From the drawing to the dock
01 / 07 · The Board
02 / 07 · The Model
Ten suppliers quote in
ten different shapes.
Onto one matrix, or you are not comparing anything.
01 / 10
03 / 07 · The Clause
The price is on
the first page.
The risk is forty
pages further in.
04 / 07 · The Table
31% below
incumbent quotes.
Found by re-specifying,
not by squeezing.
You need them again next year.
05 / 07 · The Ledger
An adjudication you cannot explain line by line
is an adjudication that will not survive review.
06 / 07 · The Floor
Mechanical engineer first,
buyer second.
I interrogate the specification,
not just the quote.
07 / 07 · The Dock
A purchase order is not finished
when it is signed.
It is finished when the correct object
is standing in the right place.
The supply base
Spare parts, automation, motion, vacuum, pneumatics and line equipment. Global OEMs alongside qualified alternative sources, because the savings live in knowing both. A single-source specification is a price you have already agreed to pay.
The vacancy notice
Seven responsibilities are listed for IPT-PLS-2026-184-LD. Here is each one, in CERN’s words, against what I already do.
01 / 07
CERN
Prepare price enquiries, market surveys and invitations to tender in accordance with the Organization’s Procurement Rules and on an international basis.
Evidence
CERN
Analyse offers, prepare proposals for adjudications and submit these to CERN’s Management.
Evidence
CERN
Ensure the preparation, negotiation and follow-up of numerous orders and contracts.
Evidence
CERN
Carry out market research to identify potential suppliers.
Evidence
CERN
Advise and support the Organization in identifying and ensuring cost efficiency and quality.
Evidence
CERN
Contribute to the advancement of CERN’s procurement techniques and tools, influencing their modernisation and optimisation.
Evidence
CERN
Foster and sustain a wide-ranging network of relationships across diverse levels, both internally and externally.
Evidence
Seven responsibilities. Seven answers.
The only variable is scale, and scale is the part I want to learn from you.
What I offer
01
The whole cycle, not a slice of it.
02
A mechanical engineer who learned the commerce, not the reverse.
03
Procurement that leaves an auditable trail and a dashboard.
The route here
In 2012, CERN announced they had found the Higgs boson.
I was a few weeks into a mechanical engineering degree in Odisha. I loved the physics, and I still do. What I could not stop thinking about was the machine. Twenty-seven kilometres of it, buried under two countries. Somebody had specified every part of that. Somebody had to buy it.
I decided I wanted to be in a place that builds things like that. Then I went and got a job on a shop floor.
August 2017, Freudenberg, Pune. Outbound shipments, stock audits, chasing discrepancies. Not glamorous. But a shop floor teaches you the thing most procurement people learn a decade too late: a purchase order is not finished when it is signed. It is finished when the correct object is standing in the right place, on the right day, and somebody has checked that it is correct.
I stayed six years and worked up through it. Material planning, S&OP and master scheduling, APQP and PPAP with suppliers, transport strategy, and the launches where a specification changes on a Friday and production starts on Monday.
The automotive division was three people. I was the third. Which meant my manager and I sat in every department there was, and I ran projects end to end because there was nobody else to run them. Three went the full cycle, design to delivery: a PM2.5 cabin filter, a tractor filtration programme, and a hydrogen fuel-cell filter built with the German team.
By 2023 I could see the ceiling. So I did the uncomfortable thing.
I quit, moved to France, and went back to being a student. An MSc in Global Supply Chain Management and Procurement at SKEMA, with MIT-partnered coursework in analytics and SQL.
I chose France partly for the school. And partly because CERN sits on the French border, and Switzerland was well outside my budget.
I did not speak the language. I took an internship at illycaffè in Paris and spent five months cleaning 450 supplier records and 4,500 product references. It was a nightmare. It also taught me more about master data than any course has.
In October 2025 I joined AESC’s gigafactory in Douai, buying the technical spares and production equipment that keep five battery lines running. In six months I delivered the highest savings on the purchasing team. Then I built the tool that tracks it, because the ERP could not.
CERN buys objects that do not exist yet, from a continent of suppliers, under rules that have to survive scrutiny, for machines that cannot wait. That is the hardest version of the job I already do.
Fourteen years ago I watched someone announce what the machine had found.
I would like to help buy the next one.
The long version
The Higgs boson
CERN finds it, and it is on every news channel. What sticks with me is not the particle. It is the machine.
Mechanical engineering begins
Odisha. Four years of drawings, tolerances, and learning how a thing is actually put together.
Graduated
Degree in hand. I did not yet know that buying the hardware was a job you could have.
Post graduate diploma
Advanced mechanical engineering. Going deeper on the technical side, deliberately.
Freudenberg
Sales and logistics engineer, Pune. A shop floor teaches you that a purchase order is not finished when it is signed.
SETI@home
I hand my machine to the search for someone else out there. It runs all night, for years.
SETI@home hibernates
Twenty-one years of volunteers, paused. The habit of pointing instruments at hard questions does not stop.
Promoted
Application and supply chain assistant manager. The division was three people. I was the third, so I ran projects end to end.
SKEMA Business School
I quit a job I was good at, moved to France, and went back to being a student. MSc supply chain and procurement.
illycaffè
Five months, 450 supplier records, 4,500 product references. It was a nightmare. It taught me master data.
ISTELI
On the jury, on the other side of the table. Asking students the logistics question they did not prepare for.
AESC gigafactory
Purchasing coordinator. Five battery lines to keep running, and 31% under incumbent quotes in the first six months.
The other end
Geneva. Twenty-seven kilometres of machine, and somebody has to buy the next one.
Evidence
CERN’s vacancy notice asks for someone who will “contribute to the advancement of procurement techniques and tools.” I did that before anyone asked, twice.
Education
Systems
Methods
Contact
Procurement and Contracts Officer · IPT-PI · Geneva
Available from January 2027 · fully mobile