, Vietnam, and China.
- Establish and execute a global supply chain strategy aligned with Nextern’s business strategy, growth plans, manufacturing footprint, and customer requirements.
- Build a cohesive global function with clear organizational accountability, decision rights, standards, priorities, and performance expectations.
- Develop the organizational structure, leadership capability, and functional expertise required to support Nextern’s continued growth and increasing operational complexity.
- Establish global priorities while maintaining appropriate flexibility for local site execution and customer requirements.
- Build strong working relationships between global supply chain leadership, manufacturing site leadership, and other enterprise functions.

Strategic Sourcing, Procurement & Supplier Management

- Lead Nextern’s global approach to strategic sourcing, procurement, supplier management, and supplier development.
- Establish category and sourcing strategies that balance cost, quality, delivery, capacity, continuity of supply, and long-term business requirements.
- Strengthen supplier selection, qualification, negotiation, contracting, performance management, and ongoing supplier relationship management.
- Develop a more coordinated approach to supplier negotiations and leverage Nextern’s global purchasing scale where appropriate.
- Establish consistent supplier performance measures, governance, and escalation mechanisms across the global organization.
- Partner with Quality and Operations to improve supplier performance, address systemic issues, and strengthen supplier capabilities.
- Proactively identify and manage supply continuity risks, capacity constraints, geographic risks, sole-source dependencies, and other vulnerabilities within the global supply base.

Supply Planning & Inventory

- Provide executive functional ownership for the processes and capabilities supporting demand planning, supply planning, SIOP, production and material planning, MRP, and inventory management.
- Partner closely with the Principal, Global Supply Planning & Inventory Strategy to develop and deploy common planning methodologies, inventory strategies, planning analytics, and MRP governance across the global organization.
- Establish clear planning processes, operating rhythms, accountability, and metrics that improve visibility and enable faster, fact-based decision making.
- Drive improved balance between customer service, manufacturing requirements, supply continuity, working capital, and inventory risk.
- Strengthen inventory governance, including management of excess and obsolete inventory, safety stock, inventory health, and other key inventory drivers.
- Ensure planning processes connect effectively across commercial, customer program, operations, finance, and supply-chain teams.

Materials, Warehousing & Logistics

- Establish global standards and expectations for materials management, warehousing, logistics, and inventory control.
- Strengthen material-flow processes from suppliers through manufacturing operations and ultimately to customers.
- Develop consistent approaches to warehouse management, material handling, inventory accuracy, transaction discipline, transportation, and logistics performance.
- Partner with site and operations leadership to improve material availability while reducing unnecessary inventory, handling, expediting, and operational complexity.
- Identify opportunities to improve Nextern’s global logistics network, service performance, cost, and supply-chain resilience.

Nextern Operating System & Functional Maturity

- Serve as a key leader in the continued development and deployment of the Nextern Operating System (NOS) across Global Supply Chain.
- Build an integrated and scalable supply chain operating model by maturing the processes, systems, infrastructure, data, management routines, and organizational capabilities required to support Nextern’s growth.
- Establish common global processes, standards, governance, KPIs, and management routines across sourcing, procurement, supplier management, planning, inventory, materials, warehousing, and logistics.
- Assess and strengthen the systems, tools, data, and infrastructure required to support an increasingly connected global supply chain.
- Drive process integration across sites and functions, clearly defining global standards, ownership, decision rights, interfaces, and appropriate local flexibility.
- Reduce unnecessary fragmentation and site-specific ways of working where global standards and common processes can improve performance and scalability.
- Establish greater process discipline, data integrity, visibility, accountability, and repeatability throughout the supply-chain organization.
- Embed structured problem solving, continuous improvement, standard work, performance management, and fact-based decision making into day-to-day supply chain leadership.
- Partner across Operations, Quality, Finance, Commercial, IT, and other functions to strengthen end-to-end processes rather than optimizing individual functions in isolation.
- Build sustainable capabilities that reduce organizational dependence on individual knowledge and enable Nextern to scale effectively.

