Senior Purchasing Manager

About Zscaler

Zscaler (NASDAQ: ZS) accelerates digital transformation so that customers can be more agile, efficient, resilient, and secure. The Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange is the company’s cloud-native platform that protects thousands of customers from cyberattacks and data loss by securely connecting users, devices, and applications in any location. 

With more than 10 years of experience developing, operating, and scaling the cloud, Zscaler serves thousands of enterprise customers around the world, including 450 of the Forbes Global 2000 organizations. In addition to protecting customers from damaging threats, such as ransomware and data exfiltration, it helps them slash costs, reduce complexity, and improve the user experience by eliminating stacks of latency-creating gateway appliances. 

Zscaler was founded in 2007 with a mission to make the cloud a safe place to do business and a more enjoyable experience for enterprise users. Zscaler’s purpose-built security platform puts a company’s defenses and controls where the connections occur—the internet—so that every connection is fast and secure, no matter how or where users connect or where their applications and workloads reside.

Job Description:

Reporting to the Director of Purchasing, we are looking to hire a Senior Purchasing Manager based out of our San Jose, CA office (in office 2 days per week). This role will be responsible for managing indirect procurement spend for Marketing, Sales, Events, Consulting, SAAS, and more. The category lead will be responsible for driving the global strategy around use and operations of the full procure to pay process.

You will have experience in complex negotiation processes across the various purchasing segments and must have a proven record of executing in a high growth technology company. You will also be detail oriented, have strong organization and communication skills, and be hands-on as this role is an individual contributing position. The position requires capabilities to communicate with multiple business functions to understand their requirements and develop sourcing strategy for the category. You will:

• Develop and execute procurement strategies for indirect spend categories
• Partner with key business stakeholders to understand their requirements and establish approved vendor list for increased efficiencies and cost
• Advise end users of preferred and most cost-effective suppliers
• Ensure that end-user requirements are sufficiently detailed in an appropriate format for sourcing
• Conduct strategic price and contract negotiations
• Research market intelligence & make strategic recommendations for purchasing components
• Benchmark suppliers against metrics to assure logistic and cost performance
• Develop and maintain a portfolio of "best in class" suppliers and assess supplier availability
• Lead contract negotiations and manage the competitive bidding process for identified opportunities
• Partner with Legal to ensure all vendor contracts are current and compliant
• Build cost models to resolve “should” cost and total cost of ownership (TCO) vital to conduct supplier negotiations
• Address performance issues with suppliers where appropriate
• Keep end-users advised regarding risks or issues involving their requirements and the influences that external forces could have on their situation
• Identify benchmarking opportunities

Minimum Qualifications:

• 7+ years of hands-on working experience in Indirect Purchasing spend

Preferred Qualifications:

• Demonstrate strategic and tactical knowledge in indirect procurement
• Analytical thinking - Ability to quickly analyze data and transform it into meaningful insight
• Strong Interpersonal skills - ability to work effectively as part of a team in an unstructured environment; comfortable and effective in influencing at all levels; ability to tactfully give/receive constructive feedback
• Creative - Inquisitive attitude, can identify new and better ways; active external learner that takes advantage of ideas, best practices, and solutions developed elsewhere
• Ability to work effectively with all levels of management and other colleagues, and demonstrate initiative, mature judgment, superior customer service orientation, and the ability to anticipate the needs of the organization
• Execution - persistent drive for results utilizing sound project management, organizational and problem-solving skills
• Attention to detail, organized and thorough with desire for continuous improvement
• Must be a self-starter with a can-do attitude and a serious desire to have a positive impact on our company
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