Team Lead – Contract Management

The Group: Morningstar’s Business Development & Sales group is responsible for helping our advisor and institutional clients build their businesses and provide better outcomes for investors. The group is structured primarily along the following client segments: Advisor, Asset Management, Retirement, Redistributor, and Commodities & Energy.

The Role: Morningstar Global Field OperationsTeam seeks a highly motivated Contracts Team Lead.  The Contracts Team Lead is responsible for overseeing the work of the team to ensure timely delivery of contractsthatmeet the needs of each product and minimize risk for both Morningstar and our clients.  Additionally, the Contracts Team Lead is responsible fordrafting, reviewing, negotiating, and finalizingcommercial contracts or contract amendments. This role works with the Sales, Product and Legal teams to create contracts, develop negotiation strategies, evaluate risk exposure, and make recommendations to business partners or legal counsel. The Contract Manager ensures our commercial contracts comply with our internal contracting policies.  

Job Responsibilities:

• Provide team leadershipresponsibility for a team of 3 to 4 direct reports.

• Manage the pipeline of sales contracts, prioritizing work across the Contracts and Legal teams to ensure timely delivery of contracts. 

• Provide training and support for the contract process within the contract team and to the sales team(s).

• Identify emerging legal and contracting issues that require policy decisions while working with the legal team to develop our positions.

• Manage contract process for new, renewal and amendment contracts.

• Review and approve contracts prepared by the sales team prior to submission to clients.

• Provide guidance to the business and functional teams on the terms of contracts and risks associated with the contracts including when to escalate risk issues for internal approvals. 

• Negotiate with clients on contracts in line with our company policies via email and phone.  Escalate issues to business and legal partners for non-standard terms for approval.

• Provide cross functional support to Sales, Sales Operations, Product, Legal and Finance teams for ongoing projects to make the contracting process more efficient.

Specific Knowledge/Skills:

• Prior management or team lead experience.

• Position requires knowledge and experience of contracting concepts, contract interpretation, proposal preparation, protests, dispute resolution.

• Knowledge and experience negotiating a wide variety of agreements, including non-disclosure agreements, evaluationagreements, subcontracts, and software license agreements.

• Must be able to work under the pressure of deadlines and demands of a variety of business clients and contract counterparties.

• Experience in implementing projects and making improvements to processes

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s Degree with 4+ years of commercial contracts management experience.

• Excellent negotiation skills; has a successful track record of negotiating customer contracts.

• Experience influencing and collaborating with internal teams and external customers.

• Excellent communication and presentation skills.

• Excellent time management and prioritization skills.

Morningstar is an equal opportunity employer.