VP Strategic Sourcing and Vendor Relations

UNC REX Healthcare; Durham (NC); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 300,000; Full time

Job summary

UNC Health is seeking a VP of Strategic Sourcing and Vendor Relations to lead enterprise resource stewardship across clinical and non-clinical domains. You will align spend, contracts, and partnerships with system priorities, governance, and patient-care goals.

The role emphasizes data-driven decision making, collaboration with physicians and leaders, and optimization of supplier partnerships to maximize value and quality across UNC Health’s network.

Qualifications

• Master's degree required.
• Requires twelve (12) years of related experience, including ten (10) years in management.

Responsibilities

• Provide system-level leadership for supply chain resource stewardship and enterprise initiatives.
• Lead value analysis and physician engagement to inform clinical and operational decisions.
• Oversee contract lifecycle management and supplier strategy across categories.
• Align capital resource planning with service line priorities and interoperability goals.
• Foster alignment across clinical and non-clinical leadership to enable collaborative decision-making.

Skills

Project management

Change management

Education

Master's degree

Job description

Description

Your passion belongs at UNC Health. Join more than 56,000 teammates working together to improve the health and well-being of the communities we serve across North Carolina.

Summary

The HCS VP Strategic Sourcing and Vendor Relations role provides enterprise leadership for supply chain resource stewardship functions, including clinical resource management, value analysis, non-clinical and purchased services sourcing oversight, system-level sourcing strategy, capital resource alignment, contract lifecycle management, supplier performance oversight.

The VP ensures that supply chain resource decisions—clinical and non-clinical—align with service line priorities, physician-driven requirements, operational needs, financial stewardship, and UNC Health’s mission to deliver high-value, high-quality patient care. This role promotes a data-driven approach linking clinical evidence, operations, spend analytics, and vendor strategies to maximize system value. Additionally, the Vice President fosters strong alignment and synergy across the health system by integrating sourcing strategies, value analysis and vendor partnerships with both clinical and non-clinical leadership, enabling collaborative decision-making, optimizing resource utilization, and ensuring cohesive execution of enterprise-wide strategic initiatives. The role reports to the Chief Supply Chain Officer.

