Senior Procurement Manager

BuildOps is looking for a Senior Procurement Manager to own our end-to-end vendor lifecycle, from intake and evaluation through negotiation, contracting, and ongoing optimization.This role will centralize how we buy software, infrastructure, and services, drive cost savings, enforce commercial guardrails, and free up teams to focus on building and selling. 

You will partner closely with Finance, Legal, IT/Security, and department leaders to ensure every dollar of spend is intentional, well negotiated, and aligned with our strategic priorities.

Vendor strategy and intake: 

• Own the vendor intake process, ensuring new requests are aligned with budget, headcount plans, and existing tools.
• Evaluate whether an existing solution can meet the need before approving net new spend.
• Partner with budget owners to prioritize requests based on impact, risk, and ROI.

Sourcing, negotiation, and renewals: 

• Lead RFPs, pricing benchmarks, and competitive bids for key categories (for example SaaS, infrastructure, professional services).
• Negotiate commercial terms including price, ramp structure, auto renewal, caps on increases, and termination rights.
• Build and manage a renewal calendar, ensuring we engage vendors well ahead of renewal dates to avoid last minute compromises.
• Develop a point of view on AI and cloud provider spend management, including token-based consumption models, structuring commitments, monitoring usage, and negotiating guardrails to control cost as AI becomes a core infrastructure layer.

Contracting and guardrails: 

• Develop and maintain a procurement playbook that defines our standard commercial positions (for example no auto renewal by default, limits on term length, renewal caps, usage thresholds).
• Partner with Legal to streamline low risk and standard contracts by creating templates and fallback positions that reduce review time.
• Ensure deals comply with security, privacy, and data handling requirements in partnership with IT/Security.

Process and systems: 

• Own or co own the procurement workflow in Ramp (or equivalent), including approval thresholds, routing rules, and documentation standards.
• Ensure all vendor records, contracts, and key terms are accurately captured in our systems (for example Ramp, ERP, contract repository).
• Continuously simplify and automate procurement steps so stakeholders have a clear, fast path from request to signed contract.
• Identify and aggressively remediate Shadow IT and unsanctioned SaaS by partnering with IT/Security and Finance to surface off process spend, bring critical tools into the formal procurement workflow, and decommission redundant or non compliant tools.

Spend analytics and savings: 

• Build and maintain dashboards and reporting on vendor spend, category trends, and savings realized.
• Identify and execute on consolidation and rationalization opportunities (for example duplicate tools, underused licenses, overlapping vendors).
• Track and communicate savings targets and performance, including both hard savings and cost avoidance.

Stakeholder partnership: 

• Serve as the primary point of contact for vendor related questions and escalations across the company.
• Educate stakeholders on procurement best practices and how to engage early to get the best outcomes.
• Partner with Finance on budgeting and forecasting for vendor spend, including scenario analysis for major contracts.

Must haves: 

• 5+ years of procurement, strategic sourcing, or vendor management experience, ideally in B2B SaaS or technology.
• Demonstrated track record of negotiating complex SaaS and infrastructure deals and delivering measurable savings.
• Strong understanding of commercial terms, including renewal structures, usage based pricing, SLAs, and basics of liability and indemnity.
• Comfortable working with Finance and Legal to align on budgets, risk tolerance, and contract standards.
• Highly analytical, able to model scenarios and quantify trade offs (for example TCO, payback, ROI, unit economics)
• Excellent communication and influence skills, able to push back constructively while maintaining strong relationships.
• Self starter who can build processes in an environment that is still scaling and maturing its procurement function.

Nice to have: 

• Experience implementing or owning workflows in Ramp, Coupa, Procurify, or similar tools.
• Background working with global vendors and multi-entity structures.
• Prior experience in a high growth startup environment.

• You are a strategic, hands-on procurement leader who enjoys building structure in a scaling environment and acting as a trusted advisor to stakeholders.
• You are comfortable digging into details of contracts and pricing models while also stepping back to design processes, playbooks, and systems that make vendor management more efficient and transparent across the company.

• LA/SF salary range: $165,000.00 - $185,000.00 base salary + annual bonus opportunity.