Australia’s procurement jobs market has changed. Regional investment booms are reshaping salaries, experienced CPOs are harder to secure, capability development is lagging and AI is transforming recruitment. Sean Johnson shares what’s driving these pressures and what CPOs should prioritise over the next 12 months.
Almost two weeks ago, I was lucky enough to be asked to present at the 15th Annual CPO Exchange for PASA on the Gold Coast, to a room of 35+ procurement leaders – and honestly, it’s one of the most invested rooms I’ve presented to in a while.
The feedback afterwards told me everything I needed to know: people aren’t just curious about where this market is headed; they’re worried about it.
Several attendees came up to me afterwards (and a few have messaged me since) to say the session put words to something they’d been feeling but hadn’t quite articulated – a tangible fear that the talent shortage is about to hit hard, driven by Olympics-linked infrastructure demand and the growing impact AI is having on job applications and hiring pipelines.
So, I wanted to share the core of what I presented, because clearly it struck a nerve:
The procurement jobs market isn’t broken, but the rules have changed.
Here’s what’s actually happening out there:
It’s a demand story, not a collapse
Cost-of-living pressure, a softening-but-stable jobless rate, an entrenched skills shortage and AI’s advance on white-collar work have combined into the most uncertain procurement jobs market in some time.
Geography now sets the price
Three cities, three booms, one wages problem:
Perth: mining and resources capex is pulling category talent out of adjacent industries. Senior category manager pay is running +22 percent above the national average.
Adelaide: the defence build-up wants clearance holders with complex-program experience – a genuinely scarce combination (+19 percent)
Brisbane: 2032 Olympics infrastructure is drawing program and category talent from across the eastern seaboard (+15 percent)
A single national pay band is now a liability, not a policy.
CPO roles are genuinely scarce
It’s not a headcount problem, it’s a pipeline problem. A decade of lean category-manager structures means few director-level candidates have real end-to-end transformation exposure, and incumbent employers are increasingly locking in their CPOs with handcuff-like incentives.
The result: search times have stretched at every level, but nowhere more than the top – CPO/director searches have increased significantly.
Training is the quiet gap
Plenty of employers are innovating to attract – parental leave, wellbeing perks, hybrid work.
Far fewer are investing to keep – structured category-management upskilling, AI-fluency programs, succession pipelines.
Perks win the offer. Capability wins the retention.
What this means for CPOs over the next 12 months
- Rebase pay bands by region, not just by role
- Fund capability alongside perks
- Build the succession bench deliberately
- Use contractors as a bridge, not a strategy
- Make the AI conversation explicit
Uncertainty is real. So is the opportunity to lead through it.
Building capability, not just headcount, is what will separate the leaders who win the talent contest from the ones who don’t.
Where are you feeling the pressure most: pay, pipeline or capability? I’d genuinely love to hear how it’s playing out in your business. That’s exactly the kind of conversation that made last week’s session so good.
Sean Johnson is client services director at Six Degrees Executive.
Connect with Sean to keep the conversation going.