Responsibilities

• Enterprise Leader & System Integration: Serve as a core member of the Supply Chain Executive Leadership Team, shaping enterprise supply chain direction, systemness, and long-term resource stewardship strategy. Partner with clinical, operational, financial, ISD, and service line leaders to ensure supply chain resource priorities align with organizational goals, care models, and investment strategies. Translate enterprise strategic priorities into coordinated approaches for clinical resources, purchased services, contract lifecycle management, supplier portfolios, and capital-related resource planning. Represent UNC Health as the executive leader for supply chain resource stewardship in internal, external, and industry forums.
• Clinical Resource Management, Value Analysis, & Physician Engagement: Provide executive leadership for UNC Health's Value Analysis program, ensuring that product decisions are clinically led, evidence-based, outcomes-focused, and aligned with service line strategies. Partner directly with physicians, surgeons, nursing leaders, researchers, and clinical leadership to prioritize resource decisions that support quality, safety, and clinical workflow. Establish enterprise standards for product evaluation, introduction, conversion, and utilization, ensuring disciplined, transparent, and data-supported decision-making. Ensure that clinical resource decisions incorporate total cost of ownership, clinical impact modeling, and systemwide adoption planning.
• Non-clinical & Purchased Services Spend Management: Lead enterprise oversight of non-clinical and purchased services resource categories, ensuring disciplined assessment of scope, cost, utilization drivers, supplier performance, and operational reliability. Drive portfolio strategies that balance financial stewardship, operational continuity, service performance, and risk management across all non-clinical domains. Ensure consistent application of enterprise methodologies for prioritization, analysis, supplier evaluation, and contracting across the non-clinical spend landscape.
• Capital Resource Alignment & Collaborations with ISD: Provide executive partnership to ISD, Finance, and clinical leadership in capital resource planning, evaluation, sourcing, and lifecycle considerations. Participate in capital-related governance bodies to ensure capital investments align with clinical service line strategy, interoperability requirements, safety standards, and financial stewardship. Oversee preparation of sourcing, commercial analysis, and vendor engagement materials for capital resource decisions. Ensure capital resource strategies align with system technology roadmaps, cybersecurity standards, support models, and long-term lifecycle planning.
• Contract Lifecycle Management & Supplier Strategy: Oversee enterprise contract lifecycle management processes, ensuring contracts are configured, maintained, monitored, and optimized throughout their lifecycle. Lead supplier strategy across clinical, non-clinical, purchased services, and capital-related spend, including segmentation, performance management, commercial negotiations, and executive business reviews. Ensure competitive bidding, contracting standards, compliance practices, and supplier accountability mechanisms are consistently applied across categories. Serve as a senior liaison to GPO partners, influencing contract strategy, supplier innovation pipelines, and emerging technology pathways. Embed proactive risk identification and mitigation into sourcing and contracting strategies, including supplier financial stability, supply continuity, geopolitical exposure, cybersecurity risk, regulatory change, and single source dependencies. Ensure contracts are structured to protect continuity of patient care through clearly defined service level expectations, performance guarantees, redundancy requirements, escalation rights, and termination provisions. Partner with Legal, Compliance, Information Security, and Operations to assess and incorporate risk appropriate commercial terms, data security provisions, and resilience requirements in all major supplier agreements. Provides executive oversight for the design and governance of an enterprise-wide vendor performance management framework, establishing standardized KPIs, benchmarking methodologies, and reporting structures to guide strategic decision-making. Leads enterprise accountability across supplier partnerships by directing performance optimization strategies, addressing systemic gaps, and driving initiatives that enhance value realization, cost stewardship, and service excellence. Design and manage diversified supplier portfolios that balance value, innovation, and resilience, reducing systemic risk while maintaining clinical and operational performance.
• Enterprise Spend Governance, Value Realization, & Financial Stewardship: Own the system’s unified value realization framework, ensuring consistent methodology and measurement of financial, operational, and clinical value outcomes (baseline, cost avoidance, offsets, GL impact, revenue effects, safety and quality measures). Collaborate with Finance to establish systemwide spend governance, ensuring transparent opportunity pipelines, validated outcomes, and sustained value delivery. Ensure all spend-related decisions support long-term sustainability, clinical appropriateness, and system resource stewardship. Optimizes clinical, operational, and financial stewardship in support of patient outcomes and long-term system sustainability. Engages physicians, nurses, operators, and service line leaders through transparent communication, evidence-based recommendations, and co‑created resource decisions.
• Compliance, Regulatory Alignment, & Risk Management: Ensure all supply chain resource decisions, contracts, and sourcing processes comply with regulatory, accreditation, and policy requirements. Oversee recall management, defective product remediation, and vendor access programs to support clinical and operational safety. Identify and mitigate supplier, technology, clinical, and market risks affecting patient care, cost, or operational performance. Lead enterprise identification, assessment, and mitigation of supply chain risks impacting patient safety, clinical operations, financial performance, and system reputation. Oversee development of mitigation strategies for supply disruption, recalls, vendor failure, cybersecurity incidents, and market volatility, in coordination with clinical, operational, and enterprise risk partners. Establish governance, monitoring, and early warning mechanisms to identify emerging supplier and market risks and trigger timely mitigation actions.
• Team Leadership & Organizational Development: Lead diverse teams across clinical resource management, value analysis, non-clinical resource management, capital resource support, contract lifecycle management, and supplier strategy. Establish a culture of stewardship, analytical rigor, transparency, clinical partnership, and service excellence. Build systemwide capabilities in analytics, negotiation, clinical integration, contracting depth, and spend governance.

Qualifications

• Education Requirements: Master's degree required.
• Licensure/Certification Requirements: None required.
• Professional Experience Requirements: Requires twelve (12) years of related experience to include ten (10) years of management experience.
• Knowledge/Skills/and Abilities Requirements:
  • Understands the overarching System operations and policies that guide the organization.
  • Drives and develops innovative ideas and solutions with significance to the organization’s future.
  • Identifies problem areas and skill gaps proactively and addresses them appropriately.
  • Excellent project management and change management skills for designing and implementing high priority System or business group initiatives in a complex environment.

Job Details

Legal Employer: STATE

Entity: Shared Services

Organization Unit: Supply Chain

Work Type: Full Time

Standard Hours Per Week: 40.00

Pay offers are determined by experience and internal equity

Work Assignment Type: Hybrid

Work Schedule: Day Job

Location of Job: US:NC: Durham

Exempt From Overtime: Exempt: Yes

This is a State position employed by UNC Health Care System with UNC Health benefits. If, however, you are presently an employee of another North Carolina agency and currently participate in TSERS or the ORP, you will be eligible to continue participating in those plans at UNC Health.

Qualified applicants will be considered without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, genetic information, disability, status as a protected veteran or political affiliation.

UNC Health makes reasonable accommodations for applicants' and employees' religious practices and beliefs, as well as applicants and employees with disabilities.