DirecciónBusiness Context
Unilever’s Business Operations (UBO) organisation is a global operation consisting of, among other key areas:
Within the supply chain over 250 factories and over 400 warehouses, procuring billions of euros of goods and services and delivering over 4.5bn cases of products across more than 210,000 locations. Supply chain is a critical lever to Unilever’s business fundamentals, with an increasing emphasis on the effective use of third-party manufacturers to manufacture our products.
The end-to-end value supply chain controls most of Unilever’s inventory, manages a majority of Unilever’s costs and physical assets, and sets the foundation to generate revenue through delivering product availability.
Market-leading fund, technology, data management and related projects connected within the tracing, reduction and tracking of GHG usage and the sustainable-sourcing and tracing of a wide range of commodities, including palm, soy, cocoa and diary.
Unilever’s supply chain is an industry leader in responsible and sustainable sourcing (SUSO), with the Supply Chain responsible for bringing to life Unilever’s Responsible Sourcing Policy in all areas.
Within the UniOps function, Unilever purchases several EUR Bn a year of software and technology services, including cutting edge deals in the areas of digital mapping and sustainability tracing blockchain.
The Customer Operations teams, which manage the global distribution of our products, including the fast-growing areas of supply chain and direct-to-customer e-commerce, including outsourcing of some supply chain operations functions and complex logistics projects.
Within the Commodity Risk Management (CRM) team within UAPL, hedges EUR 5 to 7 billion of commodity price exposures per year.
These areas are supported by a specialist, lean global legal team business partners, called the Unilever Business Operations (UBO) Legal Team located in Singapore, London, Rotterdam, Bangalore, New York, Mexico City, Sao Paolo, Durban/Johannesburg and Barcelona.
The advertised position is within both the Ice Cream global legal team and the UBO global legal team based in Barcelona and co-locating with other senior Unilever legal team members, with day to day reporting to the relevant Business Operations GC (legal director) responsible for Ice Cream Product Supply and Procurement.
You will be, closely supported by a multi-tiered system of internal and external drafting and negotiation supports, including contract lawyers, legal services insourcing and outsourcing and, where complexity necessitates, outside law firms.
This is a level 2B (Senior Counsel) role, and as such comes with significant scopes of responsibility.
This job includes the management and supervision of external and internal legal supports, and in large part the daily work concerns supervision of such work and management of matters of a complexity or internal sensitivity that cannot be fully outsourced.
Where you will fit in:
- Member of the global UBO Legal team and the global Ice Cream Legal team.
- Mentoring of junior colleagues within the Unilever Powerhouse legal team in Bangalore.
- Day to day reporting to the Business Operations GC (Legal Director) responsible for Ice Cream Product Supply and Procurement, who will also provide daily supervision and expertise training.
- You will have multiple in-house FTE junior and mid-level legal supports, and also access where needed to a pool of mature contractors for bespoke work, and also, as complexity dictates, to law firms.
- Supporting the Business Operations GC in business partnering Ice Cream Business Group for product supply and procurement matters globally.
- Leading business partnering with EU procurement and customer operations (logistics) colleagues focused on Ice Cream product supply chain.
- Member of the broader global legal function, cooperating with: BU GCs, UBO lawyer networks, country lawyers, patent/IP specialists, competition law specialists, and other legal colleagues and internal Tax, Central Business Model, HR, Quality, Safety, Finance and Insurance experts.
- Some attendance in a local Unilever office will be required, within our hybrid flexible working policies and guidelines.
What you will do – the Scopes of Work:
- You will support primarily the teams listed above, as a legal business partner, and leveraging in-house and external legal team supports, including supporting the following work areas:
- As Senior Counsel for the Ice Cream supply chain:
This work involves supporting the many facets of the global Ice Cream business group’s supply chain and related needs, including manufacturing network related projects and projects that overlap with the other portfolios e.g., work in carbon reduction in the Ice Cream network, optimizing cold chain projects, Ice Cream cabinet management etc. It also involves work on contract manufacturing and new procurement models and major deals.
- As Senior Counsel for the Ice Cream procurement team:
Support procurement of raw materials, packaging materials, capex, services for the Ice Cream business group including procurement of dairy, cocoa, other commodities and ingredients, sustainable replacement materials, capex/MRO etc.
