Procurement Lead

Parallel Web Systems; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

Generous equity

Visa sponsorships

401K plans

Daily lunch & office snacks

Dinner at the office

Unlimited vacation

Caltrain pass reimbursement

Job summary

Parallel Web Systems is seeking a first procurement leader to build and scale our procurement function. You will own compute negotiations, vendor deals across cloud, data, and software, and the full flow from intake to signature, ensuring financial efficiency.

You will partner with finance, accounting, legal, and engineering, and help hire the team as the function grows. The role emphasizes forecasting, AI-assisted speed, and strategic cost control.

Qualifications

• First procurement lead at a high-growth tech company.
• Negotiated large, complex deals across cloud, data, and software.
• Deep understanding of compute economics: reserved vs on-demand.
• Owned end-to-end flow from request to contract to payment.
• Experience using AI tools to move fast with a lean team.
• Strong forecasting and planning skills.

Responsibilities

• Build and lead Parallel's Procurement function as we scale.
• Negotiate compute and vendor commitments across software, services, and infrastructure.
• Own content and data partnership payouts to enhance product performance.
• Partner with finance, accounting, legal, and engineering; help hire the team.

Skills

Negotiation

Cloud deals

Compute economics

Forecasting

Vendor management

Team leadership

Tools

Contract management

Job description

About us

Parallel is a web infrastructure company. Our products are used by leading businesses in sales, marketing, insurance, and coding to build best-in-class AI agents with flexible and powerful programmatic access to the web.

We've raised $230 million from Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia, Index Ventures, Spark Capital, Khosla Ventures, First Round, and Terrain to build the web for AIs. We're currently valued at $2 billion and we're forming a world-class team of engineers, designers, marketers, sellers, researchers, and operational experts to achieve our mission.

Job: Be a frugal, strategic, and and hard negotiator for Parallel. You will build and lead Parallel's Procurement function as we scale a generational AI infrastructure company. You’ll lead our compute negotiations, one of largest cost centers, structuring commitments with cloud and infrastructure providers that keep pace with fast, hard-to-forecast growth. You’ll own vendor procurement across software, services, and infrastructure, from intake to signature. You’ll also own content and data partnership payouts while are key to enhancing our product performance. You’ll partner closely with finance, accounting, legal, and engineering, and you’ll help hire the team as the function grows.
You: You’ve been the first procurement lead at a high-growth tech company and built the function from nothing. You’ve personally negotiated large, complex deals across cloud, AI, data, and software, and you can point to what you won. You understand compute economics: reserved versus on-demand, commit sizing, and the levers that keep things flexible. You’ve owned the full flow from request to contract to payment, so accounting stays clean. You use AI tools to move faster with a lean team. Teams come to you early because you make forecasting, and buying easier, not harder.

Life at Parallel

Our team works fully in-person, between our Palo Alto HQ and San Francisco office. We’re a flat, talent-dense organization dedicated to solving technical and creative problems.

We seek like-minded individuals who share our passion for applying science, creativity, and consistency to big and complex problems with equally big outcomes. These are our values:

• Own customer impact: It’s on us to ensure real-world outcomes for our customers.

• Obsess over craft: Perfect every detail because quality compounds.

• Accelerate change: Ship fast, adapt faster, and move frontier ideas into production.

• Create win-wins: Creatively turn trade-offs into upside.

• Make high-conviction bets: Try and fail. But succeed an unfair amount.

Compensation & benefits

• Competitive salary

• Generous equity

• Visa sponsorships

• 401K plans

• Daily lunch & office snacks

• Dinner at the office

• Unlimited vacation

• Caltrain pass reimbursement