Category Manager

Chainalysis is building a modern, scalable procurement function to support the company’s growth. The Procurement team partners with Finance, IT, Security, Legal, Privacy, and business teams to make purchasing decisions that are cost-effective, compliant, and aligned with business needs. We are establishing category strategies, improving spend visibility, and strengthening supplier and contract governance.

In this role, you’ll:

• Build and maintain a complete view of SaaS and software applications, owners, contracts, renewal dates, spend, license counts, and utilization.

• Identify software overlap, redundancy, and shadow IT; develop consolidation plans that reduce vendor count and cost while supporting business continuity.

• Manage the renewal calendar and engage stakeholders 120–180 days ahead of renewals; right-size licenses and negotiate co-terms, multi-year pricing, price protections, and flexible true-down rights.

• Partner with IT, Security, and business owners to assess platform-versus-point-solution choices and develop plans to retire or replace tools.

• Establish intake and approval workflows that review new software purchases for duplication, security, privacy, and cost before commitment.

• Develop and execute category strategies across assigned indirect spend, which may include cloud and infrastructure, professional services, marketing, data providers, facilities, travel, telecom, and HR-related services.

• Lead RFI, RFP, and RFQ processes from requirements gathering through vendor selection, negotiation, and award.

• Negotiate commercial terms and partner with Legal on contract provisions, including SLAs, liability, data protection, termination, and renewals.

• Manage supplier performance and risk through business reviews, scorecards, due diligence, and ongoing coordination with Legal, Privacy, and Security.

• Apply procurement policy and approval requirements, including ensuring an approved PO is in place before signature; maintain accurate supplier and contract records for audit readiness.

• Report spend, savings, sourcing pipeline, and supplier risk to Procurement leadership and Finance, using an agreed methodology for hard savings, cost avoidance, and avoided true-ups.
  

We’re looking for candidates who have:

• 5+ years of experience in procurement, sourcing, or category management, including meaningful ownership of SaaS or software spend.

• A demonstrated track record of measurable savings through vendor consolidation, license optimization, and negotiation.

• Experience negotiating SaaS and software agreements, including subscription terms, usage metrics, renewals, true-ups, and price protections.

• Working knowledge of commercial contract terms and the ability to partner effectively with Legal.

• Strong analytical skills, including experience with spend analysis, utilization analysis, and business cases in Excel or similar tools.

• The ability to influence engineers, executives, and budget owners and to build alignment across functions without relying on formal authority.

• Clear written and verbal communication skills.
  

Nice to have experience:

• Working at a high-growth technology company or a company preparing for, or recently through, an IPO.

• Using SaaS management, spend-visibility, procurement, or ERP platforms.

• Managing cloud, data, or infrastructure categories.

• Supporting security, privacy, or third-party risk reviews.

• A CPSM, CIPS, or equivalent professional certification.

AI at Chainalysis
AI is not a feature at Chainalysis - it is a new way of working. One that turns instructions into work done, and helps us move faster than the threats we're built to counter, and we expect our employees to take ownership of the output and ensure quality. As the world's most trusted blockchain analytics platform, Chainalysis sits at a rare intersection of proprietary data, regulatory relationships and crypto expertise that makes it uniquely placed to shape and lead the next era of AI-driven intelligence - and we expect everyone here, regardless of role, to be an active part of it.

AI fluency is tied directly to how we measure performance and how we plan to win. There is no substitute for your own curiosity. We provide the tools, workflows, and space to experiment - but the expectation is that you develop these capabilities yourself, bring ideas, and collaborate across teams to reinvent the way work gets done. We are not using AI to do less. We are using it to do what was never possible before.

About Chainalysis