Director of Procurement in London

Synthesia is the world’s leading AI video platform for business, used by over 90% of the Fortune 100. Founded in 2017, the company is headquartered in London, with offices and teams across Europe and the US. As AI continues to shape the way we live and work, Synthesia develops products to enhance visual communication and enterprise skill development, helping people work better and stay at the center of successful organizations.

Following our recent Series E funding round, where we raised $200 million, our valuation stands at $4 billion. Our total funding exceeds $530 million from premier investors including Accel, NVentures (Nvidia's VC arm), Kleiner Perkins, GV, and Evantic Capital, alongside the founders and operators of Stripe, Datadog, Miro, and Webflow.

About the role: We are seeking a Director of Procurement to build and scale a new function at Synthesia. In this newly created role you will initially report to the CFO and operate at the center of critical decisions around spend, vendor strategy, real estate, and operational infrastructure. 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.

What you’ll be doing:

• Own strategic sourcing across key spend categories, including SaaS, cloud infrastructure, marketing, professional services, real estate, and facilities.
• In a hyper-growth environment where speed matters, you'll build frameworks that enable the business rather than slow it down.
• Partner with Legal on contract lifecycle management, ensuring risk-appropriate terms and timely execution.
• Partner with Security on development of third party practices and process.
• Drive vendor rationalization and preferred-vendor strategies that maximize leverage without compromising business velocity.
• Lead complex vendor negotiations for new contracts and renewals, with a focus on cost optimization, commercial flexibility, and risk mitigation.
• Help establish scalable procurement workflows, policies, governance, and tooling to improve visibility, audit-ability, and internal client satisfaction.
• Partner with accounting on month end accruals, coding accuracy and PO hygiene.
• Help to champion P2P adoption and optimization across the Company, driving compliance, user experience improvements, and workflow automation.

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.

Location: NYC or London

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.