Vendor and Contract Manager

About the role

As the Vendor and Contract Manager on the Safeguards team, you will own the end-to-end lifecycle of Anthropic's safety-critical vendor, partner, and consultant relationships — from identifying and selecting vendors through contract negotiation, onboarding, ongoing performance management, and renewal. The vendors and partners you'll manage span verification, threat intelligence, process outsourcing, capability evaluation, civil society consultation, and research collaboration.

You'll build repeatable processes where they're needed while staying nimble enough to handle novel partnership structures, like research collaborations, civil society consultations, and model red-teaming engagements that don't fit neatly into standard procurement workflows. You'll work closely with legal, procurement, finance, and engineering teams, and you'll be the person who knows where every Safeguards contract stands, what we're spending, and where we should consider a change.

This is a role for someone who's comfortable operating across commercial, legal, and technical contexts in a fast-moving environment — someone who can negotiate contract terms, work with legal teams to redline contracts,  set up model access for a research partner, and handle a vendor performance issue in one day.

*Important context for this role: In this position you may be exposed to and engage with explicit content spanning a range of topics, including those of a sexual, violent, or psychologically disturbing nature.

Responsibilities:

Vendor Selection & Onboarding

• Understand the broad vendor landscape for Safeguards and drive vendor selection processes with expert input, factoring in tradeoffs between capability, price, and internal resources across categories including verification, threat intelligence, process outsourcing, and capability evaluation
• Conduct vendor due diligence and coordinate security and data governance reviews for vendors handling sensitive model access or content
• Forecast future partnership needs and proactively research vendors and partners that could meet emerging Safeguards requirements

Contract & Budget Management

• Manage contracts across the Safeguards vendor and partner portfolio, working with legal and procurement teams on contract redlining, negotiation, and execution
• Work with legal teams and potential research partners to develop novel agreements for research collaboration, civil society consultation, and model red-teaming
• Handle invoicing, payment, and renewal processes with partners
• Own Safeguards vendor budget tracking and planning in partnership with finance teams, maintaining a clear picture of current spend and forecasting future needs

Ongoing Vendor & Partner Management

• Manage vendor and researcher access to models and products during testing phases and trials
• Oversee and monitor vendor performance and usage, flagging issues and resolving concerns and disputes as they arise
• Report on vendor performance, spend, and contract status to Safeguards leadership

You may be a good fit if you have:

• 5+ years in vendor management, procurement, or contract operations, ideally in risk, fraud, compliance, or trust & safety contexts at a technology company
• Demonstrated experience reviewing and negotiating contracts, including comfort with redlining and working alongside legal counsel
• Track record managing vendor budgets, including forecasting, tracking spend, and making tradeoff recommendations
• Understanding of AI safety, account abuse, or platform integrity issues — you know what verification vendors, threat intelligence providers, and content screening tools actually do
• Experience onboarding vendors and standing up new vendor relationships from scratch, not just managing existing ones
• Strong cross-functional collaboration skills, particularly with legal, procurement, finance, and engineering teams
• Comfort with ambiguity and fast-moving environments — you've built or significantly improved vendor management processes, not just inherited them

Nice to have:

• Experience in AI safety or AI-adjacent vendor ecosystems
• Familiarity with procurement tools such as Ironclad or Zip