Senior Manager, Strategic Pricing

About Kennametal

With over 85 years as an industrial technology leader, Kennametal Inc. delivers productivity to customers through materials science, tooling and wear-resistant solutions. Customers across aerospace and defense, earthworks, energy, general engineering and transportation turn to Kennametal to help them manufacture with precision and efficiency. Learn more at kennametal.com. Follow @Kennametal: Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube.

Senior Manager, Strategic Pricing

Location: Remote (U.S.)

Travel: Quarterly travel to Latrobe, PA

Job Summary

The Senior Manager, Strategic Pricing - Metal Cutting defines and executes the global pricing strategy for the Metal Cutting business across standard products, engineered solutions, custom tooling, strategic accounts, and distribution channels. The role drives profitable growth by strengthening price realization, reducing leakage, improving contract and special-pricing discipline, and embedding value-based pricing into commercial decision-making.

This leader establishes scalable pricing frameworks, governance, analytics, and tools while partnering with Product Management, Regional Sales, Customer Growth & Support, Finance, Marketing Communications, Digital Enablement, IT, Legal, Operations, and regional pricing teams. The role combines strategic leadership with hands-on execution and serves as a catalyst for building enterprise pricing capability, improving customer value capture, and accelerating data-driven decisions.

Job Responsibilities

• Define and execute global pricing strategy for the Metal Cutting business, aligning price, margin, portfolio, channel, and growth objectives.
• Establish pricing architecture, governance, guardrails, approval processes, and performance standards across regions.
• Drive price realization and margin improvement by reducing leakage across discounts, rebates, contracts, freight, and commercial terms.
• Develop value-based pricing for standard products, engineered solutions, custom tooling, and new product introductions.
• Lead pricing strategy and analytical support for strategic accounts, contracts, renewals, negotiations, and special-pricing programs.
• Build pricing dashboards, analytics, and digital tools that improve visibility, decision quality, and execution speed.
• Partner with Sales, Product Management, Finance, Operations, and regional teams to translate customer value and market insights into profitable actions.
• Lead and develop regional pricing teams while building enterprise pricing capability, accountability, and continuous improvement.

Details

Global Pricing Strategy & Governance

• Define and execute the global Metal Cutting pricing strategy, aligned with business growth, margin, portfolio, channel, and customer objectives.
• Establish pricing architecture, guardrails, approval thresholds, decision rights, and standard governance across regions.
• Develop differentiated pricing approaches by customer segment, channel, application, product family, market, and geography.
• Create a consistent global operating model while enabling appropriate regional adaptation and accountability.

Price Realization, Margin & Leakage Management

• Identify and reduce price leakage from discounts, concessions, rebates, special pricing agreements, contract exceptions, freight, and other commercial terms.
• Advance price waterfall, pocket margin, cost-to-serve, customer profitability, and mix analytics to improve decision quality.
• Coordinate responses to inflation, foreign exchange, tariffs, material costs, and competitive market changes.
• Lead price realization planning, execution, measurement, and corrective action across regions and channels

Value-Based Pricing & Portfolio Growth

• Build value-based pricing methods for differentiated products, engineered solutions, custom tooling, and new product introductions.
• Partner with Product Management and Sales to translate technical performance, productivity improvement, tool life, and customer outcomes into monetizable value.
• Develop pricing strategies that support innovation, market expansion, portfolio optimization, and profitable share growth.
• Balance competitiveness, customer value, and sustainable profitability using a global framework with regional insight.

Strategic Accounts, Contracts & Commercial Programs

• Lead pricing strategy and analytical support for global and strategic accounts, including contract development, renewals, negotiations, and commercial trade-offs.
• Model pricing and profitability scenarios, incorporating regional conditions, volume, mix, currency, logistics, rebates, and contractual terms.
• Standardize contract and special-pricing governance, review cadences, scorecards, and renewal discipline.
• Partner with account leaders on customer negotiations and ensure proposals are timely, consistent, competitive, and financially sound.

Pricing Analytics, Digital Enablement & Tools

• Lead development of pricing dashboards and performance scorecards covering realization, leakage, profitability, contract health, exceptions, and value capture.
• Create a trusted data foundation and common definitions for pricing performance across the Metal Cutting business.
• Own business requirements and adoption priorities for pricing systems, workflow automation, and digital tools.
• Apply market intelligence, predictive analytics, and AI-enabled recommendations to improve pricing decisions and execution speed.

Capability Building & Cross-Functional Leadership

• Build pricing capability across Sales, Product Management, Finance, Customer Growth & Support, and other commercial teams.
• Chair or support global pricing governance forums and communicate recommendations, risks, and outcomes to senior leadership.
• Lead cross-functional transformation initiatives and create a culture of fact-based decisions, accountability, and continuous improvement.
• Lead, coach, and enable regional pricing teams through standards, playbooks, training, and performance cadences.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree required.
• 8-12 years of experience in strategic pricing, commercial strategy, or a related field.
• Leadership experience in strategic pricing, commercial strategy, or engineered-to-order environments
• Proven success leading global or multi-region teams
• Strong understanding of cost estimation, pricing governance, and margin management
• Ability to influence senior stakeholders and enforce global standards
• Advanced analytical and data-driven decision-making skills

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in manufacturing, industrial, engineered-to-order, or metal cutting environments.
• Experience with pricing analytics tools, workflow automation, and digital pricing platforms.
• Knowledge of value-based pricing methodologies and strategic account management.

Kennametal Inc. is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer