Vendor & Procurement Manager

Job Description

Purpose of the Role

The Vendor & Procurement Manager will own the end-to-end lifecycle of Veremark’s third-party data provider relationships across all markets. This is a hands‑on, commercially-minded role that sits at the intersection of operations, compliance, and commercial strategy. You will be responsible for selecting the right vendors, negotiating the best terms, ensuring they meet our compliance and data protection standards, and holding them accountable to performance expectations.

You will work closely with the Operations, Product, Technology, Compliance, and Commercial teams to ensure that our vendor ecosystem supports Veremark’s growth ambitions while maintaining the quality and integrity that our clients expect.

Key Responsibilities

Vendor Strategy & Selection

• Develop and maintain Veremark’s global vendor strategy, ensuring we have the right data providers in place across all markets and check types (criminal, education, employment, credit, identity, right‑to‑work, sanctions, and others).
• Lead the vendor analysis and selection process for new markets, new check types, and replacement of underperforming providers. This includes market scanning, RFP/RFI management, capability assessment, commercial evaluation, and due diligence.
• Build and maintain a vendor landscape map covering all geographies and check types, identifying gaps, risks, single points of failure, and opportunities for consolidation or diversification.
• Create and maintain a vendor classification matrix to rank vendors based on check volume, fulfillment complexity and annual spend. Assign a rank (or tier) to all current and future vendors.
• Evaluate build‑vs‑buy‑vs‑partner decisions for new data sources in collaboration with the Product and Technology teams.

Commercial Negotiation & Cost Management

• Negotiate pricing, payment terms, volume commitments, SLAs, and contractual terms with all third‑party data providers. Drive cost reduction without compromising quality or turnaround times.
• Own the vendor cost base and work with Finance to model unit economics, pass‑through costs, and the impact of vendor pricing on Veremark’s blended gross margin.
• Identify and execute opportunities to consolidate spend, leverage volume across geographies, and renegotiate terms as Veremark’s scale increases.
• Manage contract renewals proactively — never let a contract auto‑renew without a commercial review.
• Benchmark vendor pricing against market alternatives on a regular cycle (at least annually for Tier 1 vendors).

Compliance, Governance & Risk Management

• Ensure all vendors meet Veremark’s compliance standards, including data protection (GDPR, PDPL, PDPA, and other applicable data privacy regulations), information security (ISO 27001 or equivalent), anti‑bribery, sanctions screening, and modern slavery requirements.
• Develop and maintain the vendor governance framework, including onboarding checklists, periodic compliance reviews, risk assessments, and exit procedures.
• Own the vendor risk register. Identify, assess, and mitigate risks related to vendor concentration, data handling, jurisdictional compliance, business continuity, and financial stability.
• Work with the Compliance and Legal teams to ensure all vendor contracts include appropriate data processing agreements (DPAs), confidentiality provisions, audit rights, breach notification obligations, and termination clauses.
• Manage vendor audits — both conducting audits of our vendors and supporting client‑side audits where Veremark’s vendor arrangements are in scope.
• Ensure compliance with data residency requirements in regulated markets (e.g., Saudi Arabia PDPL, UAE data protection, Singapore PDPA) and work with Technology to ensure data flows through approved infrastructure.

Performance Management & SLA Monitoring

• Define and implement a vendor performance management framework with clear KPIs covering turnaround time, accuracy, uptime/availability, error rates, escalation responsiveness, and client‑impacting incidents.
• Establish and monitor SLAs for all Tier 1 and Tier 2 vendors. Hold vendors accountable through regular performance reviews (quarterly for Tier 1, semi‑annually for Tier 2).
• Build dashboards and reporting to give Operations and Leadership visibility into vendor performance trends, cost trends, and risk indicators.
• Manage escalations when vendors fail to meet SLAs or quality standards. Drive root cause analysis and corrective action plans.
• Develop a vendor scorecard system that feeds into contract renewal and renegotiation decisions.

Relationship Management & Operational Coordination

• Act as Veremark’s primary point of contact for all strategic vendor relationships. Build strong, professional relationships with vendor account managers and leadership.
• Coordinate with the Operations team to ensure smooth day‑to‑day vendor interactions, API integrations, data feed management, and issue resolution.
• Work with the Technology team on vendor API integrations, data format standardisation, and automation of vendor‑related workflows.
• Support the M&A team during due diligence of acquisition targets by assessing their vendor ecosystems, identifying overlaps, and planning post‑acquisition vendor integration or migration.
• Stay current on market developments, new data sources, regulatory changes, and emerging providers that could benefit Veremark’s product offering or cost structure.

Qualifications

Must‑Have

• 3+ years of experience in vendor management, procurement, or supply chain management within a technology, data services, or professional services business. Background screening, HR tech, fintech, or regtech experience is strongly preferred.
• Proven track record of commercial negotiation — you have personally negotiated contracts, pricing, and SLAs with data providers or technology vendors and can demonstrate measurable cost savings or performance improvements.
• Strong understanding of data protection and compliance frameworks (GDPR at minimum; experience with multi‑jurisdictional data privacy laws is a significant advantage).
• Experience developing and managing vendor governance frameworks, risk registers, and performance scorecards.
• Analytical and commercially literate — you can model unit economics, understand pass‑through margins, and present vendor cost analysis to senior leadership.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English. Comfortable presenting to C‑suite stakeholders and negotiating with senior vendor contacts.
• Self‑starter who thrives in a fast‑paced, scaling environment. You default to doing, not delegating. You pick up the phone, chase the answer, and close the loop.

Nice‑to‑Have

• Experience working with background screening data providers (criminal record databases, credit bureaus, educational verification services, government registries, identity verification providers).
• Familiarity with ISO 27001, SOC 2, or equivalent information security frameworks in a vendor context.
• Experience supporting M&A due diligence from a vendor/procurement perspective.
• Working knowledge of API integrations and data interchange formats (you don’t need to code, but you need to understand how data flows between Veremark and its vendors).
• Experience managing vendors across multiple jurisdictions, particularly in the UK, UAE/GCC, Australia/NZ, Singapore, Philippines, and India.