Manager of Vendor Relations

Job Summary: Legal Shield (PPLSI) is a pioneering provider of subscription-based legal and identity theft protection plans to individuals, families, and businesses in North America. Operating through two brands — Legal Shield and IDShield — the company serves 1.8 million active members through a network of nearly 40 law firms across the US and Canada. Founded in 1972, Legal Shield is dedicated to the belief that everyone deserves a secure life and equal treatment under the law.

Backed by Stone Point Capital, the company is investing in growth, technology modernization, and operational excellence.

We are seeking a Manager of Vendor Relations to establish and lead a centralized vendor management discipline across the organization. Reporting directly to the CFO, you will be the company's senior authority on third-party relationships — building the governance, performance, contract, spend, and risk frameworks that ensure the company gets maximum value, accountability, and resilience from its vendor portfolio. This is a newly created role, and it is intentionally broad.

The company has the building blocks of vendor activity spread across functions today, but no single owner for the discipline. You will define what "world-class vendor management" means here — setting the operating model, prioritizing where to focus first, and shaping the function as it matures. Much of the role's design is deliberately left to the person who takes it: we are looking for a builder who can bring structure to ambiguity, earn cross-functional trust, and stand up a program from the ground up.

This is a hands‑on leadership role in a PE‑backed environment where precision, speed, and disciplined cost management are expected. You will start lean — with at least one direct report — and be expected to make the case for the team, tools, and processes the function needs as it scales.

The Manager of Vendor Management is the single point of accountability for the discipline of managing the company's third‑party vendor and supplier relationships. The role spans the full vendor lifecycle: selection and onboarding, contracting and commercial terms, performance and relationship management, spend and cost optimization, risk and compliance, and offboarding. As a new function, the initial scope and priorities will be shaped by the incumbent in partnership with the CFO.

You will begin by building visibility — a clear inventory of the company's vendors, contracts, spend, and obligations — and then establish the governance and operating cadences that bring consistency to how the organization engages and manages its vendors. Over time, you will define vendor tiering, standardize performance expectations, and create the playbooks that allow the discipline to scale across business units.

You will manage at least one direct report from the outset and are expected to grow and develop the team as the function's mandate expands. You will work as a connector across Finance, Legal, IT/Security, Procurement, and the business units that own day‑to‑day vendor relationships — providing the structure, leverage, and accountability that individual owners cannot achieve on their own.

• Design and stand up the company's vendor management operating model — governance structure, policies, roles and responsibilities, and decision rights — from the ground up.
• Build and maintain a centralized inventory of vendors, contracts, spend, renewal dates, and key obligations across the enterprise.
• Establish a vendor segmentation / tiering framework that focuses governance and attention on the most strategic, highest‑spend, and highest‑risk relationships.
• Define and document standardized processes for vendor intake, onboarding, review, and offboarding.
• Set the cadence and forum for vendor governance — periodic business reviews, escalation paths, and reporting to leadership.

• Define performance expectations, service levels (SLAs), and key metrics for strategic vendors; track and report against them.
• Own the relationship with strategic vendors end‑to‑end —…