Contracts Manager IT (Supporting the CIO Office)
UK or EU based candidates are highly preferred
Key Responsibilities
- Draft, review, and negotiate a broad range of IT agreements, including MSAs, SLAs, software licensing, cloud services, hardware procurement, support contracts, renewals, and amendments.
- Partner closely with the CIO and IT leadership on upcoming initiatives, vendor selection, and commercial decision-making.
- Conduct full reviews of existing vendor contracts to ensure alignment with operational requirements, security standards, financial controls, and current operating models, identifying risks, outdated terms, and improvement opportunities.
- Lead end-to-end RFPs, tendering processes, and supplier evaluations in collaboration with IT and Procurement teams.
- Own and maintain a comprehensive IT contract register, ensuring visibility across renewals, expirations, obligations, risks, and key commercial terms.
- Monitor supplier performance against service levels (SLAs/KPIs) and escalate issues to relevant stakeholders to resolve underperformance.
- Ensure vendor compliance with internal requirements around information security, privacy, data protection, and regulatory obligations.
- Work with Finance on budget planning, PO tracking, forecasting, and invoice validation, ensuring contract terms are reflected accurately in spend.
- Identify commercial and operational risks early, recommending practical mitigations and continuous improvements.
- Ensure all agreements adhere to internal governance frameworks, legal requirements, and InfoSec standards.
- Support internal audits, governance reviews, system implementation workstreams, and due diligence exercises related to IT suppliers.
- Prepare executive-level briefs and summaries for the CIO covering negotiations, renewals, key risks, supplier performance, and strategic contract decisions.
Skills & Experience
- Strong track record managing technology vendor contracts, including software, cloud, and IT services.
- Skilled in commercial negotiation, risk mitigation, and stakeholder management.
- Solid understanding of cybersecurity, data privacy, and software licensing models.
- High attention to detail with the ability to identify and mitigate contractual, compliance, and operational risks.
- Confident supporting senior leadership, including CIO-level stakeholders, in fast-paced environments managing multiple contract cycles.
Reporting Line
Reports to: CIO
