Head of Procurement and Third-Party Risk

Overview

At Community Financial System, Inc. (CFSI), we are dedicated to providing our customers with friendly, personalized, high-quality financial services and products. Our retail division, Community Bank, N.A., operates more than 200 customer facilities across Upstate New York, Northeastern Pennsylvania, Vermont and Western Massachusetts. Beyond retail banking, we also offer commercial banking, wealth management, investment management, insurance and risk management, and benefit plan administration.

Just as our employees are committed to helping our customers manage their finances, we’re committed to our employees. After all, they make it happen for our customers every day.

To ensure our people can enjoy long and successful careers here at CFSI, we offer competitive compensation, great benefits, and professional development and advancement opportunities. As an equal-opportunity workplace and affirmative-action employer, we celebrate and support a diverse workplace for the benefit of all: our employees, customers and communities.

The Head of Procurement is a strategic leadership role responsible for developing and executing the organization’s procurement strategy, ensuring the cost-effective acquisition of goods and services while maintaining high standards of quality, service, vendor performance, third-party risk management, and regulatory compliance. This leader will serve as an enterprise partner across business, compliance, legal, finance, risk management, and operational stakeholders to ensure supplier relationships deliver value while protecting the organization from operational, financial, and regulatory risk.

The ideal candidate is a commercially astute procurement executive who can balance strategic sourcing, supplier partnership, governance, regulatory compliance, and third party risk mitigation. This individual will bring strong judgment, executive presence, disciplined vendor oversight, deep contract negotiation capability, third party risk assessment and a demonstrated ability to build cross-functional alignment in a regulated financial services environment.

Essential Duties:

Strategic Procurement Leadership

• Develop and execute a comprehensive procurement strategy aligned with enterprise priorities, business needs, and financial stewardship objectives.
• Establish procurement policies, procedures, and governance frameworks that support accountability, transparency, and regulatory readiness.
• Partner with senior leaders and business stakeholders to assess current and future procurement needs and identify opportunities to improve efficiency, reduce cost, and strengthen supplier performance.
• Use spend analysis, market intelligence, and performance data to inform sourcing decisions and strategic recommendations.

Vendor Management

• Establish, maintain, and strengthen relationships with key suppliers, service providers, and strategic business partners.
• Oversee supplier selection, evaluation, onboarding, contract negotiation, renewal, and offboarding processes.
• Ensure vendors meet the organization’s expectations for quality, service, pricing, operational delivery, and compliance with applicable requirements.
• Monitor vendor performance against established metrics, service-level expectations, key performance indicators, and contractual commitments.
• Lead issue escalation and remediation efforts when vendor performance, service continuity, or compliance expectations are not being met.
• Promote supplier accountability, continuous improvement, and relationship management practices that support sustainable long-term partnerships.

Third-Party Risk Management

• Play a leadership role in assessing risks associated with third-party vendors, including financial stability, operational resilience,…