Procurement Operations Business Partner (Contract)
Employment Type: W2 Contract, 12 Months (potential to extend)
Pay Rate: $75–$95/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
About the Company
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.
About the Role
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.
What You Will Do
- 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 escalate 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.
What We Are Looking For
- 3-5+ years in 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, NetSuite, or similar, at a company with meaningful volume.
- Working knowledge of how contract review routes between procurement, legal, security, and the requester, and what a clean SOW or order form needs to contain.
- Solid grounding in financial controls, including GL and spend category coding, accruals, and why the contract, PO, and invoice need to agree.
- Comfort working across many spend categories, for example software and SaaS, professional services, marketing, HR and benefits, and workplace and facilities, rather than deep specialization in one.
- Detail orientation. You catch errors, validate data, and follow through on loose ends, and you enjoy this work rather than resent it.
- Problem solving. You drive issues to resolution and solve for the root cause, not just the immediate ticket.
- Communication. Clear, thorough written communication; you can answer multi part questions and explain process to non-finance stakeholders without jargon.
- Collaboration. You work well across teams and are comfortable asking questions and escalating appropriately rather than guessing.
- Flexibility. Fast paced, high growth environment where ambiguity is normal; you can reprioritize without perfect information.
Nice to Have
- Direct experience with Zip, Workday Financials, Ironclad, Slack, and Google Sheets.
- Exposure to software security reviews, third party risk or privacy reviews, or SaaS contracting.
- Prior month end close, accrual, or vendor reconciliation work alongside an accounting team.
- Experience at a high growth technology company where process is still being built.
- A habit of using AI tools such as Claude to speed up research, drafting, and data cleanup in your own work.
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