Procurement and Spend Manager

Responsibilities

• Build and own n8n’s procurement and spend‑management function, ensuring every vendor relationship delivers strong value, every commitment is well governed, and our processes scale through AI and automation.
• Create a disciplined, transparent, and automation‑first approach to sourcing, vendor management, contracts, and company‑wide spend.

BUILD STRATEGIC SOURCING & NEGOTIATION

• Own the vendor‑request intake and selection process from structured business need through evaluation and signed agreement.
• Lead commercial negotiations for our largest and most strategic spend, including consumption‑based cloud and AI commitments.
• Create category strategies, leadership briefing materials, and negotiation playbooks that help teams secure strong outcomes across cloud, AI, SaaS, services, and contractors.

MANAGE THE VENDOR & SAAS LIFECYCLE

• Own the vendor portfolio across onboarding, performance management, renewal, consolidation, and offboarding.
• Reduce SaaS sprawl by tracking adoption, identifying overlapping or underused tools, and taking deliberate action on renewals.
• Surface shadow IT and shadow AI while applying robust evaluation standards to AI vendors, APIs, data handling, access controls, and consumption‑based spend.

OWN CONTRACT LIFECYCLE & THIRD‑PARTY RISK

• Manage the contract lifecycle from intake and drafting support through commercial negotiation, execution, central storage, and obligation tracking.
• Independently negotiate commercial terms while routing legal redlining, security, privacy, and specialist reviews to the appropriate owners.
• Maintain proactive renewal calendars, consistent vendor‑risk processes, and traceable records that remain audit‑ready across all entities.

CREATE SPEND GOVERNANCE & VISIBILITY

• Govern outbound spend across vendors, travel, expenses, corporate cards, and contractors through clear policies and approval thresholds.
• Partner with FP&A to manage vendor spend against OpEx budgets and feed accurate actuals into financial planning.
• Build automated approvals, alerts, and always‑on reporting, with particular visibility into consumption‑based cloud and AI costs.

Requirements

MUST‑HAVES

• Function‑building experience: You’ve meaningfully built or rebuilt a procurement or spend‑management function rather than only operating an established one.
• Procurement expertise: You have deep experience across sourcing, vendor management, category strategy, and contracts, ideally within a fast‑scaling technology or SaaS company.
• Commercial negotiation: You independently review and negotiate commercial agreements and have secured strong terms on significant commitments, ideally including consumption‑based cloud or AI spend.
• Spend‑ownership mindset: You treat company money with care and bring discipline to how spend is approved, committed, monitored, and reported.
• Operator mindset: You turn ambiguous, manual workflows into clear, scalable processes and take ownership from initial problem through measurable outcome.
• AI‑native working style: You instinctively use AI and automation to remove repetitive work and are excited to build your own processes using n8n.

NICE‑TO‑HAVES

• Hands‑on automation: You’ve built workflows with n8n and can use the platform to scale your impact without relying on additional headcount.
• Audit and compliance exposure: You’ve supported audit, SOX, or GoBD readiness and understand the controls and documentation required to remain audit‑ready.
• Third‑party risk familiarity: You’ve managed vendor security assessments, DPAs, …