Vendor Strategy Lead

About Stripe

Stripe is a financial infrastructure platform for businesses. Millions of companies—from the world’s largest enterprises to the most ambitious startups—use Stripe to accept payments, grow their revenue, and accelerate new business opportunities. Our mission is to increase the GDP of the internet, and we have a staggering amount of work ahead. That means you have an unprecedented opportunity to put the global economy within everyone’s reach while doing the most important work of your career.

About the team

The vendor strategy's team mission is to support Stripe’s global expansion by creating a high-performing, scalable, and sustainable vendor ecosystem that leverages the collective benefit of Stripe. We offer a myriad of support services to our operations delivery teams and set the strategy for supplier usage across Stripe. We do this through a deeply connected strategy with our delivery partners in planning, finance, and sales. By working closely with our vendor partners and internal teams we ensure they consistently deliver the outcomes our teams need and do so through a deep and connected strategy.

What you'll do

As Stripe’s user base and global footprint grows we are looking for an experienced Vendor Program Lead who brings both strategic and operational abilities to lead our vendor strategy and overall supplier relationships. Our vendors provide the scaled operational backbone for operations, sales, risk and financial crimes. You are responsible for supporting the organization to ensure that we have a finely tuned vendor strategy that is providing world class outcomes for our users, internal stakeholders, and overall business outcomes. You will be working closely with cross-functional leaders and operational teams across our Operations, Financial Crimes, Risk, Sales, Planning, Enablement and Infrastructure teams.

Key Stakeholders (internally and externally):

Operations, Risk, Financial Crimes, Sales, Planning, F&S and vendor delivery teams

Responsibilities

• Have direct responsibility for supporting the delivery of the results of the various teams using vendors, working closely with external vendor partners and internal teams
• Ensure our internal business partners and key stakeholders understand and can execute their services within our partner ecosystem.  That they understand the performance and value of our services and that we scale our capacity to meet the growth of the business needs.
• Develop and deploy vendor-specific infrastructure globally, including network, security, tools, and processes
• Source new vendor partners or expand scope of service offering with current vendor partners
• Assist with all vendor headcount related matters including growth, new lines of business and managing attrition targets with partners
• Partner with existing vendor leadership/delivery teams to ensure vendor’s high level execution to contracts.
• Work with Sourcing teams to lead negotiations and relationship management for vendor contracts, change orders, or renewals and manage central supplier strategy programs
• Transmit and foster our values, serving as a beacon of Stripe’s user-centric philosophy and culture of transparency, empathy, inclusion, and empowermen

Who you are

We’re looking for someone who meets the minimum requirements to be considered for the role. If you meet these requirements, you are encouraged to apply. 

Minimum requirements

• 10+ years of experience leading large scale vendor operations  (preferably in high-growth, sales, financial services, or technology companies)
• Vendor management experience, ability to work with external partners globally, work in an environment where you are looking at delivery metrics, commercials, etc. Experience in running RFPs/bids, vendor & site selection, engage with top leadership of partners to bring value to the organization
• Strong stakeholder management - understanding of planning and workforce management, sales/ops stakeholders, partners.
• Strategic thinking - understand the long term goals of the broader business and ensure our network has the right partners, profiles, pricing, locations, and capacity to meet those needs at scale.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• A strong operational background and a track-record of making data driven decisions
• The ability to execute on and deliver complex operational projects involving multiple stakeholders
• Ability to execute cross-functionally and work as part of a team.
• Ability to navigate ambiguous situations, and ramp-up on new problem statements/opportunities

Preferred qualifications:

• Contractual experience - knowledge of major providers in this space, global pricing competitiveness, best practices on MSA’s and SOW’s
• Experience in User Ops, Sales or large scale operational work.  Knows the different programs and enablement support required to run a successful vendor network at scale
• Experience in developing deep relationships with x-functional partners in Finance, Sourcing, Planning and Analytics teams
• Master’s degree in engineering, operations, management or equivalent practical experience
• You are action-oriented, with strong organization skills and attention to detail
• You enjoy dealing with ambiguity, and do whatever it takes to execute on complex projects
• You have a process-oriented mindset and ability to lead people to get things done