Head of Procurement (AI)

Location: San Mateo, United States; hybrid

Salary: $260,000–$280,000 per year, plus equity

Company

Enterprise AI platform enabling companies to build, train, and serve specialized AI models across text, image, embedding, audio, and multimodal workloads.

What you will do

• Develop and execute the company-wide procurement strategy, policies, governance, operating models, and approval frameworks.
• Lead strategic sourcing, category strategies, competitive RFP and RFQ processes, supplier evaluations, and complex commercial negotiations.
• Build supplier relationship management programs, performance scorecards, business reviews, and risk mitigation plans.
• Deliver measurable savings, cost avoidance, working capital improvements, spend visibility, and total-cost-of-ownership benefits.
• Design scalable procure-to-pay and source-to-contract workflows, including purchasing, contracting, supplier onboarding, and invoicing.
• Partner with Finance, Legal, Technology, Operations, executives, and functional leaders while leading and developing the procurement team.

Requirements

• Significant experience in procurement, strategic sourcing, category management, supply chain, or related commercial roles.
• Experience leading a procurement function or major procurement programs and managing teams.
• Strong record of delivering commercial value through sourcing, negotiation, supplier management, and process improvement.
• Experience negotiating complex, high-value supplier agreements and managing supplier risk, governance, contracts, and spend.
• Strong financial and analytical capabilities, including business cases, pricing models, and total cost of ownership.
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent professional experience, with strong stakeholder management, communication, influencing, and negotiation skills.

Nice to have

• Experience building or transforming a procurement function in a high-growth organization.
• Familiarity with procurement technology, spend analytics, contract lifecycle management, and procure-to-pay platforms.
• Experience managing both direct and indirect spend categories.
• Professional procurement qualification such as CIPS, CPSM, or equivalent.

Culture & Benefits

• Work on AI infrastructure, including low-latency inference and scalable model serving.
• Collaborate with engineers and AI researchers on technology for businesses and developers.
• Operate in a fast-growing environment focused on ownership, measurable impact, curiosity, and innovation.
• Equity is included in the compensation package.