Supplier Business Partner - Contingent Workforce

About MBRDI\:
Mercedes-Benz Research and Development India (MBRDI), headquartered in Bengaluru with a satellite office in Pune, is the largest R&D center for Mercedes-Benz Group AG outside of Germany. Our mission is to drive innovation and excellence in automotive engineering, digitalization, and sustainable mobility solutions, shaping the future of mobility.

Role Title\:
Supplier Business Partnering Specialist – Supplier Business Partner Team

Role Purpose\:
The Supplier Business Partnering Specialist will play a critical role in evolving suppliers from transactional staffing vendors into trusted capability partners aligned to business priorities. This role operates at the intersection of Business, Procurement, and Suppliers to proactively shape demand, improve skill deployment, and ensure predictable, high-quality external workforce delivery.

The role is responsible for enabling business continuity and growth through disciplined external workforce management, system and data hygiene, supplier governance, and proactive demand planning. The SBP Specialist acts as a talent strategist, system disciplinarian, and performance integrator to strengthen supplier maturity and create scalable talent solutions aligned to MBRDI’s long-term strategy.

Key Responsibilities\:

• Partner closely with Business Leaders to anticipate external workforce demand 60–90 days in advance.
• Challenge JD clarity, skill requirements, and deployment assumptions before roles are released.
• Enable skill redeployment across projects before approving fresh hiring demand wherever feasible.
• Bring workforce intelligence such as availability, skill adjacency, cost, and supply risk into business discussions.
• Own structured supplier scorecards covering profile quality, speed of response, compliance, documentation, data accuracy, and bench readiness.
• Lead disciplined monthly and quarterly supplier reviews with clear improvement actions and follow-up mechanisms.
• Reduce JD–profile mismatch through structured intake calibration with business and suppliers.
• Manage supplier concentration, risk exposure, PO discipline, rate governance, and documentation compliance.
• Monitor bench availability across suppliers and internal pools to drive redeployment before new demand release.
• Improve first-time-right submission quality by strengthening supplier understanding and accountability.
• Ensure clean master data alignment across Vendor, Role, Cost Center, PO, FG, and S4 systems.
• Reduce rate mismatches, PO discrepancies, manual workarounds, and demand-to-PO data inconsistencies.
• Track recurring system errors and drive structural fixes through process discipline.
• Identify recurring friction in sourcing, onboarding, deployment, or billing cycles and lead root-cause resolution.
• Escalate systemic risks proactively and drive continuous improvement across SBP, Suppliers, Business, and Systems.
• Stay informed on emerging skills, rate movements, talent scarcity trends, and supplier capability evolution.
• Provide proactive recommendations to BRMs, HRBPs, and business stakeholders on build vs buy vs redeploy decisions.

Required Skills and Experience\:

• Strong understanding of supplier ecosystem, external workforce management, and vendor governance.
• Experience in supplier partnering, workforce planning, talent deployment, procurement coordination, or HR operations.
• Ability to understand and learn IT/R&D skill requirements and translate them into supplier delivery expectations.
• Strong analytical skills with comfort in data, dashboards, reporting, and workforce intelligence.
• Good understanding of system and data hygiene across workforce, vendor, cost center, PO, and billing processes.
• Ability to identify recurring process gaps and solve structural issues rather than only transactional escalations.
• Strong stakeholder management skills with the ability to work with Business Leaders, Suppliers, Procurement, HRBPs, and BRMs.
• High ownership mindset with accountability for delivery quality, process discipline, and supplier maturity.
• Digitally fluent, curious, fast-learning, and comfortable working in a complex R&D/GCC environment.
• Strong communication, problem-solving, governance, and review management skills.