- As legal business partner to the EU/UK region for Ice Cream:
You will supervise and lead the following within EU/UK:
- logistics and warehouse services projects and regional logistics supply contracts, and outsourcing deals for supply chain processes;
- contract manufacturing contracts, the termination of existing contract manufacturing relationships;
- capex (e.g., new or extended factories, laboratories or offices, equipment orders, engineering services orders);
- asset light (factory sale and long-term service agreement) deals;
- Renewable energy / renewable power projects (capex, PPAs etc.) in EU and providing global level guidance on this area;
- International sales of materials and / or goods contracts;
- on an occasional basis, management of claims and litigation for supply chain matters within the work scopes above; and
- on an occasional basis, work of the types above in other areas of the world.
In this role, your responsibilities will include that you:
- Provide leadership team support and business counselling;
- Provide scoping of work instructions;
- Supervision of drafting and analysis for legal matters;
- Provision of advice and management of contract negotiations, reviews and drafting;
- Identify legal risks and help the business to navigate them, providing creative but legally-compliant solutions;
- Provide concise guidance and advice on escalated legal and risk issues;
- Create clear risk analysis and guidance for a non-legal audience; and
- Provide clear instructions to external and internal legal service providers, contract support lawyers and law firms.
We are aware that some of these work scope areas are specialist in nature. Whilst we welcome applicants with wide and relevant expertise, you should still apply if there are one or more areas in which you will need ramp-up support from our subject matter expertise colleagues.
Success factors:
The successful candidate will be a person who:
- Has an academic degree in law and a current bar qualification in any relevant jurisdiction, with at least 8+ years of experience in legal advisory and drafting work.
- Is comfortable, with low levels of escalation of queries and limited supervision of written work product, with the benefit of the internal and external legal supports noted above, to instruct the drafting of, reviewing and redrafting as needed, through to completion, a wide range of medium and complex contracts and matters within the Scopes of Work.
- Experience in contract manufacturing / third party manufacturing will be particularly useful for this role.
- Has a wide experience of multiple disciplines, including complex contracting, claims, litigation management, funds, finance, capex and policy-writing/review. Experience of leadership and supervision of both direct and non-direct reports and supporting resources.
- Has experience of advising senior stakeholders and their leadership teams.
- Has a range of experience of supporting procurement/buying teams.
- Has a fluent command of the English language i.e., for drafting and legal advisory work.
- Preferably, has a personal passion for Sustainable Sourcing and ESG matters, and experience in advising on the same.
- Has experience of drafting and reviewing complex funding, technology and finance contracts.
- Some understanding of commodity buying is preferred.
- Has sound cross-cultural skills, emotional maturity, ability conduct international business.
- Is self-motivated.
- Has the ability to argue with conviction points at-table.
- Has strong mental agility, and a mental willingness to learn and understand unfamiliar areas of work.
- Has a willingness to work a flexible working day, since some early-start and evening telephone calls (from home) will sometimes be needed for effective communication with global team members and global business partners.
The job scope for this role is inherently dynamic and varied, responding as needed to the major events of the day e.g., conflicts, pandemics, internal restructuring.
Key Interfaces:
Within Legal – Ice Cream Legal colleagues, Business Operations GC (director) responsible for Ice Cream Product Supply, other Business Operations senior counsels globally, central expertise team lawyers (e.g., IP, competition law), the Corporate and Transactions legal team.
Within the Business – The direct client interfaces will predominantly be within the following areas:
- Ice Cream Product Supply Leadership team and their team members
- Ice Cream Procurement team
- Global capex procurement team;
- CRM team; and
- EU/UK Customer Operations (including logistics) and procurement teams, supply chain teams and procurement teams (including Unilever International).
Unilever is an organisation committed to equity, inclusion and diversity to drive our business results and create a better future, every day, for our diverse employees, global consumers, partners, and communities. We believe a diverse workforce allows us to match our growth ambitions and drive inclusion across the business. At Unilever we are interested in every individual bringing their ‘Whole Self’ to work and this includes you! Thus if you require any support or access requirements, we encourage you to advise us at the time of your application so that we can support you through your recruitment journey.
