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Synthesia
Synthesia

Director of Procurement

London; New York City Operations Senior Posted 8h ago

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Role description

What the team is looking for.

We are seeking a Director of Procurement to build and scale a new function at Synthesia. This is a high-impact role with real ownership. You'll define our sourcing and procurement strategy, lead complex negotiations, and help build the processes and systems from scratch that support the company's next stage of growth.

Key responsibilities include:

  • Owning strategic sourcing across key spend categories, including SaaS, cloud infrastructure, marketing, professional services, real estate, and facilities
  • Building frameworks that enable the business rather than slow it down in a hyper-growth environment
  • Partnering with Legal on contract lifecycle management, ensuring risk-appropriate terms and timely execution
  • Partnering with Security on development of third-party practices and process
  • Driving vendor rationalization and preferred-vendor strategies that maximize leverage without compromising business velocity
  • Leading complex vendor negotiations for new contracts and renewals, with a focus on cost optimization, commercial flexibility, and risk mitigation
  • Helping establish scalable procurement workflows, policies, governance, and tooling to improve visibility, audit-ability, and internal client satisfaction
  • Partnering with accounting on month-end accruals, coding accuracy, and PO hygiene

We'd love to hear from you if you have:

  • A track record of building procurement functions from scratch, with the instinct to spot leverage others leave on the table and the presence to operate at C-level
  • 10+ years of progressive experience in procurement, strategic sourcing, or vendor management
  • Significant experience negotiating complex SaaS, cloud, professional services, and/or real estate contracts
  • Deep expertise in sourcing strategy, vendor selection, contract negotiation, supplier performance management, and cost optimization
  • A track record of managing multi-million-dollar budgets and delivering measurable savings and operational efficiencies
  • Familiarity with procurement and SaaS management tools
  • Strong cross-functional partnership skills, with the ability to influence senior stakeholders across Finance, IT, Security, HR, and Legal
  • Comfort reviewing and redlining commercial terms in close collaboration with legal teams
  • A structured, pragmatic approach to problem-solving, with the ability to operate both strategically and hands-on

We'd be particularly excited if you have:

  • An 'AI first' mindset and curiosity about how AI can improve procurement operations
  • Experience optimizing cloud infrastructure and compute spend, particularly in AI/ML environments
  • A track record navigating real estate strategy and vendor partnerships in global, multi-office settings
Skills mentioned
  • strategic sourcing
  • procurement
  • vendor management
  • negotiation
  • contract management
  • supplier performance management
  • cost optimization
  • budget management
  • procurement tools
  • SaaS management
  • AI
  • cloud infrastructure
  • compute spend
  • real estate strategy
  • vendor partnerships