Vendor Relationship Manager

Why Stifel

Stifel strives for a culture that puts its clients and associates first: a culture where everyone belongs, everyone is welcome, and everyone contributes to the success of our clients, their careers, and the firm as a whole.

Let’s talk about how you can find your place here at Stifel, where success meets success.

What You'll Be Doing

The Vendor Relationship Manager owns a portfolio of the firm’s strategic IT vendors from contract signature through renewal. Acting as the single point of contact between renewals, the Manager ensures vendors deliver what the firm is paying for, holds them accountable when they fall short, and produces the evidence the firm needs to make every renewal an informed decision rather than a default. The role works closely with the Vendor Management Analyst, FinOps, Procurement, Legal, Compliance, Third-Party Risk, and the business owners of each vendor relationship.

What We're Looking For

• Serve as the named single point of contact for an assigned portfolio of strategic vendors; commercial and performance conversations route through this role.
• Run the recurring verification cycle against each contract’s deliverables and service levels, collect evidence, and record results against each obligation.
• Raise vendor performance shortfalls, drive remediation to closure, and escalate when remediation stalls.
• Identify service credits earned and initiate claims through Procurement before contractual windows close.
• Run quarterly business reviews for each strategic vendor, including agenda, evidence pack, minutes, and actions tracked to closure.
• Open renewal reviews 180 days before the notice date and produce the renewal decision record with a renew, renegotiate, replace, or terminate recommendation, supported by usage, performance, credit, and benchmark data.
• Provide dated, evidence-based attestations of vendor performance, verified against data the firm controls rather than vendor-supplied reports alone.
• Coordinate vendor exits on termination, including transition, data return and destruction evidence, and access revocation.
• Extend the established relationship-management playbook across the remaining strategic vendors.

What You'll Bring

• Experience managing relationships with strategic technology or managed-service providers.
• Working knowledge of IT contracts, service level agreements, and service credit mechanisms.
• Track record of holding vendors accountable and escalating issues through to resolution.
• Strong presentation, facilitation, and written communication skills.

Education & Experience

• Minimum Required: Bachelor’s degree in Business, Information Technology, Finance, or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Minimum Required: 5+ years of experience in vendor management, IT service management, outsourcing governance, or a related field.
• Preferred: Experience in financial services or another regulated industry and familiarity with third-party risk management expectations for regulated firms.
• Preferred: Experience overseeing an application-management or other managed-service provider.

Licenses & Credentials

• Minimum Required: None.

Systems & Technology

• Proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite, including Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, Copilot, and Teams.
• Proficiency with approved AI tooling and the judgment to use it appropriately in vendor management activities.

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About Stifel

Stifel is more than 130 years old and still thinking like a start-up.  We are a global wealth management and investment banking firm serious about innovation and fresh ideas.  Built on a simple premise of safeguarding our clients’ money as if it were our own, coined by our namesake, Herman Stifel, our success is intimately tied to our commitment to helping families, companies, and municipalities find their own success.

While our headquarters is in St. Louis, we have offices in New York, San Francisco, Baltimore, London, Frankfurt, Toronto, and more than 400 other locations.  Stifel is home to approximately 9,000 individuals who are currently building their careers as financial advisors, research analysts, project managers, marketing specialists, developers, bankers, operations associates, among hundreds more.  Let’s talk about how you can find your place here at Stifel, where success meets success.

At Stifel we offer an entrepreneurial environment, comprehensive benefits package to include health, dental and vision care, 401k, wellness initiatives, life insurance, and paid time off.

Stifel is an Equal Opportunity Employer.