Procurement Operations Business Partner

Procurement Operations Business Partner (Contract)

Employment Type: W2 Contract, 12 Months (potential to extend)
Pay Rate: $100-$120/hr, depending on experience
Location: San Francisco preferred; open to Seattle or New York

Schedule:

Hybrid – 2 to 3 days/week on-site, specific days flexible

Russell Tobin is partnering with a fast-growing, mission-driven AI research organization — widely recognized as one of the leading names in frontier AI safety — to hire a Procurement Operations Business Partner on a 12-month contract basis. This organization builds AI systems designed to be safe, interpretable, and steerable, and its purchasing volume is scaling quickly alongside its headcount.

The Procurement Operations team sits within Finance Operations and serves as the front door for all company purchasing — software, professional services, research services, marketing, benefits, and facilities. This team partners daily with requesters, Legal, Security, Privacy, IT, and Accounts Payable to get purchases reviewed, contracted, and issued cleanly and compliantly through the company's procure-to-pay systems (Zip, Ironclad, Workday).

The Procurement Operations Business Partner will own the primary procurement relationship for a portfolio of business teams (e.g., G&A, People & Workplace, Product), managing purchase requests from intake through signed agreement and issued purchase order, and keeping purchase order and spend data clean through month-end close.

This is a tactical, execution-focused role centered on moving purchase requisitions through the system and translating procurement, finance, and legal terms into plain language for business partners — not a strategic sourcing or vendor-negotiation role.

• Serve as the day to day procurement partner for a portfolio of business teams, guiding requesters from initial request to an approved purchase order and a signed agreement.
• Review purchase requests and their supporting documents, including quotes, statements of work, order forms, and vendor agreements, for completeness, accuracy, and alignment with procurement policy, and coach requesters on what a clean submission looks like.
• Coordinate cross functional reviews with Legal, Security, Privacy, IT, and Finance so each purchase reaches the right stakeholders the first time and keeps moving, and step in to unblock requests that stall.
• Translate procurement, legal, and finance requirements into plain language for business partners, and represent the business need clearly back to those review teams.
• Manage purchase orders across their lifecycle, including issuance, change orders, and periodic open PO reviews, so the contract, the PO, and vendor invoicing stay aligned.
• Partner with Accounts Payable and vendors to resolve invoice and payment questions tied to your portfolio.
• Support month end close by gathering spend and accrual inputs from budget owners and vendors and explaining notable variances for your portfolio.
• Be a visible, responsive point of contact for your business teams in Slack and office hours; resolve routine questions quickly and elevate true blockers with context.
• Maintain playbooks and process documentation for the areas you own, and bring forward practical improvements, including where automation and AI tools such as Claude can remove manual work.

• 3-5+ yearsin procurement operations, purchasing, accounts payable, finance operations, contract administration, or a closely related operational role.
• Hands on experience running purchase request intake through purchase order in a procure to pay tool such as Zip, Coupa, Workday, Net Suite, or similar, at a company with meaningful volume.
• Working knowledge of how contract review routes…