Procurement Manager

The opportunity 9fin is scaling fast, and the way we buy needs to scale with us. Today, procurement is handled ad hoc across Finance, Legal, and IT. Requests route differently every time, subscriptions duplicate across teams, contracts auto‑renew without review, and there is no central view of who we buy from, what we pay, or when contracts come up. The cost is real: missed negotiation leverage, overlapping tools, and senior time spent on work that should sit with a dedicated owner.

The Procurement Manager is a new, standalone role within Operations at 9fin, based in London and reporting to the General Counsel. The role exists to do three things:

• Build scalable process. Design 9fin's procurement policy, intake, RFP, and renewals process from first principles, with the tooling to support it as we grow.
• Own the function. Take end‑to‑end ownership of the vendor lifecycle, the vendor register, the renewals calendar, and commercial negotiation across vendor categories.
• Partner across the business. Be the single point of contact for Finance, Legal, and IT/InfoSec on inbound procurement, and the partner team managers come to when they want to bring in a new tool.

This is a build role. You will not inherit a team, a playbook, or a tooling stack. You will design them.

We are looking for someone with 5 to 8 years of procurement experience at a technology or fintech business of comparable scale, who is excited to take ownership of a function rather than administer one.

What you'll work on:

• Build scalable process: Design 9fin's procurement policy, intake process, and approval workflow from first principles, with scale in mind from day one. Stand up a single front door for procurement requests, replacing the current ad hoc routing across Finance, Legal, and IT teams. Define and document the RFP process: how we source, how we evaluate alternatives, and how we record the rationale. Evaluate and recommend procurement tooling (for example, Cledara) during your first 90 days, with a view to automating renewals tracking and intake. Set the cadence and content of procurement reporting to the business.
• Own the function: Own the full vendor lifecycle end to end: sourcing, evaluation, contracting, onboarding, renewals, offboarding. Own the central vendor register and spend dashboard as the single source of truth for who we buy from and what we pay. Own the renewals calendar and drive renewal conversations early, with the relevant team manager, well ahead of auto‑renewal dates. Lead commercial negotiations across vendor categories, from SaaS tooling to specialist services, and own the commercial outcome. Identify and resolve duplicate subscriptions and overlapping tools across the business.
• Partner across the business: Act as the single point of contact for Finance, Legal, and IT/InfoSec on inbound procurement activity, sequencing approvals so each function is engaged at the right point. Partner with Finance to manage and maximise the value of every pound spent, not just allocate it. Own savings, cost avoidance, and value capture as commercial outcomes the business can measure. Integrate procurement into Finance's budgeting processes and planning cycles, so vendor decisions are made with the full picture of the planning horizon rather than in isolation. Work with Finance to design and operate clear authorisation levels and approval flows, so the right decisions sit with the right people and the process scales as the business grows. Partner with Legal on contract review and risk‑tiered routing of vendor agreements. Partner with IT/InfoSec on security and data protection assessments for new and renewing vendors. Work with team managers across the business to surface needs, challenge requests against existing tooling, and route projects to the right approvers at the right time.

About you:

• Owner, not administrator: You treat the function as yours. You set the standard, drive the outcome, and do not wait to be told what is next. You are comfortable being accountable for results, not just activity.
• High energy, high intensity: You bring pace and personal drive to the work. You move fast, push hard on the things that matter, and have the stamina to build a function while running it at the same time.
• Builder mindset: You have designed a procurement function or materially expanded one, not just maintained a mature one. You are comfortable with a blank page and motivated by the chance to build something that lasts.
• Commercial negotiator: You have led vendor negotiations on material spend, not just administered contracts someone else negotiated. You know when to push and when to accept, and you own the commercial outcome.
• Structured and scalable thinker: You design process with the next stage of growth in mind, not just the current state. You can stand up a vendor register, a spend dashboard, an intake workflow, and an RFP process without being told the steps.
• Strong cross‑functional partner: The role sits at the intersection of Finance, Legal, IT/InfoSec, and every team that buys something. You build trust quickly across functions and sequence the right people at the right time, without becoming a bottleneck yourself.
• Willingness to challenge the status quo: You see how things could be done better, and you are not afraid to speak up. You push back constructively, evidence in hand.
• Bias to action: You move quickly from problem to solution. You would rather ship a working process and refine it than spend a quarter perfecting a policy.
• Finance literate: You are comfortable working inside a Finance team's planning cycle, reading budgets, and talking commercial impact in the terms Finance uses (not just procurement terms).

Benefits: We’re a scaling start up, and we enjoy sharing our success; when the company succeeds, we always reinvest that in our people. We also offer huge amounts of responsibility, an abundance of opportunity for growth and a platform to truly excel.