Senior Procurement Operations Manager

Cresta · Vertical AI · India · Remote · Sales

This role is for a Senior Procurement Operations Manager at Cresta, an AI company. The role focuses on managing procurement operations, systems, vendor contracts, and analytics. It involves acting as a product owner for procurement workflows and tooling, coordinating contract operations, managing renewals, supporting negotiations, and providing data reporting. This is an individual contributor role with cross-functional responsibilities.

What you'd actually do

  1. Act as the product owner for Zip, including intake forms, routing rules, approval logic, required fields, SLAs, notifications, and catalog basics
  2. Manage and optimize Vendr workflows from intake through signature to improve cycle time, transparency, and stakeholder experience
  3. Own contract workflow coordination: intake, version control, signature routing, countersignature, and final distribution
  4. Build and run a structured renewal calendar with clear checkpoints (e.g., 120 / 90 / 60 / 30 days)
  5. Maintain high-quality vendor master and spend data that leadership can trust

Skills

Required

  • 6–10+ years of experience in procurement operations, sourcing operations, vendor management, or similar roles
  • Hands-on experience administering procurement or intake workflows (e.g., Zip, Vendr, Coupa, Ariba, Ivalua, ServiceNow, Jira, or similar tools)
  • Strong contract operations experience (workflow coordination, repository hygiene, renewals and notice tracking)
  • Comfortable negotiating smaller agreements and driving stakeholders to decisions
  • Strong analytical skills (Excel/Google Sheets; BI tools a plus)
  • Excellent written communication and ability to operate asynchronously across time zones
Read full job description

Cresta is on a mission to turn every customer conversation into a competitive advantage by unlocking the true potential of the contact center. Our platform combines the best of AI and human intelligence to help contact centers discover customer insights and behavioral best practices, automate conversations and inefficient processes, and empower every team member to work smarter and faster. Born from the prestigious Stanford AI lab, Cresta's co-founder and chairman isSebastian Thrun, the genius behind Google X, Waymo, Udacity, and more. Our leadership also includes CEO,Ping Wu, the co-founder of Google Contact Center AI and Vertex AI platform,& co-founder, Tim Shi, an early member of Open AI.

We’ve assembled a world-class team of AI and ML experts, go-to-market leaders, and top-tier investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock Partners, Sequoia, and former AT&T CEO John Donovan. Our valued customers include brands like Intuit, Cox Communications, Hilton, and Carmax and we’ve been recognized by Forbes and Bain Consulting as one of the top private AI companies in the world.

Join us on this thrilling journey to revolutionize the workforce with AI. The future of work is here, and it's at Cresta.

About the role:

Procurement Operations Lead to own the execution backbone of procurement. This is a senior individual contributor role with end-to-end ownership of procurement operations, systems, renewals discipline, vendor and contract data integrity, and analytics.

This role is responsible for making procurement run cleanly and predictably day to day. You will act as the product owner for procurement workflows and tooling (Zip and Vendr), coordinate contract operations (with Legal owning redlines and approvals), manage renewals and vendor lifecycle hygiene, support smaller negotiations, and deliver trusted reporting to leadership.

This is not a people management role. It is a high-ownership IC role with cross-functional authority and visibility.

**_Working hours: Primarily IST / EMEA hours _**from a remote location in Bangalore, India.

Responsibilities:

Procurement systems and workflow ownership

  • Act as the product owner for Zip, including intake forms, routing rules, approval logic, required fields, SLAs, notifications, and catalog basics
  • Manage and optimize Vendr workflows from intake through signature to improve cycle time, transparency, and stakeholder experience
  • Enforce a single, standardized intake path for procurement requests and ensure requests move through the system efficiently

Contract operations

  • Own contract workflow coordination: intake, version control, signature routing, countersignature, and final distribution
  • Maintain a clean, accurate contract repository with complete metadata (term, renewal dates, notice periods, pricing models, key clauses, attachments)
  • Ensure contracts and data are centralized, audit-ready, and easy for Finance, Legal, and stakeholders to reference_

_

Renewals and vendor lifecycle management

  • Build and run a structured renewal calendar with clear checkpoints (e.g., 120 / 90 / 60 / 30 days)
  • Prevent auto-renew surprises by tracking notice deadlines and driving timely renewals, downsizing, or cancellations
  • Support vendor rationalization and supplier consolidation by identifying duplicates, low-utilization tools, and opportunities to standardize_

_

_Negotiation support _

  • Independently negotiate smaller, low-risk renewals and net-new agreements under defined thresholds using approved playbooks
  • Prepare negotiation and renewal packets for larger or more complex deals and escalate appropriately_

_

Data and analytics

  • Maintain high-quality vendor master and spend data that leadership can trust
  • Produce reporting on renewal pipeline, cycle times, bottlenecks, agreement coverage, vendor count trends, and savings evidence support
  • Provide analysis to inform sourcing decisions, vendor consolidation efforts, and procurement governance

Qualifications We Value:

  • 6–10+ years of experience in procurement operations, sourcing operations, vendor management, or similar roles
  • Hands-on experience administering procurement or intake workflows (e.g., Zip, Vendr, Coupa, Ariba, Ivalua, ServiceNow, Jira, or similar tools)
  • Strong contract operations experience (workflow coordination, repository hygiene, renewals and notice tracking)
  • Comfortable negotiating smaller agreements and driving stakeholders to decisions
  • Strong analytical skills (Excel/Google Sheets; BI tools a plus)
  • Excellent written communication and ability to operate asynchronously across time zones_ _

We have noticed a rise in recruiting impersonations across the industry, where scammers attempt to access candidates' personal and financial information through fake interviews and offers. All Cresta recruiting email communications will always come from the @cresta.ai domain. Any outreach claiming to be from Cresta via other sources should be ignored. If you are uncertain whether you have been contacted by an official Cresta employee, reach out to recruiting@cresta.ai