Head of Procurement

The posting, as Fireworks wrote it

ABOUT US

Fireworks is the platform for specialized intelligence, enabling companies to build, train, and serve AI models tailored to their own data, workflows, and products. Founded by the team behind PyTorch and backed by AMD, Atreides, Benchmark Capital, Index Ventures, Lightspeed, NVIDIA, Sequoia Capital, and TCV, Fireworks powers production AI with hundreds of state-of-the-art open models across text, image, embedding, audio, and multimodal workloads. Today, Fireworks is a Series D company valued at $17.5 billion, bringing together an ambitious, collaborative team that's building the future of enterprise AI.

ROLE OVERVIEW

We are seeking an experienced and commercially minded Head of Procurement to lead our procurement function and shape the company’s sourcing, supplier management, and purchasing strategy.

This role will be responsible for building a high-performing procurement organization that delivers measurable cost efficiencies, improves supplier performance, strengthens commercial discipline, and reduces supply and operational risk. The Head of Procurement will partner closely with business leaders across Finance, Operations, Legal, Technology, and other functions to ensure procurement supports both near-term business needs and long-term company objectives.

The ideal candidate combines strategic thinking with strong execution, commercial negotiation expertise, stakeholder management skills, and the ability to build scalable procurement processes in a growing organization.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

PROCUREMENT STRATEGY & LEADERSHIP

• Develop and execute the company-wide procurement strategy aligned with business and financial objectives.
• Establish procurement policies, operating models, governance, and approval frameworks.
• Build procurement into a strategic business partner rather than a transactional purchasing function.
• Identify and prioritize opportunities for cost optimization, supplier consolidation, process improvement, and risk reduction.
• Provide leadership and coaching to the procurement team and build organizational capability as the function grows.

STRATEGIC SOURCING & COMMERCIAL MANAGEMENT

• Lead strategic sourcing initiatives across key spend categories.
• Develop category strategies based on spend analysis, market intelligence, supplier capabilities, and business requirements.
• Lead or support high-value and complex commercial negotiations.
• Drive competitive sourcing processes including RFPs, RFQs, supplier evaluations, and contract negotiations.
• Establish commercial benchmarks and ensure the organization receives competitive pricing, terms, and service levels.
• Partner with Legal and Finance to improve contract structures, payment terms, renewal management, and commercial protections.

SUPPLIER MANAGEMENT

• Develop a structured supplier relationship management program for strategic and critical suppliers.
• Establish supplier performance metrics, scorecards, business re

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lity to evaluate business cases, pricing models, and total cost of ownership.

• Excellent stakeholder management, influencing, communication, and negotiation skills.
• Ability to operate effectively in a fast-paced environment with competing priorities and incomplete information.
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent professional experience.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Experience building or transforming a procurement function.
• Experience operating in a high-growth or rapidly changing organization.
• Familiarity with procurement technology, spend analytics, contract lifecycle management, and procure-to-pay platforms.
• Experience managing both direct and indirect spend categories.
• Professional procurement qualification such as CIPS, CPSM, or equivalent is advantageous.

SUCCESS MEASURES

Success in this role will be measured through outcomes such as:

• Procurement savings and cost avoidance.
• Percentage of addressable spend managed through procurement.
• Supplier performance and risk reduction.
• Improved commercial and contractual terms.
• Procurement cycle times and stakeholder satisfaction.
• Compliance with procurement policies and processes.
• Increased spend visibility and forecasting accuracy.
• Development of a strong, scalable procurement organization.

WHY FIREWORKS?

• Solve Hard Problems: Tackle challenges at the forefront of AI infrastructure, from low-latency inference to scalable model serving.
• Build What’s Next: Work with bleeding-edge technology that impacts how businesses and developers harness AI globally.
• Ownership & Impact: Join a fast-growing, passionate team where your work directly shapes the future of AI—no bureaucracy, just results.
• Learn from the Best: Collaborate with world-class engineers and AI researchers who thrive on curiosity and innovation.

Fireworks AI is an equal-opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all innovators.