Senior Strategic Negotiator

The candidate selected for this position will spend 90-95% of his/her time developing and conducting supplier negotiations, running the RFP/Bidding process, performing contract and contract amendment reviews, ensuring development of performance criteria for business reviews, and establishing and tracking key measures. 5-10% of his/her time will be allocated to continuous improvement initiatives, procurement planning and special projects management, analytics, and reports/monthly procurement management.

• Coordinates with Management to establish initial procurement project strategy and executes the procurement project strategy per assignment.  
• Responsible for ensuring that assigned procurement project dates are being adhered to and acts as the single point of contact for new multi vendor and single vendor procurement projects and contract requests 
• Responsible for assigned procurement planning and project management of supplier selection teams, which include technical, financial and business personnel.  
• RF(x) Process - During RF(X) process, the Sr. Procurement Specialist will lead and guide teams which analyze needs, prepare source lists, as well as collaborate and assist in drafting the RF(X), capture, organize, and evaluate responses, organize Q&A sessions, and lead and guide opening and closing bid communications.
• Develop parameters and supplier negotiation plans and conduct supplier negotiations per assignment. Draft and execute the contract in collaboration with appropriate parties. Manage ongoing contract amendments and addendums, including monitoring supplier performance.
• The Sr. Procurement Specialist will offer contract, procurement and process management expertise and continuous improvements.  Responsibilities include supplier research, establishing supplier performance measurements for ongoing review, assisting the decisions for process improvement and organizing, providing feedback to suppliers in business reviews and management in internal reviews.
• Vendor Management post issuance of PO. The Sr. Procurement Specialist will be responsible for tracking Business Reviews and may be asked to issue review to selected vendors

Typical Qualifications:

Education/Experience:

• Bachelor’s Degree, preferably in business, procurement, logistics or related discipline required.
• Familiarity with accounting/ cost accounting/ cost management is desired
• Course work in supply chain management is desired
• Program Management or other Project Management course work preferred.
• 3-5 years of contracting experience in a commercial environment (preferably IT or technical area), including procurement pre-planning, project management, bid document preparation (RFP), source selection and contract negotiation.

Knowledge/Skills/Abilities:

• Knowledgeable of procurement and contracting, project management, supplier management processes, and the contract agent responsibilities listed above.
• Critical business skills should include financial, cost and total cost-of-ownership analysis and intervention and risk assessment.
• Familiarity with key process and quality indicators and legal regulations is desired.
• Working knowledge of budget and accounting processes.
• Spreadsheet fluency is preferred
• Quality-focused, customer-oriented individual with the business and critical skills to manage a wide variety of contracting and procurement activities.
• Knowledge of cloud computing/storage, telecommunications, IT and Software and services is helpful.
• Excellent interpersonal skills, including problem solving, listening and relationship building.  Excellent written and verbal communication skills, and strong presentation skills are required.

Why You’ll Like Working for DigitalOcean

• We innovate with purpose. You’ll be a part of a cutting-edge technology company with an upward trajectory, who are proud to simplify cloud and AI so builders can spend more time creating software that changes the world. As a member of the team, you will be a Shark who thinks big, bold, and scrappy, like an owner with a bias for action and a powerful sense of responsibility for customers, products, employees, and decisions. 
• We prioritize career development. At DO, you’ll do the best work of your career. You will work with some of the smartest and most interesting people in the industry. We are a high-performance organization that will always challenge you to think big. Our organizational development team will provide you with resources to ensure you keep growing. We provide employees with reimbursement for relevan