Manager of Strategic Sourcing, Software and Engineering

Zendesk•Madison, WI

7d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Global Strategic Sourcing team helps maximize value and minimize risk through Zendesk’s vendor relationships and ensures the organization has the goods and services needed for success. As Manager of Strategic Sourcing, you will play a key role during the sourcing strategy and execution across software and engineering categories. You’ll use your innovative thinking, analytical and negotiating skills to oversee and lead highly complex negotiations, contract review, and usage forecasting to achieve top-line growth and maximize value to the company. This role encompasses all aspects of the sourcing’s responsibilities including category assessment, vendor due diligence, RFx, contract negotiations and vendor management.

Requirements

5+ years of experience sourcing for a tech or software company
Strong software and engineering strategic negotiation skills
Proven team player and ability to build and maintain business partnerships
Executive level communication and presentation skills
Highly motivated towards achieving cost savings and operational improvement goals
Demonstrated subject matter expertise in the functional areas of Technology, product and engineering.
Proven success leading projects that impact multiple functional areas
Flexibility and influence in working in a high growth, high volume environment
Demonstrated subject matter expertise in AI infrastructure, including RAG frameworks, AI gateways, and consumption-based pricing models.
Understanding of how AI and automation are reshaping the competitive landscape for software and professional services vendors.
Proven ability to integrate commercial strategy with a technical ecosystem, specifically leveraging hyperscaler routes for negotiating better terms and model portability.
Experience negotiating with vendors offering revenue-based pricing models and managing data usage agreements that involve AI/LLM usage, such as API renewals.

Responsibilities

Guide and influence business and senior leadership through key strategic projects and procurement strategy, focusing on critical vendor management, integration, and informed purchase guidance aligned to Zendesk growth and partner vision. This includes developing executive-level presentations and analysis for internal partner communications/updates.
Develop, maintain, and validate accurate forecasts for usage, licenses, and capacity for key contracts (e.g., AWS, Google, MongoDB, Snowflake, and others) in collaboration with Engineering, IT, and business units to gather data and identify trends or potential risks to inform contract negotiations and prevent over-commitment or unnecessary costs.
Lead sourcing strategy, complex negotiations, and vendor diversification for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Large Language Model (LLM) providers. Analyze and optimize AI/LLM consumption, including token usage and capacity planning, to inform contract negotiations and mitigate financial risk.
Lead end-to-end sourcing execution, including market research, RFx strategy development, and acting as an escalation point for contract negotiations partnering with Legal, Security, and IT. Support spend management projects focused on savings, process efficiency, and risk reduction, including total cost of ownership evaluations and pricing audits.
Implement and manage a multi-vendor LLM ecosystem strategy, including coordinating sourcing for frontier labs (e.g., OpenAI, Anthropic), hyperscaler routes (e.g., AWS Bedrock, Gemini/Vertex), and open-weight model providers (e.g., Groq, Baseten) to ensure diversification, cost efficiency, and performance optimization.
Drive commercial leverage by maintaining commitment discipline (targeting ~60% of forecasted spend) and pursuing flexible, shorter (6-12 month) renewal cycles with major LLM providers to mitigate market volatility and pricing shifts.
Collaborate with Engineering and IT to manage the governance layer for internal AI productivity tooling (e.g., LibreChat, Claude Code, Gemini) to track seat vs. consumption costs and align model spend with security and legal approvals.