Senior Specialist, Sourcing & Vendor Management

Description: Senior Specialist, Sourcing & Vendor Management Position: Remote/ Open to any US time zone 12 Months (possible extension) Vetting Questions: Please describe how you have managed a vendor or external partner you have worked with in the past (looking for establishing relationships, regular meetings scheduled, governance and oversight, how managed KPIs/SLAs). Please describe when you have negotiated a new vendor/external partner contract or amended an existing contract and the steps you have taken (looking for the candidate to be able to articulate initiating discussions with the vendor). Brief Description: This role will be responsible for supporting and participating in the development and implementation of a multi-year strategy that expands the capability and flexibility of working with external partners across the functional areas within GRADS. This position will be responsible for organizing, under the supervision of sourcing leadership, the activities in support of our current (and future) outsourced scope of work. Responsibilities will include managing and organizingprocesses and connections between the external partner and the various stakeholders with the GRADS functional areas and Procurement to ensure that we are efficiently and effectively delivering high quality regulatory submissions on time globally. Essential Functions/Responsibilities

• Organizes and conducts meetings with internal client stakeholders and external vendors and provides post meeting summary and action tracking.
• Supports the management of the functional areas sourced activities to support efficient, on-time execution of these agreements and related services.
• Supports the team and participates in the process led by sourcing management, in the end-to-end process for sourcing within functional areas working with Procurement as appropriate. This includes support of vendor RFI/RFP, selection of vendors, solution ID workshops, vendor onboarding/offboarding transition activities, and vendorkey performance indicator (KPI) metric collation and oversight, manage the vendor agreements and activities within the client global supplier management and contracting platform, working towards business as usual, while sustaining performance and compliance and ultimately continuously improving upon the existing processes.
• Management of the GRADS AM shared mailbox and ensure appropriate actions are taken.
• Collaborate with GRADS Compliance organization to resolve any compliance or quality issues within functional areas resulting from executed vendor partnerships.
• Responsible for raising deviations as needed to ensure efficiency and overall quality of activities as it relates to Strategic Sourcing & Vendor Management for functional areas.
• Contribute to determining solutions outside of current responsibilities as needed and manages day-to-day operational issues outside of current responsibilities as needed.
• Work with procurement, Finance, IT and functional areas subject matter experts to oversee the conduct of due diligence evaluations and selection of external partner organizations.

Required Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

• Experience working in a drug development outsourced model, either on the outsourcer or client side with an ability to translate learnings to functional area outsourcing models.
• At least 3-5 years of working experience with or within a healthcare/consumer care industry project management, GRADS functional areas activities that includes working with external partners.
• Extensive experience with leading successful delivery of projects (pipeline, business improvement, and/or change management projects)
• Knowledgeable of functional areas processes for pharmaceutical products.
• Strong negotiation, interpersonal, communication, and leadership skills.
• Ability to lead by influence and work effectively in matrix organizational structures.
• Must have proven track record to be able to think critically, strategically, independently and problem solve.
• Must have high level of motivation, drive, and demonstration of client leadership values.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills and negotiation skills including ability to write clearly and concisely.
• Top notch interpersonal skills in difficult situations.
• Driver of change and innovation.
• Ability to work seamlessly with all levels of personnel.
• Demonstrated sensitivity and knowledge of cultural differences with experience in multi-country, multi-cultural environments and demonstrated success with cross-geographically based cultural collaborations.
• Excellent Microsoft office application skills as well as, e-mail and online meeting tool skills.

Required/Preferred Education and Licenses

• Bachelor’s degree in health sciences or equivalent work experience in pharmaceutical research and development.