Strategic Vendor Partnerships & Procurement Lead, Technology

THE ROLE

Multiverse is the UK's largest apprenticeship provider and its first EdTech unicorn, and it's rebuilding on an AI-first foundation. Enterprise Trust & Reliability is the layer where that platform meets the customer, the regulator, and the investor. Our mission is to turn enterprise trust into enterprise revenue: the guardrails, integrations, and vendor relationships that let Multiverse move fast without breaking the trust that enterprise customers pay for.

We're hiring our first Strategic Technology Vendor Partnerships & Procurement Lead: the commercial operator who owns how we buy, renew, and partner on technology. You'll sit at the seam between engineering, security, legal, finance, and our vendors, and you'll turn tooling spend and partner relationships into commercial advantage.

This is a high-autonomy, high-influence individual-contributor role reporting to the Senior Director of the function.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

Build and own commercial and vendor relationships that matter most — model providers like Anthropic or ChatGPT, hyperscalers like AWS and Google, major platforms like Salesforce or Oracle, and developer and security tooling tooling vendors. Keep these relationships warm and know when to activate them. Look past cost: proactively find where a vendor relationship can unlock real value for the business, whether that's training, co-building, product integrations, or better commercial terms.

Centralise and modernise how we buy, renew, and consolidate technology, building this from a low base. That means a single software asset register, a clear intake-and-approval flow, and legal and security engaged early as a gate to clear, not a blocker to fight. Bring total cost of ownership and usage-based pricing into the open so spend maps to outcomes.

Own the live threads from day one — including our LLM enterprise contracts, AI tooling, Identity platforms and other software contracts — and hold the pen on negotiations and renewals across the wider technology portfolio.

Turn procurement and partnerships into a commercial lever, not a cost centre. You'll sit at the seam between engineering, security, legal and finance, influencing outcomes across teams you don't manage — so persuasion and clarity carry the role. Done well, this also becomes trust and vendor evidence that helps enterprise and regulated customers say yes faster.

HOW WE WORK WITH AI

At Multiverse, AI is our engine, not an add-on. In this seat that's literal: you'll be buying, negotiating, and partnering on the exact tools that make it true, and modelling what they cost and what they return. We expect you to use AI daily in your own work — from drafting and comparing contracts to analysing spend — and to be genuinely curious about a tooling and AI-provider market that looks different every quarter.

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

You've built and grown relationships with major technology partners— AWS, Google, Salesforce, Anthropic-type organisations — and can point to commercial impact you unlocked, not just costs you cut.

You're comfortable inside a procurement process too: you've negotiated and renewed software, cloud, or SaaS contracts and can speak to the trade-offs you made, you understand consumption-based pricing, and you're at ease driving a decision across security, legal and finance without owning those teams. But procurement isn't the whole story for you — you think about what a vendor relationship can build, not just what it costs, and you treat compliance as a lever rather than a blocker.

You're technically literate enough to challenge a vendor's claim without being an engineer, and comfortable navigating an engineering and product environment rather than operating purely from the business side. We're looking for AI acumen too: you understand the competitive AI landscape — Anthropic, Google, AWS and others — well enough to advise on real strategic calls, like whether our current AI partner remains the right long-term one.

What this role isn't. This is an internal commercial seat, not sales: no quota, pipeline, or external revenue target. Your customers are our engineers and the business. You don't need to be an engineer (technical fluency over depth), and you won't manage people from day one—this senior IC role earns a team by proving the function.

To be clear on scope: this role owns buy-side commercial relationships with technology providers - advanced planning, networking, keeping warm, and then contracts, pricing, renewals, and consumption. Go-to-market partnering, co-selling, co-marketing, and curriculum work live with Partnerships and other teams, requiring close coordination on shared accounts.

YOUR FIRST NINE MONTHS

Months one to three: map the estate. Every technology contract, renewal date and owner in one place; a single software asset register; a clear picture of spend across tokens, seats and cloud. Get on top of the live threads such as our LLM enterprise contracts, our identity tooling, developer tools, and cross-organisational threads — and start spotting quick wins, like renegotiating spend with an existing supplier.

Months four to six: stand up the buy, renew and consolidate process with security and legal engaged early. Land a first consolidation or renegotiation win — for example, a usage-backed recommendation that settles a tooling question. Start growing the strategic side: identify where vendor relationships can bring value beyond commercial terms, whether that's training, co-building, or product integrations - coordinating with the Partnerships team on any go-to-market angle.

Months seven to nine and beyond: turn procurement and partnerships into a genuine selling point. Produce the trust and vendor evidence that speeds enterprise and regulated deals, and build a repeatable partner playbook for the relationships that matter most — then keep that cycle of deepening partnerships and evolving process running.