Lead Supply Negotiator

Crux AI

Palo Alto (CA)

On-site

USD 150,000 - 210,000

Full time

8 days ago

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Benefits offered by this job

Health, dental, and vision coverage

Life insurance

Disability insurance

401(k) plan with company match

Job summary

Crux AI, a U.S.-based integrated AI infrastructure company, seeks an experienced professional to lead strategic sourcing and contract management for hardware and services essential to building our facilities.

You will negotiate multi-year supply agreements, manage partner relationships (including coordination with Google), and apply AI-enabled tools to track compliance, optimize costs, and protect Crux’s margins across the value chain.

Qualifications

8–10+ years in strategic sourcing or supply management for hardware/infrastructure.
Experience negotiating multi-year, allocation-constrained agreements with hyperscalers or OEMs.
Hands-on, builder mindset with ability to develop AI-enabled contract tools.

Responsibilities

Negotiate and manage contracts with Crux's supply partners.
Establish partner cadence with Google and other suppliers.
Develop AI-enabled contract management and compliance tooling.

Skills

Strategic sourcing

Supply management

Partner management

Contract negotiation

AI/Automation mindset

TPU

GPU

Hardware sourcing tools

Tools

TPU

GPU

Hardware sourcing tools

Job description

Built to set the gold standard for integrated AI infrastructure

Crux AI is a newly formed, U.S.-based integrated AI infrastructure company created to remove the physical and operational constraints on consequential AI ambitions. Crux brings together power, high-density data centers, TPU silicon, networking, orchestration software, and ongoing operations as one integrated system.

Crux is being capitalized to plan every layer together, develop each one to demanding standards, and operate the whole system with efficiency and reliability. That gives hyperscalers, frontier AI labs, sovereign customers, enterprises, and AI-native companies greater freedom to pursue the AI they are here to create.

What you’ll do

Your first job is to negotiate and manage excellent contracts with Crux’s supply partners including the strategic technology partnership with Google as Crux’s TPU supply, OEM/ODM relationships for HW equipment and networking, data center services and MEP equipment supply chain as Crux begins building its own facilities, and the indirect categories such as third-party services, managed business functions and software that keep the company running.

Excellent means total cost of ownership over the life of asset / contract, not unit price: delivery certainty, warranty and support terms, roadmap commitments, and supply quality that is defined in the contract and measured and tracked after signature.

Supply is the binding constraint on Crux’s growth, and the terms, timing, and reliability you negotiate determine what Crux can sell, when, and at what margin — so ensuring continuity of supply, through diversified sources, buffer and allocation commitments, and contractual protections against disruption, is as much your job as price.

Because Crux’s supply agreements and customer contracts both run for years, every negotiation is forward-looking: the question is never only today’s price and allocation, but how supply costs, generation roadmaps, and partner commitments will evolve over the life of the assets Crux deploys.

Your second job is to make sure the contracts deliver what they promise — building and leveraging AI tools to manage the contract portfolio, track partner compliance to terms and quality commitments, and prevent value leakage between what was negotiated and what is delivered and invoiced. You’ll partner across Demand/Supply Planning, Capacity Delivery, Pricing, Finance, and Legal, and with the supply, product, and support organizations of Crux’s supplier partners.

SIGNALS OF SUCCESS

After 60 days in this role:

Mapped key supply partners and their supply, roadmap, and support organizations and establish yourself as Crux’s primary working-level counterpart.
Stood up a partner operating cadence with Google and other key suppliers — weekly supply reviews, monthly executive syncs, and a shared issues and escalations log.
Delivered a consolidated view of committed chip allocation, delivery schedules, and open commercial terms against Crux’s Stage 1 capacity plan, with a multi-year TCO view of supply and its impact on unit economics.
Completed a category map of Crux’s direct and indirect spend — the foundation of Crux’s spend cube — with a prioritized sourcing plan for the next 12 months.
Adapted to a fast-paced environment, triaging appropriately and continuously improving our function.

After 6 months:

Negotiated and closed the allocation, pricing, and delivery terms for Crux’s first set of cluster deployments on a TCO basis, with measurable supply quality and service commitments written into the contracts and the cost inputs feeding the cost and margin model of record.
Selected and contracted Crux’s initial OEM/ODM partners for HW equipment and networking, with commercial terms and delivery commitments aligned to the deployment plan.
Supply risk and continuity framework in place — delivery slippage, generation transitions, quality, and single-source exposure — with mitigations agreed with partners and Capacity Delivery.
Established Crux’s sourcing and contracting process for indirect categories with Finance and Legal, and have Crux’s spend cube live as a centralized, near real-time view of spend across categories, suppliers, and sites.
Demonstrated an AI-forward and automated approach to this role — you have built, in a hands-on way, AI-enabled tools for contract management, compliance tracking against negotiated terms and quality commitments, and invoice-to-contract reconciliation that the team uses every day.

After 1 year:

Secured the supply commitments required for Stage 1 completion and a credible path to the Stage 2 plan, with terms that hold up as generations transition and volumes scale.
Have a multi-category supply portfolio under active management — accelerators, OEM/ODM, data center equipment, and indirect — with a consistent negotiation playbook, a commercial terms framework, and supplier quality scorecards tracked against contract.
Quantified record of value protected — leakage identified and recovered across pricing, delivery, quality, and service terms — and be positioned to build and lead the sourcing and partnership function as Crux scales.

EXPERIENCES, ATTRIBUTES AND MINDSET THAT INDICATE A GOOD MATCH

Experiences

8–10+ years in strategic sourcing, supply management, or partner management for hardware or infrastructure, including direct responsibility for negotiating large, allocation-constrained, multi-year supply agreements with hyperscalers, semiconductor vendors, or OEM/ODMs on a total-cost-of-ownership basis
Managed a multi-category supply portfolio spanning direct hardware and indirect services, including post-signature contract compliance and supplier quality management, and understand how hyperscaler and major vendor supply, roadmap, and support organizations make decisions
You are outcome driven and hands on. This is a builder’s seat, not a supervisory one — you build your own tools, use AI and automation as a default in everyday work, and you’d rather build an agent that reads every contract and flags every deviation than find the leakage in a quarterly review
You are a relationship builder and a hard negotiator at the same time. You can protect Crux’s position on terms and timing while keeping partners invested in Crux’s success
You have a high tolerance for ambiguity. You absorb ambiguity and navigate complexity rather than passing it along
You negotiate for the life of the asset, not the purchase order in front of you. You think in total cost of ownership, model how terms play out over years, and care about supply quality and certainty across the fleet more than any single win

Nice to have [Preferred, not required]:

Direct experience with TPU, GPU, or other accelerator supply and allocation
Experience sourcing data center equipment — power, cooling, electrical, and mechanical — for new builds
Familiarity with hardware logistics, import/export controls, and trade compliance

Salary Range Information

The annual salary range for this position has been estimated based on market data and other factors. However, a salary higher or lower than this range may be appropriate for a candidate whose qualifications differ meaningfully from those listed in the job description.

About Crux