Procurement

Procurement @ Clay

Clay is a fast‑growing AI GTM platform and our vendor spend is scaling with us. As our first Procurement hire, your primary mandate is simple: get us better deals. You’ll own our entire vendor negotiation lifecycle by identifying savings opportunities, running competitive sourcing events, and driving hard on commercial terms across our biggest contracts.

Beyond the deal work, you’ll also build the infrastructure that lets us scale how we buy, work cross‑functionally with key decision makers, and identify opportunities for savings and consolidation.

• Own Clay's vendor negotiation strategy across all major spend categories from SaaS, data partnerships, hosting, professional services, and marketing, with a clear mandate to drive year‑over‑year savings
• Conduct a full audit of existing vendor contracts to identify renegotiation opportunities, unfavorable terms, and upcoming renewals worth challenging
• Run competitive sourcing events (RFPs, RFQs, reverse auctions) to create leverage and benchmark pricing against market rates
• Lead all commercial negotiations end‑to‑end from opening anchor, to redline, to signature, with a focus on unit price, payment terms, caps, and exit rights
• Build and maintain a savings tracker showing realized savings, cost avoidance, and pipeline reported directly to Finance leadership
• Develop negotiation playbooks by vendor category, so Clay always enters renewals with a strategy, not just a conversation
• Work with Legal to redline MSAs, order forms, and DPAs including flagging commercial risk and driving resolution without letting Legal review become a bottleneck
• Track renewal calendar and market benchmarks so no contract auto‑renews without a competitive review
• Evaluate, select, and implement a procurement intake and approval platform (e.g. Zip, Ramp) while defining approval routing, PO thresholds, and stakeholder workflows
• Own the integration between procurement tooling, ERP, and Ramp to ensure POs, approvals, and invoices flow cleanly end to end
• Build spend reporting and dashboards, including committed spend, open POs, savings realized, and renewal pipeline, so Finance always has a clear picture of upcoming spend

• 6–10 years of procurement or strategic sourcing experience with a demonstrable savings track record
• Expert negotiator, you’ve closed complex, high‑value SaaS and vendor contracts and can point to specific wins
• Deep familiarity with SaaS and AI pricing models, contract structures, and where vendors have room to move
• Comfortable running competitive sourcing events from scratch and using competition as leverage
• Strong financial instincts with the ability to build financial models and know when a price is genuinely good
• Hands‑on experience implementing a procure‑to‑pay or intake platform (Zip, Coupa, or similar)
• Operates independently in ambiguous environments, and you don’t need a playbook to get started
• Can push back on vendors while keeping the relationship intact