Senior Manager, Sourcing and Procurement

Please note that we are unable to provide visa sponsorship for this position.

About Proper Voltage

Proper Voltage is unlocking the next generation of battery technology across robotics, data centers, and defense.

We're building intelligent battery systems that make advanced chemistries (sodium-ion, lithium-titanate, lithium-silicon) work in products that were never designed for them. Humanoid robots can upgrade power systems without redesigning their entire platform. Data centers get safer, cheaper backup power. Drones and autonomous vehicles get higher energy density without lengthy integration cycles.

If you want to work on hard problems that matter, with colleagues that you enjoy working with, this is the place. 

Job Overview

The Senior Manager, Sourcing and Procurement owns the commodity strategy and supplier ecosystem for Proper Voltage’s custom mechanical components. This means building and managing supplier relationships, negotiating commercial terms, developing new sources for hard-to-find custom fabricated parts, and ensuring the company can build on schedule and at target cost as it scales from NPI to thousands of units per month.

This person sits within the supply chain team, reporting to the Director of Supply Chain, and partners closely with Engineering on design-for-sourcing decisions, with Finance on cost modeling and spend visibility, and with the VP of Supply Chain on strategic sourcing direction and production readiness. The role is the commercial owner of the mechanical supplier book, from the first RFQ through long-term supplier development.

Our manufacturing model includes contract manufacturing in Mexico with a mixed US and Asia sourcing base. The BOM includes custom-fabricated mechanical components (precision CNC aluminum, sheet metal enclosures, thermal management assemblies, flexible copper busbars), PCBA, and sodium-ion cells sourced from a novel chemistry supply base. This role’s primary focus is the custom mechanical portfolio. Electrical commodities (PCBA, power boards) will be added to the team’s scope as the function scales.

This role starts as an individual contributor. You are not inheriting a team. You will own the mechanical sourcing and procurement function personally, with the expectation that we will hire and build a team around you as the company scales. This is a role that grows with you.

Who this role is for:

You have hands-on experience sourcing and qualifying suppliers, not just managing relationships that were handed to you. You have issued RFQs, run factory visits, negotiated pricing, and seen a supplier through from first contact to production PO. Ideally, you bring a network of trusted fabricators and mechanical component suppliers that you can tap into on day one. 

You are comfortable working in supplier ecosystems that are still being built. You know how to find and qualify a precision CNC fabricator when there is no approved vendor list to pull from. You can evaluate a facility for production scalability, not just prototype capability. 

You understand should-cost modeling and can build a total cost of ownership picture from raw material pricing through tooling, NRE, lead times, MOQs, and freight-inclusive landed cost. You use that analysis to drive negotiations and sourcing decisions, not just to document them after the fact. 

You have cross-geography sourcing experience, whether that is Asia, Mexico, or managing suppliers across multiple regions, and you understand the commercial and logistical complexity that comes with it. 

You are equally comfortable building a commodity strategy and chasing down a quote. You do not need a fully defined playbook to get started, and you get more energized by ambiguity than slowed down by it. You can take an incomplete spec or a fuzzy set of requirements and start moving: identifying potential suppliers, getting directional quotes, and narrowing options while the engineering details are still coming together. You do not wait for perfect information to act. 

You have a sense for where supply risk lives and you move early to mitigate it. You see a single-source dependency forming and start qualifying alternate