Senior IT Vendor & Talent Partnerships Consultant

IWU is seeking a Senior IT Vendor & Talent Partnerships Consultant (Independent Contractor ‑ 1099 / Contract-to-Hire) for a large-scale technology reorganization project.

• IWU has been a pioneer and industry leader in technology
  
  - enabled education
  , being one of the first universities to establish distance learning in the early 1990s.
• University leadership is rekindling our entrepreneurial spirit and has mandated and funded an organization-wide initiative to re-platform major existing systems to AI-FIRST/AI-NATIVE driven technology platforms
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• We are standing up two additional data centers in an active/active configuration at premium commercial colocation facilities for on-premises sovereign AI platforms and application solutions that will become the foundation for how we deliver intelligent internal and commercially offered products.
• IWU’s technology teams currently comprise about 90 people delivering infrastructure, application, and integration services across the university
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• IWU’s technology teams are growing and looking for the best and brightest Christ-followers to help us fully embrace the AI revolution
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• IWU has launched a once-in-a-generation enterprise re-platforming – dual-site data center build-out, AI-first platform, integration hub, and dozens of concurrent work streams – staffed largely through 1099 contract-to-hire specialists, architects, and leaders across multiple hiring tranches. We are seeking a Senior IT Vendor & Talent Partnerships Consultant to drive how IWU finds, engages, contracts, and manages the external talent and vendor relationships that make that program executable.
• This is not a generic HR generalist role and not a passive procurement clerk.
  You will drive the outside-relationship function for IT – staffing agencies and executive search partners, systems integrators, OEM and software vendors, colocation and carrier relationships at the program edge – with clear SLAs, rate discipline, and accountability for outcomes. You will partner with the CIO, EPMO, workstream leads, Finance, and HR to keep hiring pipelines full, contracts defensible, and vendor performance visible.
• You will stand up vendor and contractor lifecycle processes, and translate workforce plans into signed SOWs and candidates in seats – on schedule and within benchmark.

• Guide recruitment strategy and execution for IT contract-to-hire roles across hiring tranches, role prioritization, req intake, agency selection, pipeline metrics, and time-to-fill targets aligned to the re-platforming roadmap.
• Partner with hiring managers and EPMO on job descriptions, leveling, and compensation bands – Mercer-aligned benchmarks, 1099 rate multipliers, and consistent offer structure across work streams.
• Run the contractor lifecycle – onboarding, background and compliance checks, SOW execution, extension/renewal decisions, conversion-to-W-2 coordination, and offboarding.
• Maintain candidate and contractor tracking – pipeline stages, source quality, and audit-ready records for institutional and legal review.

• Coordinate technology vendor relationships spanning infrastructure, software licensing, AI platform components, integration tools, and SI partners – without duplicating technical architecture decisions owned by workstream leads.
• Lead vendor selection and RFP/RFQ processes in partnership with workstream owners – requirements gathering, evaluation criteria, demos, reference checks, and recommendation memos the CIO can act on.
• Negotiate contracts, SOWs, and rate structures – scope, deliverables, acceptance criteria, SLAs, payment terms, and exit clauses – with Finance and Legal review.
• Monitor vendor…