Strategic Sourcing Business Partner, R&D Operations

The shape of it

In the posting’s own words

We are hiring a Strategic Sourcing Business Partner to own the commercial side of this portfolio. Today these vendors have business owners and Procurement Operations support, this role will drive real ownership of the commercial terms end to end including contracts redlines, deployment of contract templates, and the negotiation.. There is significant untapped value in this portfolio (in pricing, in contract terms, and in vendor performance), and this role exists to go get it.

What it asks for · 9

• 7+ years of strategic sourcing, category management, vendor management, or commercial negotiation experience, primarily in services categories (data services, BPO or outsourced operations, lab or research services, managed services, staffing, or similar)
• Hands-on contract experience: you have personally redlined MSAs and SOWs, built templates and fallback positions, and know where the commercial value sits in a services contract (pricing exhibits, volume commitments, termination rights, SLAs and remedies, IP and data terms) and when to bring in Legal
• A track record of personally leading multi-million dollar services negotiations to strong outcomes, not just managing the process around them
• Judgment about where leverage lives and how hard to use it: you can look at a portfolio of many vendors and many concurrent deals and know which ones deserve a deep negotiation and which need a fast, standard path, and you have a reputation with past vendors and colleagues for being commercially tough and fair with partners that need to scale with us
• Strong analytical skills: rate and unit-cost analysis, TCO modeling, and pricing model design; you can find the real economics underneath a vendor proposal
• Services vendor management experience: SLAs, scorecards, QBRs, and escalations, and how to enforce them without damaging the relationship
• Comfort operating at pace: high deal volume, ambiguity, imperfect information, and a bias to execute rather than perfect
• Clear, direct communication with executives internally and across the table, including in difficult conversations and escalations
• Fluency with AI tools in your daily work and demonstrated experience in rebuilding your own workflows around them

Also a plus

• Experience sourcing human data, data labeling, annotation, or evaluation vendors, or comparable BPO and outsourced operations categories, and a point of view on where that market is heading
• Experience sourcing lab services, scientific equipment and consumables, robotics or hardware services, or other technical services for a research organization
• Experience at a hypergrowth company renegotiating or restructuring vendor pricing and contract structures under the growth curve
• Experience standing up sourcing coverage for a category from scratch (templates, playbooks, benchmarks), not just operating within an established program
• Experience designing vendor scorecards, SLA frameworks, and performance management programs
• Familiarity with the confidentiality, data-handling, and IP terms that matter for research and data vendors
• A point of view on how AI will change services vendor relationships and negotiations, backed by things you have actually tried

Tools and skills named

Words the posting leans on

• vendor43×
• services30×
• contract19×
• terms19×
• experience18×
• negotiation18×
• commercial15×
• deal15×
• pricing15×
• slas15×
• data14×
• portfolio12×
• templates12×
• sourcing11×
• legal10×
• partner10×

Counted from the posting after the mission statement and the legal notices are set aside. The ones near the top are the ones a screener is looking for.

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