Strategic Sourcing Business Partner, R&D Operations

About this role

About Anthropic

Anthropic’s mission is to create reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. We want AI to be safe and beneficial for our users and for society as a whole. Our team is a quickly growing group of committed researchers, engineers, policy experts, and business leaders working together to build beneficial AI systems.

About the Role

Anthropic's R&D teams depend on a large and fast-growing ecosystem of outside service providers. The biggest and most complex piece of it is Human Data Operations (HDO): roughly ~140 vendors that supply the human-generated data, evaluations, and expert feedback our research depends on. Alongside HDO is a growing set of other R&D services, including wetlabs, robotics labs, outsourced and BPO service providers, and other specialized service partners that our research and special-initiative teams rely on.

We are hiring a Strategic Sourcing Business Partner to own the commercial side of this portfolio. Today these vendors have business owners and Procurement Operations support, this role will drive real ownership of the commercial terms end to end including contracts redlines, deployment of contract templates, and the negotiation.. There is significant untapped value in this portfolio (in pricing, in contract terms, and in vendor performance), and this role exists to go get it.

The job has four parts: run the contracts (redlining, templates, and renewals), lead the commercial negotiations, partnering with the business to positively influence decision-making, and manage vendor performance once the deal is signed. Success means moving fluidly between the deal and the relationship: negotiating strong terms, then executing against them through QBRs, SLA enforcement, and escalations as our needs change.

We use Claude as part of our daily workflow and are looking for someone who wants to help define what an AI-native sourcing function looks like, including how AI changes deal-making and vendor management itself over the next few years.

How this role fits within Procurement

Procurement Operations Business Partners own the primary relationship with each business vertical and are the front door for intake and day-to-day requests. Strategic Sourcing partners closely with them and owns the commercial outcome: negotiation strategy, contract terms and redlines, contract compliance, ongoing vendor performance, and sustained value creation for the leaders of these verticals. You will also be working closely day to day with Legal (legal positions, templates, terms), Finance & Strategy (budgets, forecasts, and strategy), and Security / TPRM (risk assessment, approvals, process).

Responsibilities

Contract management and templates

• Own the commercial redline for HDO and R&D services agreements (MSAs, SOWs, order forms, amendments, and renewals), partnering with Legal on legal terms, so deals move quickly while maintaining negotiation posture

• Build and maintain the template library for these categories (standard MSA and SOW templates, pricing exhibits, SLA schedules, and a fallback playbook) so that most deals start on our paper rather than the vendor's

• Run the renewal calendar for the portfolio so that no agreement auto-renews or lapses without a deliberate commercial decision

• Keep contract data (rates, volume commitments, SLAs, key dates) current in our contract and intake systems so obligations are visible and enforceable

Negotiations and commercial strategy

• Lead pricing and commercial negotiations across the portfolio, from strategy and deal structure through terms, SLAs, and executive alignment; you will personally run the ones that matter most

• Build playbooks and Claude-powered tools for redlining, negotiation prep, benchmarking, and vendor reporting that raise the throughput and deal quality of the whole team

• Design pricing structures that fit how R&D actually consumes these services (per-unit, per-hour, capacity, tiered, and committed-volume models) and that align vendor incentives with quality and throughput

• Build and maintain a competitive bench for every mission-critical category via RFPs and competitive processes: qualified second sources, contracts structured so volume can move as needed, and flexible pricing constructs

• Track and report savings, cost avoidance, and improved terms for the portfolio

Vendor management and value creation

• Own the vendor management cadence for mission-critical vendors: QBRs, scorecards, SLA and quality reporting, and remedies when performance slips

• Manage escalations between R&D teams and vendors and drive them to resolution

• Identify consolidation, rationalization, and renegotiation opportunities as volumes shift, and bring executive-ready recommendations to R&D and Finance leadership

• Manage TPRM, security, and compliance approvals, audit rights, and data-handling terms in partnership with Security and Legal

Relationships & Partnership

• Partner with Procurement Ops BPs and the leaders in R&D and special-initiative teams to understand upcoming needs and growth, and get vendor capacity and terms in place ahead of them

• Partner with Finance & Strategy on vendor budgets, forecasts, and multi-year cost models for the portfolio

You may be a good fit if you have

• 7+ years of strategic sourcing, category management, vendor management, or commercial negotiation experience, primarily in services categories (data services, BPO or outsourced operations, lab or research services, managed services, staffing, or similar)

• Hands-on contract experience: you have personally redlined MSAs and SOWs, built templates and fallback positions, and know where the commercial value sits in a services contract (pricing exhibits, volume commitments, termination rights, SLAs and remedies, IP and data terms) and when to bring in Legal

• A track record of personally leading multi-million dollar services negotiations to strong outcomes, not just managing the process around them

• Judgment about wh

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