Head of Procurement

About the role

We are rebuilding biotech for the AI era.

When a breakthrough is delayed, the world waits. Getting a molecule from discovery to patients, or a crop from lab to field, involves thousands of slow, manual, disconnected steps. AI has the potential to change this, compressing decades of R&D work into years. But that only happens when clean, structured scientific data and AI are built into how science gets done.

Benchling is the AI platform for biotech R&D. Scientists use Benchling to design experiments, capture structured data, and run AI agents and models directly in their workflows. Over 200,000 scientists around the world trust Benchling to power their most important work, from academic labs to Sanofi, Moderna, and more than half of the world's top 50 biopharma.

We’re building an AI scientist for our customers. We can’t do that if we haven’t built the muscle ourselves. AI fluency is the foundation we build on; it's core to how we work, and we're committed to helping every new hire integrate it into their day-to-day. As part of our interview process, you'll complete a brief AI-focused exercise or discussion so we can understand how you think about and use AI to drive impact in your role. Feel free to reference any tools, platforms, or workflows you use today.

Role Overview

Benchling is looking for a Head of Procurement to lead how we buy. You'll be a senior individual contributor reporting to the Chief Accounting Officer with broad influence across and responsibility for our third-party spend in cloud infrastructure, enterprise SaaS, and professional services, and over our travel and expense program.

Our procurement function has earned real trust across the business. Teams don't just invite procurement into their deals for compliance, but because it makes their deals better. You'll protect and build on that trust. You'll be a partner to the business: someone who understands what each team is trying to achieve, looks objectively through a broader company-wide lens, finds the best overall value for Benchling, and makes buying easier while improving how it's controlled.

You'll lead negotiations of our largest and most strategic contracts, build coverage to address the tail, and be our expert on what a well-designed procure-to-pay process looks like, guiding our systems and accounting partners toward it. You'll work closely with Engineering, IT, Security, Marketing, Legal, Strategic Finance, Corporate Development, and Accounting, running a regular rhythm that gets to decisions. You'll adjust how involved you are to what each team needs, from running a deal end to end to coaching an experienced owner.

Responsibilities

Sourcing and negotiation, together with strategic initiatives, make up roughly 65-70% of your time. Process excellence makes up the remaining 30-35%.

Sourcing, negotiation, and spend management

• Lead vendor negotiation and renewals for our largest and most strategic agreements, including our cloud infrastructure and enterprise SaaS providers.
• Structure deals that hold up over time, including usage-based and committed-spend pricing, multi-year terms, price protections, and exit and data portability rights.
• Enhance our renewal management process, building a renewal strategy with business owners and Strategic Finance, so renewal pricing never comes as a surprise.
• Develop category strategies for our major spend areas, and use them to consolidate vendors, inform renewal strategies and stop redundant software spend, working with business partners on usage monitoring and build-versus-buy decisions.
• Design and implement an appropriately sized third-party vendor risk program that aligns and partners with security and other stakeholders. Improve vendor risk visibility and build mitigation plans with business partners.
• Build leverage by giving business owners what they need to negotiate on their own.
• Advise on categories outside procurement today, such as benefits, large events, real estate, and our contingent workforce vendors.

Process excellence

• Leverage your experience in leading edge, best-in-class process and set the direction. Partner with stakeholder teams to evolve existing processes.
• Own our procurement and T&E policies, set clear rules for when procurement gets involved, and assess whether our tools are still the right ones.
• Simplify and apply AI and automation from intake through reporting, including procurement metrics teams can use on their own, department-level tool budgets with Strategic Finance, and tracking of committed and usage-based contracts with Corporate Accounting.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in procurement, strategic sourcing, or vendor management, with most of that experience at technology or SaaS companies
• Negotiation expertise that experienced deal owners can learn from, and a track record of delivering substantial, measurable savings by leading the most complex, high-stakes negotiations in the company, including large cloud infrastructure commitments and multi-year enterprise SaaS agreements, and by driving cross-functional vendor and tool consolidation
• A reputation as a trusted business partner who balances commercial results with stakeholder needs and long-term vendor relationships
• Ability to understand why the business needs a solution and how it fits into the broader product vision
• Leading-practice procurement process design: demonstrated results from process redesign and simplification, leveraging AI and automation, with good judgment about where they help and where they don't
• Excellent written, verbal, and presentation skills at an executive level. You can make a clear case for value with data-driven analysis based on usage, benchmark, and total-cost data, and influence decisions without authority.
• Experience designing third-party risk processes with Security, Legal, and Compliance partners
• Familiarity with Zip, Navan, NetSuite, or similar platforms
• Comfort working on your own, handling both strategy and execution

Differentiating: procurement certification (CPSM, CIPS, or similar)

Nice to have

experience in life sciences or biotech

How We Work

• We offer a flexible hybrid work arrangement that prioritizes in-office collaboration. Employees are expected to be on-site 3 days per week (Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday).
• #LI-Hybrid
• #BI-Hybrid
• Benchling welcomes everyone.
• We believe diversity enriches our team so we hire people with a wide range of identities, backgrounds, and experiences.