Assistant Director, Sourcing & Procurement

About The Job

The Assistant Director of Sourcing & Procurement is a trusted advisor responsible for strategic sourcing, procurement services, vendor management, market insights and supporting vendor initiatives for technical professional services and labor. The role develops business and vendor strategies, leads complex negotiations, advances enterprise vendor-management practices, and supports regulatory and compliance requirements.

What You'll Do:

• Partner with senior leaders and enterprise teams to establish vendor strategies, goals, and execution plans for critical, high-risk, and strategic relationships.
• Advise executive relationship owners on using strategic vendors to achieve innovation, efficiency, and sound financial management.
• Identify sourcing opportunities across strategic vendor relationships and anticipated enterprise needs.
• Lead sophisticated, sensitive and technology focused contract negotiations
• Lead cross-departmental projects while managing scope, risk, business value, schedules, and budgets.
• Research vendor-management trends and help ensure applicable regulatory and compliance expectations are addressed.
• Recommend and implement significant process, workflow, organizational, and system improvements.
• Provide leadership and mentoring to vendor managers throughout the vendor-management lifecycle.

What You'll Bring:

• Bachelor's degree in Business, Information Technology, Legal, or a related field preferred, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Minimum eight years of leadership experience in financial services, preferably involving sourcing, vendor management, or strategic vendor negotiations.
• Preferable technical acumen related to the delivery of infrastructure and software services
• Ability to build influential relationships, communicate a vision, persuade varied audiences, and guide senior-leader decisions.
• Strong cross-functional leadership, financial analysis and modeling, research, analytical problem-solving, planning, and organizational skills.
• Experience with contract development and execution; MBA or JD preferred.

Position focus

• Cover a broad professional services and labor portfolio, including but not limited to infrastructure, cloud services, data, architecture and risk groups throughout business functions.
• Operate as a category manager, consultant, and project leader across multiple concurrent initiatives.
• Develop sound contracts in partnership with Legal, Risk, Privacy, and Security.
• Partner with IT leadership to connect technology roadmaps with contract strategy and market capabilities.
• Create concise executive-level PowerPoint stories that clearly frame issues and recommended direction.
• Potential to lead at least one direct report, with potential for future team growth.

Skills You'll Have:

• Strategic, consultative approach supported by data and market intelligence.
• Strong communication and comfort discussing technology with business partners.
• Ability to ask probing questions, guide stakeholders, and manage numerous priorities.
• Strong Excel, PowerPoint storytelling and executive communication.
• Software/Infrastructure-category/background experience is preferred, but related sourcing-category experience may be transferable.

Compensation Range:

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We believe in fairness and transparency. It’s why we share the salary range for most of our roles. However, final salaries are based on a number of factors, including the skills and experience of the candidate; the current market; location of the candidate; and other factors uncovered in the hiring process. The standard pay structure is listed but if you’re living in California, New York City or other eligible location, geographic specific pay structures, compensation and benefits could be applicable, click here to learn more.

Grow your career with a best-in-class company that puts our clients' interests at the center of all we do. Get started now!

Northwestern Mutual is an equal opportunity employer that welcomes talented individuals of all backgrounds. We are committed to creating and maintaining an environment in which each employee can contribute creative ideas, seek challenges, assume leadership and continue to focus on meeting and exceeding business and personal objectives.

About Us

At Northwestern Mutual, we believe relationships are built on trust. That our lives and our work matter. These beliefs launched our company over 160 years ago. Today, they're just a few of the reasons why people choose to build careers at Northwestern Mutual. What started in Milwaukee, WI has grown into 7,000+ home office professionals split across 3 campuses: New York City, Franklin and downtown Milwaukee (HQ) - each one bringing with it its own unique talent and culture. In a company with such a long and storied history, this may be the most exciting and important time to be a part of Northwestern Mutual as we are growing our digital and tech capabilities and are always on the lookout for bright, tech-savvy candidates.

Northwestern Mutual is an equal opportunity employer that welcomes talented individuals of all backgrounds. We are committed to creating and maintaining an environment in which each employee can contribute creative ideas, seek challenges, assume leadership and continue to focus on meeting and exceeding business and personal objectives.