Head of Procurement
Fireworks AI · San Mateo, United States · 12h ago
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 reviews, and improvement plans.
Identify supplier concentration, continuity, compliance, financial, geopolitical, and operational risks.
Develop mitigation strategies and alternative sourcing options for critical suppliers.
Build strategic relationships with key suppliers to support innovation, service improvement, and long-term value creation.
Spend Management & Value Creation
Create visibility into company-wide third-party spend and identify opportunities to improve purchasing effectiveness.
Establish savings methodologies and reporting in partnership with Finance.
Deliver measurable cost savings, cost avoidance, working capital improvements, and total cost-of-ownership benefits.
Improve demand management and challenge unnecessary or inefficient expenditure where appropriate.
Track procurement performance against agreed KPIs and communicate results to senior leadership.
Procurement Operations & Process
Design scalable procure-to-pay and source-to-contract processes.
Improve requisition, approval, purchase order, contracting, supplier onboarding, and invoice workflows.
Increase procurement adoption while creating an efficient experience for internal stakeholders.
Evaluate and implement procurement technologies, sourcing platforms, contract management systems, and analytics tools where appropriate.
Ensure procurement processes support appropriate financial controls, audit requirements, and regulatory obligations.
Stakeholder Partnership
Partner with senior executives and functional leaders to understand business priorities and upcoming purchasing requirements.
Advise stakeholders on sourcing strategies, supplier selection, commercial structures, and negotiation approaches.
Balance cost, speed, quality, innovation, service, and risk when making procurement recommendations.
Build strong relationships across the organization and influence decisions without creating unnecessary bureaucracy.
Qualifications
Significant experience in procurement, strategic sourcing, category management, supply chain, or related commercial roles.
Demonstrated experience leading a procurement function or major procurement programs.
Strong record of delivering measurable commercial value through sourcing, negotiation, supplier management, and process improvement.
Experience negotiating complex, high-value supplier agreements.
Strong understanding of procurement governance, contracting, supplier risk, and spend management.
Experience managing and developing teams.
Strong financial and analytical capabilities, including the ability 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.