Global Head of Strategic Procurement

SolarWinds•Austin, TX

About The Position

SolarWinds is seeking a strategic and commercially minded Global Head of Strategic Procurement to define and lead the company’s enterprise procurement, travel, and spend-management strategy. This senior leader will establish procurement as a strategic capability and enterprise partner, shaping how SolarWinds manages third-party spend, creates value, manages risk, and enables the business. The role sets the vision and operating model for Strategic Procurement and Travel, aligns leaders across the organization, and builds a scalable, data-driven system that converts procurement activity into measurable business outcomes. The role is accountable for a cost-savings agenda that includes incremental realized savings, supplier value, commercial discipline, process effectiveness, and leadership transparency. It also provides strategic advisory support for AI-related oversight and decision-making and leads the procurement-related component of the GRC risk review. The leader will establish procurement strategy and governance, build cross-functional partnerships, create the processes and performance-management systems needed to scale procurement and P2P, lead value creation and strategic negotiations, and set the direction for travel and employee spend. The role is also the senior business owner for the P2P platform and related capabilities; partners on improvements to contracting and spend governance; leads procurement-related OneTrust governance; builds and leads a high-performing Strategic Procurement team; and advises on governance for AI-related suppliers, investments, use cases, and enterprise risk. Success means Strategic Procurement is recognized as an enterprise value-creation and business-enablement function; savings and validated cost avoidance exceed the function’s investment; procurement, P2P, travel, contracting, and supplier governance work through a common scalable management system; and leaders have visibility into spend, savings, supplier commitments, renewals, controls, and risk. The ideal candidate is an enterprise strategist and builder with the judgment, credibility, and operating discipline to align stakeholders and build a durable procurement capability.

Requirements

Significant leadership experience in strategic procurement, sourcing, category management, corporate spend, or a related enterprise transformation function.
Demonstrated record of creating material, recurring value through sourcing strategy, negotiation, supplier portfolio management, demand management, and operating-model transformation.
Experience establishing or transforming an enterprise procurement, P2P, contract lifecycle, travel, or supplier-governance capability.
Strong senior-leadership presence, commercial judgment, and ability to influence decisions without relying solely on formal authority.
Experience leading complex negotiations and managing senior supplier relationships.
Proven ability to build governance, metrics, investment cases, and leadership reporting that connect procurement activity to enterprise outcomes.
Demonstrated experience hiring, developing, and leading high-performing teams through organizational change.
Experience partnering across Finance, Legal, IT, Security, HR, and business functions in a complex organization.
Familiarity with third-party risk, GRC, control frameworks, and platforms such as OneTrust.
Exceptional communication, analytical, organizational, and people-leadership capabilities.

Nice To Haves

Practical understanding of AI governance and responsible enterprise decision-making.
Navan experience.

Responsibilities

Define the enterprise procurement strategy, including the multi-year roadmap, value-creation agenda, category priorities, governance model, and decision rights for procurement, travel, and third-party spend.
Build partnerships with Finance, Legal, IT, Security, HR, and business leadership to align spend decisions with enterprise priorities, risk appetite, and financial objectives.
Establish the processes, data, technology, controls, and performance-management routines needed to scale procurement and P2P as an enterprise capability.
Set the methodology, baseline, pipeline, governance, and reporting for realized savings, cost avoidance, supplier value, and commercial improvement.
Lead the company’s most important negotiations and oversee strategic supplier portfolio strategy, senior relationships, performance, and risk posture.
Set strategic direction for travel, expense, corporate cards, preferred suppliers, policy, adoption, and employee experience.
Serve as senior business owner for the P2P platform and related capabilities, ensuring technology, workflows, data, and reporting support adoption and control.
Partner with Legal and business leaders to improve contracting and spend governance, including intake, prioritization, approval velocity, renewal visibility, and accountability for commercial decisions.
Lead procurement-related OneTrust governance from intake through ongoing monitoring, establishing ownership, decision rights, control requirements, and escalation paths.
Lead and develop a high-performing Strategic Procurement team, including serving as the senior escalation point for complex sourcing decisions, supplier issues, cross-functional conflict, and governance exceptions.
Help establish governance, oversight, and decision-making frameworks for AI-related suppliers, investments, use cases, and enterprise risk, partnering with technology, security, legal, privacy, and compliance stakeholders.