Global Functional & Site Partnership

- Own global supply chain functional standards, talent, organizational capability, processes, priorities, governance, and functional performance.
- Establish strong partnerships with site leaders to ensure global supply-chain priorities are integrated effectively into day-to-day manufacturing operations.
- Maintain clear accountability between global functional leadership and local site execution.
- Support site leadership in resolving significant material, supplier, planning, inventory, and logistics challenges.
- Ensure global standards create value for the manufacturing sites and customers rather than unnecessary organizational complexity.
- Foster collaboration and knowledge sharing across the global supply chain network.

People & Organizational Leadership

- Build, develop, and retain a strong global supply chain leadership team.
- Establish clear expectations and accountability while empowering regional and site supply chain leaders to execute effectively.
- Develop functional talent and succession pipelines across supply-chain disciplines and geographies.
- Establish appropriate competencies, career paths, and development opportunities for supply-chain professionals throughout Nextern.
- Coach and develop leaders who can operate effectively in a matrixed, global manufacturing environment.
- Create a culture that values accountability, collaboration, transparency, disciplined execution, continuous improvement, and proactive problem solving.

Performance Management & Business Partnership

- Establish meaningful global supply chain KPIs and management routines that provide clear visibility to performance, risks, and priorities.
- Use data and analytics to identify systemic issues, understand root causes, prioritize resources, and drive sustainable improvement.
- Partner with Finance to improve visibility to inventory, purchase commitments, material cost, working capital, and supply-chain financial performance.
- Partner with Commercial and customer-facing teams to ensure supply-chain capabilities and constraints are appropriately reflected in customer commitments and business decisions.
- Provide the COO and executive leadership team with clear visibility to significant supply-chain risks, performance trends, capability gaps, and improvement priorities.

QUALIFICATIONS

Required

- Bachelor’s degree in Supply Chain, Operations, Engineering, Business, or a related discipline; advanced degree preferred.
- Significant progressive leadership experience across multiple supply-chain disciplines within a manufacturing environment.
- Demonstrated experience leading across multiple sites, regions, or countries in a global supply-chain organization.
- Broad experience across strategic sourcing, procurement, supplier management, planning, inventory, materials management, warehousing, and logistics.
- Demonstrated success building or maturing supply-chain organizations, processes, systems, and management infrastructure.
- Experience implementing common processes, governance, KPIs, and operating mechanisms across decentralized or multi-site operations.
- Strong understanding of ERP/MRP-enabled planning environments and the role of systems, master data, analytics, and transactional discipline in effective supply-chain execution.
- Experience leading organizational and process transformation while maintaining day-to-day operational performance.
- Strong business and financial acumen, including understanding of inventory, working capital, material cost, supplier economics, and operational performance.
- Strong communication, influence, negotiation, and change-leadership capabilities.
- Demonstrated ability to develop leaders and build high-performing teams across geographic and organizational boundaries.
- Ability to travel routinely up to 15%, with flexibility for periods of higher travel based on business needs.

Preferred

- Experience within medical device, life sciences, or another highly regulated manufacturing environment preferred.
- Experience working within complex outsourced manufacturing, contract manufacturing, or customer-driven manufacturing models preferred.

COMPENSATION

- Salary range: $150,000 to $230,000 depending on skills and experience

BENEFITS

- Health Care Plan (Medical, Dental & Vision)
- Retirement Plan with Company Match
- Paid Time Off, Personal Days, AND Birthday Holiday!
- Lifetime Membership Subsidy and Wellness Resources
- Life Insurance (Basic, Voluntary & AD&D)
- Family Leave (Maternity, Paternity)
- Short-Term & Long-Term Disability
- Taco Thursdays!!!

Nextern is an equal opportunity employer. We encourage applications from candidates of all backgrounds and experiences, and we are committed to fostering an inclusive and diverse workplace. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or veteran status.