Lead, Category Management - Professional Services

Lead, Category Management, Professional Services

Strategic Sourcing & Vendor Management

Do you enjoy solving complex business problems through strategic sourcing, rigorous analysis, and strong contract negotiations? As Lead, Category Management, Professional Services, you will partner with business leaders to develop and execute category strategies that deliver value, foster innovation, identify savings opportunities, and mitigate risk. You will lead high-visibility sourcing initiatives from requirements definition through supplier selection and contract negotiation while building trusted relationships across Finance, Legal, technology, and business teams. This role offers the opportunity to influence senior leaders, strengthen Guardian’s supplier portfolio, and accelerate impact across the enterprise.

You are

A strategic and collaborative sourcing lead who can translate business needs into executable category and negotiation strategies. You are comfortable leading complex, high-value initiatives, influencing senior stakeholders, and balancing commercial value, innovation, speed, and risk. You bring strong analytical judgment, clear communication, active listening, adaptability, integrity, accountability, and a problem-solving mindset. You build trust across functions, support an inclusive team culture, and remain organized and effective while managing competing priorities.

The Lead, Category Management, Professional Services Category will handle end to end sourcing and contracting negotiations of sourcing activity and projects within the Professional Services category. S/he will become familiar with Guardian’s contract landscape, supplier base, and manage key suppliers.  S/he will also need to engage the business early in the sourcing process to understand requirements, propose category management ideas and cost saving opportunities.

You have

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in technology, finance, legal studies, business, or a related discipline.
• At least 10 years of experience in strategic sourcing, category management, and contract negotiations.
• Demonstrated knowledge of the end-to-end sourcing and contracting process, including requests for proposal, requests for information, supplier evaluation, and commercial negotiations.
• Experience leading professional services sourcing projects across both technology and non-technology engagements.
• Strong in contract review, redlining, and drafting contract language.
• Ability to analyze supplier proposals, pricing, business terms, and legal terms, and to redline contracts to accurately capture negotiated business requirements.
• Proficiency with Microsoft Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience negotiating large-volume of consulting, technology implementation, managed services, outsourcing, or transformation contracts.

• Experience developing alternative commercial models such as fixed-fee, milestone-based, outcome-based, consumption-based, or blended-rate structures rather than relying solely on time-and-materials arrangements.

• Experience using should-cost analysis, benchmarking, rate-card analysis, and competitive market intelligence to develop negotiation positions.

• Experience managing strategic suppliers through supplier performance management, QBRs, KPIs, SLAs, and continuous improvement programs.
• MBA preferred

You will

• Run and lead end-to-end execution of high visibility and complex RFPs, RFIs, vendor selection and contract negotiations in the Professional Services Category. 
• Partner with Head of Professional Services Category to develop and integrate category management strategies across the business units.
• Drive and deliver on vendor consolidation on professional services suppliers being used across the different LOBs.  Partner with key finance leadership to review category spend and drive savings opportunities.
• Ability to develop strategic sourcing strategy on complex deals and showcase leadership and drive sourcing influence to senior level leaders and their teams.
• Candidate must possess experience handling technology and non-technology professional services sourcing projects. 
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to define requirements, evaluate proposals, and ensure timely decision-making.
• Research and advise Guardian senior leaders on supplier options, deal structuring and other deal aspects, including deal duration, selection criteria and supplier KPIs.
• Create evaluation sheets and perform qualitative and quantitative analysis to drive to consensus on supplier selection. 
• Providing detailed analysis of supplier proposals to stakeholders, including pricing and business terms.
• Provide the first layer of review prior to sending matters to legal and will need to directly interface with suppliers and internal business partners. The ideal candidate will demonstrate strong organizational skills, possess the ability to multi-task, be detail oriented, and be able to set and manage priorities.
• Become familiar with Guardian’s contract landscape, supplier base, and manage key suppliers. 
• Engage the business early in the sourcing process to understand requirements, propose category manag
• ement ideas and cost saving opportunities. 
• Manage and prioritize a key complex and high value contracts and sourcing projects simultaneously.
• Provide the first layer of review prior to sending matters to legal and will need to directly interface with suppliers and internal business partners.
• Demonstrate strong organizational skills, possess the ability to multi-task, be detail oriented, set, and manage priorities
• Build trusted relationships with IT, Legal, Finance, and business leaders.

Reporting Relationships

As our Lead, Category Management, Professional Services, you will report to our Head of Category Management, Professional Services. The role resides within the Strategic Sourcing & Vendor Management organization.

Location

This role is hybrid with 3 days a week in office in the Hudson Yards NYC, or Holmdel NJ office

Salary Range:

$103,450.00 - $169,960.00

The salary range reflected above is a good faith estimate of base pay for the primary location of the position. The salary for this position ultimately will be determined based on the education, experience, knowledge, and abilities of the successful candidate. In addition to salary, this role may also be eligible for annual, sales, or other incentive compensation.

Our Promise

At Guardian, you’ll have the support and flexibility to achieve your professional and personal goals.  Through skill-building, leadership development and philanthropic opportunities, we provide opportunities to build communities and grow your career, surrounded by diverse colleagues with high ethical standards.

Inspire Well-Being

As part of Guardian’s Purpose – to inspire well-being – we are committed to offering contemporary, supportive, flexible, and inclusive benefits and resources to our colleagues. Explore our company benefits at www.guardianlife.com/careers/corporate/benefits. Benefits apply to full-time eligible employees. Interns are not eligible for most Company benefits.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Guardian is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will be considered for employment without regard to age, race, color, creed, religion, sex, affectional or sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, marital status, disability, military or veteran status, or any other classification protected by applicable law.

Accommodations

Guardian is committed to providing access, equal opportunity and reasonable accommodation for individuals with disabilities in employment, its services, programs, and activities. Guardian also provides reasonable accommodations to qualified job applicants (and employees) to accommodate the individual's known limitations related to pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions, unless doing so would create an undue hardship. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and/or to receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please contact [email protected]. Please note: this resource is for accommodation requests only. For all other inquires related to your application and careers at Guardian, refer to the Guardian Careers site.

Visa Sponsorship

Guardian Life is not currently or in the foreseeable future sponsoring employment-based visas (e.g., such as an H-1B). In order to be a successful applicant, you must be legally authorized to work in the United States, without the need for employer sponsorship/support now or at any time in the future.

Notice Regarding Guardian’s Use of Artificial Intelligence in Recruitment

As part of Guardian’s job application process, Guardian may use artificial intelligence tools (“AI Tools") to automate the sorting and filtering of information provided by applicants as part of its preliminary screening. This preliminary screening may be used to help identify applicant materials and resumes relative to their indication that the applicant meets the requirements for the specific job for which they are applying, as specified in the listing posted on Guardian’s jobs website (Careers at Guardian at https://www.guardianlife.com/careers). At Guardian, we do not use AI Tools to substantially assist or replace human judgment or discretionary decision making in our hiring process. All hiring decisions will be made by Guardian colleagues.

Please be aware that if you apply for a specific position with Guardian, you will have the choice of opting out of Guardian’s use of AI Tools during the job application process. If you would like to request an alternative process that does not utilize AI Tools or would like to request a reasonable accommodation, within ten business days of your position application, you must email your request to [email protected], making sure to provide your name and job requisition identification number. Guardian will retain your applicant materials and resume and all information therefrom in accordance with Guardian’s document retention policy, a copy of which you may request via [email protected].

Additionally, at applicable times, Guardian will make public the most recent bias audit results for such AI tools, which may be found here. 

Current Guardian Colleagues: Please apply through the internal Jobs Hub in Workday.