Contracts Manager

The Planet Group; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 90,000 - 140,000; Full time

Job summary

The Planet Group is seeking a contract-focused professional for a 6-month engagement in New York. The role involves drafting, reviewing and negotiating MSAs, SOWs, SLAs, and data privacy terms for staff augmentation and managed services.

You will work closely with Procurement, Legal, Risk and Information Security to move agreements efficiently. Ideal candidates have 5–7 years in commercial contract management within financial services or related investment organizations, with strong negotiation

Qualifications

• 5 to 7 years in commercial contract management, procurement or contracts-focused legal work.
• Experience at global investment manager, fund administrator or comparable investment organization.
• Proven negotiation experience with third-party service providers.

Responsibilities

• Draft, review and negotiate MSAs, SOWs, SLAs, order forms and data privacy terms.
• Advise business owners and translate contractual rights and obligations into plain terms.
• Partner with Global Procurement, Legal, Third Party Risk Management and Information Security to keep agreements moving.
• Resolve disputes and ensure documented resolutions; maintain contract records and renewal calendars.
• Monitor usage and entitlements, pricing, and escalations to inform vendor negotiations.
• Support renewal and negotiation calendar across the portfolio.
• Understanding that timing affects operational dates like NAV processes and data migrations.

Skills

Contract negotiation

Vendor management

Stakeholder management

Contract lifecycle

Education

Bachelor's degree

Tools

Contract repositories

Contract lifecycle management (CLM)

Job description

Duration: 6 months, likely extends to a year

onsite expectation 2-3 days/in office/week min

Job Description:

What you will be doing

You will draft, review and negotiate third-party service agreements on behalf of business owners, working through standard templates, policies and approval paths. The work is a mix of new agreements and renewals, and it moves quickly.

Day one focus areas include statements of work for staff augmentation and managed services, renewals across the data and analytics portfolio, and the contracting workstream supporting a new investment vehicle, which involves fund administration, loan servicing and technology agreements that need to line up with one another.

Responsibilities:

Draft, review and negotiate agreements. Master service agreements (MSAs), statements of work (SOWs), service level agreements (SLAs), order forms, amendments, third-party information security agreements and data privacy and processing agreements. Negotiate directly with vendor commercial and legal contacts, escalating where terms fall outside standard positions.

Advise business owners. Translate contractual rights, obligations and risk positions into plain terms for portfolio managers, operations leads and technology owners who are not contracting specialists and help them shape requirements into a scope a vendor can price and deliver against.

Partner across the contracting path. Work with Global Procurement, Legal, Third Party Risk Management, Information Security and Data Privacy to keep agreements moving without skipping required review. This includes assembling the inputs each group needs rather than handing off and waiting.

Resolve disputes and unclear terms. Investigate performance issues, service credit claims, scope disagreements and invoicing discrepancies, then work them to a documented resolution.

Maintain the contract record. Keep executed agreements, amendments, key dates, renewal triggers, termination rights and spend commitments accurate and accessible in contract repository, and flag upcoming milestones early enough to act on them.

Track consumption against contracted entitlements. Monitor actual usage against what each agreement entitles to, covering software seats and licenses, data feed and redistribution rights, user counts, API and query volumes, and any tiered or consumption-based pricing. Identify where we are approaching a threshold, model the cost of the next tier against the cost of an overage, and bring the business owner a recommendation to buy more, reallocate what we already hold or reduce entitlements we no longer use, with enough lead time to negotiate rather than true up after the fact.

Support the renewal and negotiation calendar. Track expirations and auto-renewal dates across the portfolio, prepare negotiation positions ahead of each cycle and brief the vendor manager and business owner on options.

Much of this work involves vendors who deliver into live investment operations, so timing matters as much as terms. A contract that lands two weeks late can hold up a NAV process, a data migration or an investment close. The people who do well in this role understand that and manage backwards from the operational date rather than the legal one.

Required skills and experience:

5 to 7 years in commercial contract management, procurement or contracts-focused legal work, including direct ownership of MSAs, SOWs, SLAs, information security schedules and data privacy and processing terms.

Experience gained at a global investment manager, an alternatives manager, a fund administrator, an insurance investment arm or a comparable investment organization. We are looking for people who already understand how an investment platform runs and who will not need the operating context explained to them.

Proven negotiation experience with third-party service providers, including the ability to hold a position on liability, indemnification, data handling, termination and service credits while keeping the relationship workable.

Strong stakeholder management skills and comfort operating with business owners, legal counsel, procurement and vendors at the same time.

Excellent organizational skills and evidence of managing a portfolio of concurrent agreements against competing deadlines.

Clear written and verbal communication, particularly the ability to explain a contractual issue and its practical consequences to a non-legal audience.

Working experience with contract lifecycle management platforms and contract repositories.

Ability to adapt as requirements shift, especially around data privacy, information security and third-party risk expectations.

Preferred experience:

Familiarity with any of the following agreement types: fund administration and accounting services, loan servicing or agency services, market and reference data licensing, order management and portfolio systems, or professional services and staff augmentation.

Familiarity with software licensing and subscription models, including seat-based, enterprise, tiered and consumption-based pricing, and the entitlement and redistribution terms that come with market data agreements.

Exposure to regulatory and third-party risk requirements relevant to financial services, including outsourcing and operational resilience expectations.

Experience contracting with offshore or nearshore service providers.

Qualifications:

Bachelor's degree in business, legal studies or a related field, or equivalent work experience.

5 to 7 years of relevant experience in contracts, procurement or legal, specifically including commercial contract terms and third-party service agreements.

Experience at an investment manager, fund administrator or comparable investment organization.