Vendor Management Lead

Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Kentucky; On-site; USD 121,000 - 151,000; Full time

Job summary

Howard Hughes Medical Institute in the greater Washington, DC area seeks an experienced procurement professional focused on vendor management and contract governance. You will advocate for HHMI, define needs, negotiate terms, and drive SLAs and compliance across benefits, software, and IT vendors.

This is an individual contributor role reporting to the Director, Procurement, with five to seven years of experience and a bachelor’s degree.

Qualifications

• Five to seven years of experience in vendor management, supplier relationships, or contract administration.
• Excellent negotiation and advocacy skills with a track record of enforcing terms.
• Strong understanding of service levels, SLAs, and risk management.

Responsibilities

• Help pick the vendor by defining needs, weighing proposals, and selecting terms.
• Hold vendors accountable for delivering as agreed, across departments.
• Negotiate terms, renewals, and amendments to HHMI’s advantage with Procurement and GC.
• Build and run SLA reviews to ensure vendors meet their commitments.
• Take escalation for performance issues and drive them to resolution.
• Oversee major relationships, especially benefits, software, and IT vendors.
• Lead vendor performance reviews and initiate corrective actions.
• Collaborate with staff handling vendors day-to-day to represent HHMI’s interests.
• Provide regular updates to the executive team through the COO.

Skills

Vendor management

Negotiation

SLA development

Contract administration

Escalation management

Vendor performance reviews

Education

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience

Job description

Primary Work Address: 4000 Jones Bridge Road, Chevy Chase, MD, 20815

Current HHMI Employees

HHMI is focused on supporting and moving science forward in a variety of different ways ranging from conducting basic biomedical research, empowering educators, inspiring students, developing the next generation of scientists – even stretching into film and media production. Our Headquarters is in the greater Washington, DC metro area and is home to over 300 employees with expertise in investments, communications, digital production, biomedical sciences, and everything in between. The work housed here supports and augments the groundbreaking research conducted in HHMI labs across the nation. As HHMI scientists continue to push boundaries in laboratories and classrooms, you can be sure that your contributions while working here are making a difference.

This is a role for someone who reads a vendor contract and immediately spots where the leverage sits, and who is comfortable being the person who says no on HHMI’s behalf. You are HHMI’s advocate with its vendors: in choosing them, in negotiating with them, and in holding them to what they promised.

You will sit in Finance and report to the Director, Procurement, but the vendors you cover span the Institute (from benefits providers to enterprise SaaS vendors). Whichever department owns the day to day relationship, you own whether the vendor is actually delivering.

The job is advocacy and accountability, not account coordination. You help HHMI pick the right vendor in the first place. You negotiate contract terms and renewals to HHMI’s advantage, build the service level agreements and terms that define what good looks like for us, and run the compliance reviews that catch it when a vendor falls short. When something breaks, you are the point of escalation, and you drive it to resolution instead of passing it along.

You will work closely with Procurement, the Office of General Counsel, and HHMI’s other department leads, and with staff across the Institute who manage these vendors day-to-day. You will report regularly to the executive team, through the COO, on how our vendors are performing. None of the people you work with day-to-day report to you, so getting to the right outcome depends on how well you make your case.

What you will actually do

• Help pick the vendor. When a department needs a new vendor, you are in the room. You help define what HHMI needs, weigh the proposals, and push for the vendor and the terms that will serve the Institute best.
• Hold vendors accountable. Across the Institute, you track whether vendors are delivering the terms, service levels, and deliverables they agreed to, no matter which department manages the relationship day to day.
• Negotiate the contract. You negotiate terms, renewals, and amendments to HHMI’s advantage, including the SLAs and the terms that will work for us, with Procurement and the Office of General Counsel alongside you on pricing, scope, and risk.
• Build and run SLA reviews. You develop and document service level agreements with key vendors, then run regular compliance and SLA reviews to confirm they are living up to them.
• Take the escalation. When a vendor is not meeting its commitments, you are the first call. You drive performance issues, errors, and delays to resolution.
• Watch the biggest relationships. You own whether HHMI’s major service providers deliver, enterprise-wide, with the heaviest focus on benefits vendors and software and IT vendors.
• Run performance reviews. You lead periodic vendor performance reviews, document what you find, and hold vendors to corrective action plans when they fall short.
• Coordinate without owning. You work with the staff who deal with these vendors day to day. You gather what they know and use it to represent HHMI’s interests.
• Keep the executive team informed. You report regularly to the executive team, through the COO, on vendor performance, open escalations, and what is coming up for selection or renewal.

What we are looking for

• A dogged advocate for HHMI. You are on the Institute’s side, every time, from the first vendor conversation through the last performance review, and vendors know it.
• A tenacious negotiator. You can hold firm on contract terms and service expectations while keeping a workable relationship with the vendor.
• Judgment on when to escalate. You can tell the difference between a vendor hiccup and a pattern, and you know when to raise it and how to drive it to a close.
• Fluent in SLAs and metrics. You can write a service level agreement that actually measures something, and apply it across vendor types that have nothing in common with each other.
• Comfortable without a permanent seat. You can walk into a vendor relationship you do not own day to day and still get the outcome you need.
• High expectations, worn lightly. You expect real service from a vendor. You expect the department that owns the relationship to expect it too. You can hold both without becoming that department’s adversary.

Nice to have

• Direct experience negotiating or managing benefits contracts or software and IT agreements.
• Exposure to other enterprise service providers, such as cloud platforms, HR or HCM systems, or benefits administration platforms.

What this role is not

• A contract filing job. You are negotiating and enforcing terms, not just tracking renewal dates and storing signed agreements.
• A role for someone who avoids friction. Part of the job is telling a vendor, plainly, that they are not meeting the bar, and staying in that conversation until it is fixed.

Practical details

This role is based at HHMI Headquarters and reports to the Director, Procurement. It is an individual contributor position with no supervisory or budgetary responsibility. HHMI is looking for five to seven years of experience in vendor management, supplier relationship management, or contract administration, and a bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience. #LI-BG1

Compensation and Benefits

Our employees are compensated from a total rewards perspective in many ways for their contributions to our mission, including competitive pay, exceptional health benefits, retirement plans, time off, and a range of recognition and wellness programs. Visit our Benefits at HHMI site to learn more.

Hiring Pay Range

$120,517.60 - $150,647.00

Pay Type

Annual

The posted range reflects HHMI’s good faith estimate of the anticipated hiring salary range for this role at the time of posting. Actual hiring compensation is determined by a candidate’s qualifications, experience, and internal equity.

HHMI is an Equal Opportunity Employer

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