Senior Counsel Business Operations – Home Care, Supply Chain and Procurement

JOB TITLE: Senior Counsel Business Operations – Home Care, Supply Chain and Procurement

JOB LOCATION: Bangalore

ABOUT UNILEVER:

Be part of the world’s most successful, purpose-led business. Work with brands that are well-loved around the world, that improve the lives of our consumers and the communities around us. We promote innovation, big and small, to make our business win and grow; and we believe in business as a force for good. Unleash your curiosity, challenge ideas and disrupt processes; use your energy to make this happen. Our brilliant business leaders and colleagues provide mentorship and inspiration, so you can be at your best. Every day, nine out of ten Indian households use our products to feel good, look good and get more out of life – giving us a unique opportunity to build a brighter future.

Every individual here can bring their purpose to life through their work. Join us and you’ll be surrounded by inspiring leaders and supportive peers. Among them, you’ll channel your purpose, bring fresh ideas to the table, and simply be you. As you work to make a real impact on the business and the world, we’ll work to help you become a better you.

Who are we and what we offer...

We’re establishing three Legal Powerhouses in Bangalore, Mexico City and Barcelona, which will be an integral part of the Legal Function and provide defined, structured services to our other lawyers and to the wider business.

Where this position fits-into the team:

• Part of the Unilever Legal Powerhouse – a team we’re currently building, in Bangalore

• Integral part of the Unilever’s Legal Function - a global operation consisting of approximately 400 lawyers and specialists

• Based alongside the UniOps Function in Bangalore – a wider team of 1,600 that powers Unilever’s compass strategy through world class business operations enabled by technology and innovation.

Business 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, Sao Paolo, Durban and Barcelona.

The advertised position is within this global team, based in Bangalore and co-locating with multiple other senior Unilever legal team members, and reporting to the GC (director) Home Care Products / SEAA / Natural Materials Procurement, and the GC UBO, based in London and Singapore.

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 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 Home Care 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) Home Care Products / SEAA / Asia/Natural Materials Global Procurement who will also provide daily supervision and expertise training, with functional reporting being to the Group General Counsel for Home Care.

• 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 with the Natural Materials global procurement team and Home Care Business Group for product supply and procurement matters globally.

• Leading business partnering with SEAA procurement, supply chain and customer operations (logistics) colleagues in SEAA, and their country-specific legal teams.

• Offshore business partner with the Unilever Oleochemical Indonesia leadership team, in particular to support offshore sales legal matters and capex. Unilever Oleochemical Indonesia is a large palm oil refiner owned by Unilever, which refined palm oil into many of the materials needed for personal care products.

• Member of the broader global legal function, cooperating with: UBO Group lawyer networks, country lawyers, BG GCs, UBO network lawyers, patent/IP specialists, competition law specialists, IP specialists and other legal colleagues and internal tax, 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 supply chain and product officer business partner to the Home Care business group:

This work involves supporting the many facets of the global Home Care business group’s supply chain and related needs, including many projects that overlap with the other portfolios e.g., work in carbon reduction new materials projects, work on new fragrances business models. It also involves work on contract manufacturing and new procurement models and major deals, and unique areas of business such as air and water purifier businesses. You will here support the global work of the reporting line GC.

• As Senior Counsel for the global Natural Materials procurement portfolio:

Support the line manager GC as legal oversight for global natural materials, including commodities, soft oils (palm, soy) and sustainable replacement oils/detergents materials procurement deals (business partners primarily located across Europe and Asia) Unilever is the single largest private buyer of palm kernel oil, and therefore this work ties into the support for Unilever’s palm oil refinery, Unilever Oleochemical Indonesia (please see below). This area of work includes cutting-edge deals for the development and then bulk purchase of new, low impact materials such as rhamnolipids;

• As a legal business partner to the Global Flavors and Fragrances procurement team:

Support the line manager GC as legal oversight for this group, which sits within the global Natural Materials procurement portfolio and promotes industry-leading projects for the development and procurement of new fragrances, and the industry rollout of new business models (business partners predominantly located in the UK, Switzerland and Rotterdam).

• As offshore senior legal business partner to Unilever Oleochemical Indonesia:

This role falls into three parts:

• occasional support for the offshore sales activities of Unilever Oleochemical Indonesia to non-Unilever customers, guiding a locally-based counsel;
• occasional support for the large-scale palm oil procurement needed as feedstock for Unilever Oleochemical Indonesia, led by the Natural Materials procurement portfolio; and
• support for one-off projects, including capex expansions of the plant, guiding a locally-based counsel and overseeing external counsel supports.

• As offshore legal business partner to the SEAA region: As offshore senior legal business partner, you will supervise and lead the following within SEAA:

• 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 SEAA 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 business partners.

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 10+ 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, and in particular as regards one or more of: palm, caustic soda, alcohols, oleochemicals and soy.

• 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 – GC (director) Home Care Products / SEAA / Natural Materials Procurement, GC UBO, other Business Operations senior counsels globally, Home Care and other Business Unit Senior Counsels, central expertise team lawyers (e.g., IP, competition law), the Corporate and Transactions legal team and R&D/Patents specialists. The Home Care GC group and their BU counsels will each be a key interface. 

Within the Business – The direct client interfaces will predominantly be within the following areas:

• Home Care contract manufacturing team and product officer team (UK based);

• The VP leading the Natural Materials procurement portfolio, and the members of his leadership team (UK based);

• Global capex procurement team (India based);

• UOI procurement leads (Indonesia-based); and

• SEAA Customer Operations (including logistics) and procurement teams, supply chain teams and procurement teams (including Unilever International).

At HUL, we believe that every individual irrespective of their race, colour, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, nationality, caste, disability or marital status can bring their purpose to life. So apply to us, to unleash your curiosity, challenge ideas and disrupt processes; use your energy to make the world a better place. As you work to make a real impact on the business and the world, we’ll work to help you become a better you!