Senior Contracts Manager

Overview

This role owns end-to-end contracting and commercial relationships with external partners, helping ensure agreements and vendor relationships are managed efficiently, accurately, and in compliance with organizational requirements.

The Operations function supports people, finance, accounting, legal, IT, AI, and general business operations to enable responsible, fast execution across the organization. External partners—consultants and technical advisors, suppliers, contract manufacturers, testing laboratories, research partners, and professional services firms—play a key role in delivering protective equipment and crisis-response infrastructure at scale.

Responsibilities

Negotiation and drafting

• Negotiate, redline, and close the majority of agreements, including:
  • Consultant agreements
  • Master services agreements and statements of work
  • Supplier and manufacturing contracts
  • Non-disclosure agreements
  • Research collaboration agreements
• Engage and manage outside counsel as needed, including budgeting when additional legal support is warranted.
• Build and maintain legal templates, standard positions, fallback language, and negotiation playbooks to resolve recurring terms consistently and efficiently.

Contract administration and compliance

• Run the contract lifecycle from intake and approval through execution, repository management, and closeout, using workflows and tooling that keep agreement status visible.
• Maintain the contract record as the single source of truth for every agreement, ensuring records are complete, accurately tagged, and searchable.
• Track renewals, expirations, and notice windows to ensure commitments related to confidentiality, data protection, insurance, and reporting are met.

Vendor management

• Manage vendors commercially, including competitive selection and pricing negotiations.
• Own vendor onboarding and ongoing performance management, including supplier consolidation and the decision to renew, renegotiate, or exit at each term end.
• Align contracting with purchasing, spend approval, and payment processes so commitments are visible to Finance and reflected in budgets.

Requirements

• Negotiated and redlined a broad range of commercial agreements, with the ability to take a contract from first draft to signature with limited supervision.
• Understand where risks reside in agreements, including indemnification, liability caps, intellectual property, confidentiality, data protection, and termination, and can explain tradeoffs in plain language.
• Worked closely with internal and external lawyers and can determine what to resolve directly versus when to invest legal spend for additional support.
• Built or substantially improved contract administration tools (templates, intake/approval routing processes, contract records, obligation tracking, and renewal management).
• Can manage concurrent matters and deadlines while keeping track of obligations and proactively moving contracts forward.
• Managed supplier relationships commercially, including competitive selection, pricing negotiation, and performance management through renewal or exit.
• Direct and constructive with counterparties, building and maintaining win-win partnerships where possible.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience contracting in life sciences, biotechnology, medical devices, or manufacturing.
• Regular use of AI tools and the discipline to verify outputs.
• Experience with government, philanthropic, or grant-funded agreements, including flow-down and reporting obligations.
• Experience selecting or implementing a contract lifecycle management system.
• Law degree, paralegal qualification, or contract management certification.

Compensation & Benefits

• Expected base salary range: $155,000 to $185,000 per year.
• Actual base pay will be determined based on relevant experience, education, skills, and geographic location.
• Benefits include:
  • Medical, dental, and vision insurance
  • 401(k) plan with company match
  • Flexible PTO

Location

California Applicants

• Under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), personal information from applicants is collected solely for recruitment purposes and is not sold.