What You'll Be Doing
The Vendor Relationship Manager owns a portfolio of the firm’s strategic IT vendors from contract signature through renewal. Acting as the single point of contact between renewals, the Manager ensures vendors deliver what the firm is paying for, holds them accountable when they fall short, and produces the evidence the firm needs to make every renewal an informed decision rather than a default. The role works closely with the Vendor Management Analyst, FinOps, Procurement, Legal, Compliance, Third-Party Risk, and the business owners of each vendor relationship.
What We're Looking For
- Serve as the named single point of contact for an assigned portfolio of strategic vendors; commercial and performance conversations route through this role.
- Run the recurring verification cycle against each contract’s deliverables and service levels, collect evidence, and record results against each obligation.
- Raise vendor performance shortfalls, drive remediation to closure, and escalate when remediation stalls.
- Identify service credits earned and initiate claims through Procurement before contractual windows close.
- Run quarterly business reviews for each strategic vendor, including agenda, evidence pack, minutes, and actions tracked to closure.
- Open renewal reviews 180 days before the notice date and produce the renewal decision record with a renew, renegotiate, replace, or terminate recommendation, supported by usage, performance, credit, and benchmark data.
- Provide dated, evidence-based attestations of vendor performance, verified against data the firm controls rather than vendor-supplied reports alone.
- Coordinate vendor exits on termination, including transition, data return and destruction evidence, and access revocation.
- Extend the established relationship-management playbook across the remaining strategic vendors.
What You'll Bring
- Experience managing relationships with strategic technology or managed-service providers.
- Working knowledge of IT contracts, service level agreements, and service credit mechanisms.
- Track record of holding vendors accountable and escalating issues through to resolution.
- Strong presentation, facilitation, and written communication skills.
Education & Experience
- Minimum Required: Bachelor’s degree in Business, Information Technology, Finance, or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
- Minimum Required: 5+ years of experience in vendor management, IT service management, outsourcing governance, or a related field.
- Preferred: Experience in financial services or another regulated industry and familiarity with third-party risk management expectations for regulated firms.
- Preferred: Experience overseeing an application-management or other managed-service provider.
Licenses & Credentials
Systems & Technology
- Proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite, including Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, Copilot, and Teams.
- Proficiency with approved AI tooling and the judgment to use it appropriately in vendor management activities.
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