Sr. Category Manager - H/W, Infrastructure and Cloud

At Verint, we believe customer engagement is the core of every global brand. Our mission is to help organizations elevate Customer Experience (CX) and increase workforce productivity by delivering CX Automation. We hire innovators with the passion, creativity, and drive to answer constantly shifting market challenges and deliver impactful results for our customers. Our commitment to attracting and retaining a talented, diverse, and engaged team creates a collaborative environment that openly celebrates all cultures and affords personal and professional growth opportunities. Learn more at www.verint.com.

Overview of Job Function:

The Sr. Category Manager will be responsible for leading the strategic procurement of goods and services, sourcing, negotiating and contract management for the enterprise IT categories, including telecom and data network services, hardware, cloud and IT services in this area. The Sr. Category Manager will lead cross functional teams executing on category strategies, requirements, leading negotiations and managing contract execution.  This person will also play a key role in the supplier selection and managing supplier relationships, ensuring all vendor engagements comply with the company’s procurement policies and procedures.

Principal Duties and Essential Responsibilities:

• Take ownership of assigned categories - lead, develop, drive and implement strategic sourcing plans and remain accountable for targets aligned with procurement objectives.
• Lead the communication, execution and implementation of category initiatives, ensuring they meet the needs of the business and procurement goals.
• Lead complex, strategic sourcing projects and obtain cost savings through supplier negotiations, event driven activities and alternate sourcing.
• Bring strategic thinking to spend categories to support execution of business transformation strategies.
• Demonstrate cross functional leadership, working closely with teams to identify opportunities, aggregate spend, standardize telecom and data network services, hardware, cloud and IT services as required to leverage purchasing power and achieve results.
• Interface with stakeholders to improve decisions regarding budgeting, forecasting, sourcing, compliance, quality and contracting.
• Utilize spend data and business insights to identify key sourcing opportunities for categories, developing and executing comprehensive cost reduction plans.
• Monitor current category market conditions to identify potential supply challenges and develop supply continuity plan.
• Build and maintain positive business relationships with suppliers and stakeholders yielding effective partnerships.
• Manage all vendors as required, including key suppliers with global and/or critical contracts.
• Initiate and lead supplier business reviews that address performance, technology, roadmaps, business growth strategies and supply market changes.
• Respond and resolve issues around the contract, technical and operational support, and invoicing.
• Establish global collaboration and proper alignment with cross functional teams and stakeholders.
• Ensure all procurement projects and activities follow the Global Procurement policy and procedures.

Minimum Requirements:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Business, Supply Chain, Finance, Technology or related field or equivalent work experience.
• 8-10+ years’ experience in strategic sourcing of infrastructure, cloud and hardware and managing category spend with delivered results and evidence of increases in scope and level of responsibility.
• Demonstrated effectiveness in sourcing complex IT categories: Examples include
• Networking including voice, data, wireless, SIP, conferencing, VOIP, network equipment
• Telecommunication including contract terms, tariffs, fixed and variable bandwidth-based pricing schedules, minimum revenue commitments and service level agreements for voice and data
• IT Hardware, including personal computing, mid and high range servers, mainframes, and security appliances
• IT Services, including outsourced infrastructure, data center, application development and product assessment
• Cloud operations and platforms
• Strong technical understanding of the organizational technology, infrastructure needs and cloud opera