DC LLE Strategic Sourcing Manager

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.   Microsoft Cloud Operations and Innovation (CO&I) is the team behind the cloud.  Within CO&I, the Engineering Procurement and Construction (EPC) team is responsible for delivering core datacenter infrastructure for Microsoft’s cloud business. The MS portfolio consists of complex, multi-disciplinary, large scale, multi-year datacenter construction and lease projects. We are looking for a passionate, high-energy individual to help build the cloud datacenters that power the world’s largest online services.  In alignment with our Microsoft values, we are committed to cultivating an inclusive work environment for all employees to positively impact our culture every day. ​​​​​​​  Responsibilities Responsibilities: The Strategic LLE Category Manager maintains and executes sourcing strategies for complex projects and/or purchasing opportunities.   Integrates business specifications for complex purchasing areas into request for information and/or request for proposal processes.   Leads contract negotiations for several purchasing categories cross-functionally and ensures that price, capacity, and strategic business needs are met.   Applies an understanding of procurement policies.   Ensures adherence to policy, educates stakeholders and suppliers on policy compliance, and drives the remediation and resolution of sourcing issues.   Collaborates with senior Procurement stakeholders to ensure awareness of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and/or defined milestones and deliverables, and to drive timeliness and consistency across supply chain requests.   Identifies issues related to procurement requests and collaborates with business and engineering partners.   Creates contract execution plans, defining control processes and approaches.   Develops and leads pricing and negotiation strategies for several complex purchasing categories and gains C-suite support for strategies both internally and externally.   Drives early business engagements for highly complex business areas or purchasing categories.   Manages supplier activity and progress across multiple accounts and complex purchasing categories, developing and executing supplier account plans detailing mutual priorities and focus for the supplier relationship for the upcoming period.   Collaborates with senior Procurement stakeholders to ensure awareness of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and/or defined milestones and deliverables, and to drive timeliness, accuracy, quality, and consistency across supply chain requests.   Serves as subject matter expert on the SLA, milestones, and/or deliverables, and manages any escalations related to policy non-compliance.   Leverages data to anticipate and mitigate risk and negative business impacts by ensuring compliance with agreed-upon terms, communicating delay potential to stakeholders, and driving the execution of contingency plans cross-functionally and/or cross-regionally as needed.   Applies an end-to-end understanding of procurement processes and policies, and the tradeoffs between Microsoft and key suppliers to drive business impact by applying market intelligence to define, develop, and influence the adoption of channel strategies cross-functionally and/or cross-regionally that enable scalable execution with consistency, accuracy, quality, and timeliness of delivery.   Leads decision making around the execution and evolution of various workstream processes, identifies and seeks solutions to compliance areas/gaps, and influences leadership to drive change internally