Category Manager - IT

Job Overview:

Cambium Learning Group is seeking an Category Manager, IT to own commercial strategy and execution for a defined set of technology spend categories. In this role, you will lead renewals, competitive sourcing events, vendor negotiations, and category planning across software, SaaS, cloud, endpoint, telecom, and related IT services.

This is a hands-on, high-ownership role for someone who enjoys leading deals directly, building commercial leverage, and negotiating with vendors from a well-prepared position. You will partner closely with Finance, Legal, Information Security, IT, and business unit stakeholders to deliver measurable savings, reduce vendor risk, and improve how technology sourcing is executed across Cambium.

Job Responsibilities:

Category Strategy and Renewal Management

• Own category strategy for assigned IT spend areas, including SaaS and software, cloud infrastructure, end-user computing and endpoint services, and telecom and network.
• Own the renewal pipeline for your categories: track upcoming expirations, assign clear ownership, build the strategy for each engagement, and execute early enough to preserve leverage and avoid surprise renewals.
• Maintain market and vendor intelligence, including pricing benchmarks, licensing model shifts, and viable competitive alternatives, and use it to shape category plans.
• Own the vendor framework for your categories, including preferred and strategic vendor designations, consolidation and rationalization targets, and the standards a vendor has to meet to stay in the portfolio.

Negotiation and Commercial Execution

• Own the pre-negotiation phase for engagements in your categories: establish the spend baseline, set the savings target, identify leverage and alternatives, and build the business case before going to a vendor.
• Lead competitive sourcing events end to end, from business case and requirements through RFx, evaluation, shortlisting, and award.
• Negotiate directly on pricing, terms, escalators, termination and exit rights, SLAs and service credits, and liability, working from a total cost of ownership view rather than headline price.
• Build spend and TCO analysis that holds up under vendor scrutiny, including normalizing quotes, reconciling usage and license counts, and modeling multi-year commitments.
• Validate and record the outcome of every engagement you run, including final savings and cost avoidance against the established baseline, so category-level reporting, financial forecasting, and stakeholder communications are built on numbers you stand behind.

Contracting, Risk, and Compliance

• Drive contract execution in partnership with Legal, including redlines on commercial terms and coordination of the Information Security and data privacy reviews that gate a deal.
• Coordinate third-party risk intake so security, privacy, and compliance reviews happen at the right point in the sourcing process rather than at signature.
• Maintain sourcing intake and pipeline hygiene in the team's intake-to-procure platform, with disciplined documentation of status, decisions, and supporting evidence.

Stakeholder Partnership and Knowledge Sharing

• Own stakeholder alignment for engagements in your categories: gather requirements, set expectations on timing and tradeoffs, and secure agreement on the strategy before going to market rather than announcing the outcome after the fact.
• Act as an internal advisor to technology leaders and business units on vendor options, commercial structures, timing, and tradeoffs, building enough trust that stakeholders engage sourcing early because it makes their outcome better, not slower.
• Contribute to the team's sourcing knowledge base by documenting lessons learned, vendor insights, benchmarks, and negotiation approaches that can be reused and improved by the broader sourcing team.

Job Requirements:

• 6+ years of experience in strategic sourcing, procurement, category management, vendor management, or a related commercial role, including experience with IT, software, SaaS, or technology services categories.
• Proven ability to lead vendor negotiations directly, develop leverage-based negotiation strategies, challenge supplier assumptions, and secure measurable commercial improvements across pricing, terms, risk, and flexibility.
• Working knowledge of commercial contract terms and comfort partnering with Legal on redlines, negotiation positions, and contract risk tradeoffs.
• Strong spend and data analysis skills, including building and defending TCO and multi-year commitment models
• Advanced proficiency in Microsoft Excel and/or Google Sheets; experience with BI, reporting, or spend analytics tools is a plus.
• Strong cross-functional collaboration skills and the ability to align Finance, Legal, Information Security, IT, and business stakeholders around a sourcing strategy.
• Organized, systems-minded work habits and comfort managing work through a procurement intake, sourcing, or work management platform such as Zip, Coupa, Ariba, or Jira.
• Exceptional written and verbal…