Senior Manager, Operations Vendor Management

Upgrade is a fintech company that provides affordable and responsible credit, mobile banking, and payment products to everyday consumers. We were the fastest growing company in the Americas last year according to the Financial Times and Upgrade Card was the fastest growing credit card in America. We have delivered over $24 billion in affordable and responsible credit over the last 5 years. The company is backed by some of the most prominent technology investors and was recently valued at $6.3B.

We have built an energizing, collaborative and inclusive culture where team members help each other, learn and innovate to move the company and its customers in the right direction, and own the outcome of their efforts.

Upgrade has been named a “Best Place to Work in the Bay Area” three years in a row, “Top Companies to work for in Arizona” and one of the "Best Engineering Department" awarded annually by Comparably. We've also received recognition for being a best company for Diversity, Women, Culture, and Veterans.

We are looking for new team members who get excited about designing and delivering new and better products to join a team of 1600 talented and dedicated professionals. Come join us if you like to tackle big problems and make a meaningful difference in people's lives.

 

About the Role:

The Senior Manager, Operations Vendor will join Upgrade’s Operations, to support the management of third party vendors. The ideal candidate will have strong experience sourcing and evaluating vendor solutions relevant to a business operations environment, negotiating contracts, and managing vendor relationships.

 

What You’ll Do: 

• Responsible for the end-to-end management of third party vendors, of varying needs and complexity, in Upgrade’s business operations.
• Maintains relationships with external vendors, business process owners, system owners, and internal enterprise vendor/risk/compliance/legal teams to ensure soundness and timeliness in the procurement and ongoing management of vendors. 
• Maintains deep knowledge of services the vendor provides, as well as maintaining awareness of emerging services that would be relevant to the business
• Ensuring there are ongoing communication cadences between the vendor and internal stakeholders for support, change management, and business review purposes.
• Leverages understanding of business and operational strategy, needs, and objectives to ensure appropriate engagement and accountability of the vendor
• Support contracting, renewal, and termination administration processes
• Accountable for contract reviews, ensuring contracts accurately reflect products/services/pricing prior to Legal and Executive reviews.
• Monitor and hold vendors accountable to contractual requirements and SLAs
• Identifying and influencing opportunities in pricing, flexibility, SLAs, and other business beneficial terms. 
• Build the operations vendor program and project management structure required to maintain responsibilities in line with business growth and needs
• Maintain a clear and organized reference of contract documentation, contractual obligations, SLAs, and other key points of information to help ease the routine of contract management and vendor decision making
• Consults with senior management and other key internal stakeholders on strategic and tactical sourcing strategies; develops, plans and ensures successful implementation of contracted services

 

What We Look For:

• 5+ years required direct experience in relevant areas such as third party lifecycle management, relationship management, business arrangements, and/or procurement.
• Strongly prefer those with experience in environments across Financial Services, FinTech, Startups, Business Operations, and Contact Centers.
• Advanced knowledge of vendor management, third party lifecycle framework/principles, business operations, operational systems/products/services, competitive intelligence and market trends, negotiation tactics, and relationship management
• Excellent understanding of contract management and budgetary management principles/practices/procedures
• Self-starter with the right attitude and ability to thrive in a fast-paced and constantly changing environment with ease and agility
• Ability to build and scale a program and related processes from small to large scale
• Highly organized individual with the ability to effectively balance a high volume of tasks of varying degrees of complexity, urgencies, and topics
• Ability to contribute to strategic direction of the vendor program and provide advice to senior leadership
• Excellent presentation, interpersonal, written, and verbal communi