Procurement & Contracts Lead

The Washington Post•Washington, DC

6d•$105,600 - $176,000•Onsite

About The Position

The Procurement & Contracts Lead strengthens The Washington Post’s ability to make disciplined, informed decisions about its most important vendor relationships. This role manages strategic sourcing and contract activity across significant spend categories, including content and wire services, production and technology, and contingent and freelance labor. The role looks beyond contract administration to determine whether current vendors, tools, and commercial arrangements continue to meet the organization’s business, financial, operational, and risk requirements. It leads structured sourcing and negotiation processes and provides decision-makers with clear, evidence-based recommendations to renew, renegotiate, consolidate, compete, or replace vendor arrangements. Working across Finance, Legal, IT, and business units, this position helps balance cost, service quality, operational requirements, contractual risk, and long-term business value. It also plays an important role in building a scalable strategic-sourcing and contract-management capability within a growing procurement function.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in business, finance, procurement, supply chain, or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and relevant experience.
Five or more years of progressively responsible experience in strategic sourcing, category management, vendor negotiation, procurement, or contract management.
Demonstrated experience leading vendor negotiations and developing commercial terms that balance cost, risk, service quality, and business requirements.
Experience managing sourcing or contracting activity involving multiple stakeholders and complex business requirements.
Working knowledge of total-cost-of-ownership analysis, market benchmarking, competitive sourcing, and supplier evaluation methods.
Experience partnering with Legal on contract review, redlines, negotiation strategy, and risk mitigation.
Strong business judgment and the ability to assess value beyond the lowest-cost option.
Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to present concise, evidence-based recommendations to senior stakeholders.
Demonstrated ability to influence across functions without direct authority.
Strong organizational skills and the ability to manage multiple sourcing events, negotiations, and renewal deadlines simultaneously.
Comfort operating in a lean, evolving function where process development and execution occur in parallel.

Nice To Haves

Experience sourcing content, wire services, technology, production services, contingent labor, freelance services, or other categories relevant to a media organization.
Experience working in media, digital publishing, technology, or another rapidly changing business environment.
Familiarity with procurement, sourcing, contract-lifecycle-management, or spend-analysis platforms.
Experience using market-intelligence and pricing-benchmarking services, such as Gartner BuySmart or comparable resources.
Professional certification such as CPSM, CIPS, CPM, or an equivalent procurement or supply-management credential.
Experience supporting procurement-process or ERP transformation.

Responsibilities

Manage strategic sourcing and category-management activity across assigned high-value and business-critical spend categories.
Develop and maintain category strategies that align sourcing decisions with enterprise financial, operational, technology, risk, and business priorities.
Assess existing vendors, tools, and commercial arrangements to determine whether they continue to meet the organization’s needs.
Lead competitive sourcing processes, including requirements development, market analysis, requests for information or proposals, bid evaluation, supplier selection recommendations, and commercial negotiations.
Present clear recommendations to renew, renegotiate, consolidate, compete, or replace major vendor arrangements.
Identify opportunities to consolidate suppliers or technologies, improve service levels, reduce risk, and strengthen total value.
Lead commercial negotiations for new agreements, renewals, amendments, and contract extensions within assigned categories.
Evaluate pricing, service levels, contractual protections, performance commitments, termination provisions, and other commercial terms.
Partner with Legal on contract language, redlines, compliance requirements, data protection, intellectual property, indemnification, and other areas of legal risk.
Coordinate internal stakeholder input before negotiations to ensure that business requirements, operational concerns, technical considerations, and risk positions are understood.
Prepare concise negotiation strategies and approval materials that explain financial exposure, key risks, available alternatives, and recommended positions.
Partner with the Procurement Analyst to maintain accurate contract records and renewal calendars, reducing the risk of unplanned expirations or automatic renewals.
Support contract owners in understanding key obligations, renewal dates, pricing adjustments, and supplier-performance commitments.
Use market intelligence, competitive benchmarks, historical spend, and total-cost-of-ownership analysis to inform sourcing strategies and negotiations.
Evaluate cost drivers and commercial models rather than relying only on headline pricing.
Quantify negotiated savings, cost avoidance, risk reduction, and other forms of business value using agreed procurement methodologies.
Work with Finance and business stakeholders to validate assumptions and identify the financial implications of sourcing recommendations.
Provide timely reporting on sourcing activity, negotiations, upcoming renewals, savings opportunities, and material vendor risks.
Build productive working relationships with Finance, Legal, IT, Information Security, Privacy, business units, and other stakeholders involved in vendor decisions.
Serve as a strategic sourcing adviser to business leaders, helping them define requirements, evaluate alternatives, and navigate procurement and contracting processes.
Maintain professional, constructive supplier relationships while protecting The Post’s commercial interests.
Represent Procurement in relevant cross-functional governance forums and provide visibility into material negotiations, supplier issues, and category performance.
Escalate significant commercial, operational, compliance, or vendor-continuity risks through appropriate governance channels.
Identify sourcing and contract-management process gaps and help design practical improvements that increase consistency, efficiency, control, and data visibility.
Develop reusable templates, negotiation tools, evaluation criteria, playbooks, and standard operating practices.
Contribute procurement, supplier, and contract-data requirements to ERP selection, design, testing, and implementation.
Support the development of a scalable procurement operating model as the function grows.
Help strengthen stakeholder understanding of procurement’s role in cost management, risk mitigation, supplier performance, and business planning.