Vendor Management Lead

Howard Hughes Medical Institute•Headquarters, KY

4d•$120,518 - $150,647•Onsite

About The Position

This role is for someone who reads a vendor contract and immediately spots where the leverage sits, and who is comfortable being the person who says no on HHMI's behalf. You are HHMI's advocate with its vendors: in choosing them, in negotiating with them, and in holding them to what they promised. You will sit in Finance and report to the Director, Procurement, but the vendors you cover span the Institute (from benefits providers to enterprise SaaS vendors). Whichever department owns the day to day relationship, you own whether the vendor is actually delivering. The job is advocacy and accountability, not account coordination. You help HHMI pick the right vendor in the first place. You negotiate contract terms and renewals to HHMI's advantage, build the service level agreements and terms that define what good looks like for us, and run the compliance reviews that catch it when a vendor falls short. When something breaks, you are the point of escalation, and you drive it to resolution instead of passing it along. You will work closely with Procurement, the Office of General Counsel, and HHMI's other department leads, and with staff across the Institute who manage these vendors day-to-day. You will report regularly to the executive team, through the COO, on how our vendors are performing. None of the people you work with day-to-day report to you, so getting to the right outcome depends on how well you make your case.

Requirements

A dogged advocate for HHMI. You are on the Institute's side, every time, from the first vendor conversation through the last performance review, and vendors know it.
A tenacious negotiator. You can hold firm on contract terms and service expectations while keeping a workable relationship with the vendor.
Judgment on when to escalate. You can tell the difference between a vendor hiccup and a pattern, and you know when to raise it and how to drive it to a close.
Fluent in SLAs and metrics. You can write a service level agreement that actually measures something, and apply it across vendor types that have nothing in common with each other.
Comfortable without a permanent seat. You can walk into a vendor relationship you do not own day to day and still get the outcome you need.
High expectations, worn lightly. You expect real service from a vendor. You expect the department that owns the relationship to expect it too. You can hold both without becoming that department's adversary.
Five to seven years of experience in vendor management, supplier relationship management, or contract administration.
A bachelor's degree or equivalent experience.

Nice To Haves

Direct experience negotiating or managing benefits contracts or software and IT agreements.
Exposure to other enterprise service providers, such as cloud platforms, HR or HCM systems, or benefits administration platforms.

Responsibilities

Help pick the vendor. When a department needs a new vendor, you are in the room. You help define what HHMI needs, weigh the proposals, and push for the vendor and the terms that will serve the Institute best.
Hold vendors accountable. Across the Institute, you track whether vendors are delivering the terms, service levels, and deliverables they agreed to, no matter which department manages the relationship day to day.
Negotiate the contract. You negotiate terms, renewals, and amendments to HHMI's advantage, including the SLAs and the terms that will work for us, with Procurement and the Office of General Counsel alongside you on pricing, scope, and risk.
Build and run SLA reviews. You develop and document service level agreements with key vendors, then run regular compliance and SLA reviews to confirm they are living up to them.
Take the escalation. When a vendor is not meeting its commitments, you are the first call. You drive performance issues, errors, and delays to resolution.
Watch the biggest relationships. You own whether HHMI's major service providers deliver, enterprise-wide, with the heaviest focus on benefits vendors and software and IT vendors.
Run performance reviews. You lead periodic vendor performance reviews, document what you find, and hold vendors to corrective action plans when they fall short.
Coordinate without owning. You work with the staff who deal with these vendors day to day. You gather what they know and use it to represent HHMI's interests.
Keep the executive team informed. You report regularly to the executive team, through the COO, on vendor performance, open escalations, and what is coming up for selection or renewal.