Head of Procurement

We are rebuilding biotech for the AI era.

When a breakthrough is delayed, the world waits. Getting a molecule from discovery to patients, or a crop from lab to field, involves thousands of slow, manual, disconnected steps. AI has the potential to change this, compressing decades of R&D work into years. But that only happens when clean, structured scientific data and AI are built into how science gets done.

Benchling is the AI platform for biotech R&D. Scientists use Benchling to design experiments, capture structured data, and run AI agents and models directly in their workflows. Over 200,000 scientists around the world trust Benchling to power their most important work, from academic labs to Sanofi, Moderna, and more than half of the world's top 50 biopharma.

We’re building an AI scientist for our customers. We can’t do that if we haven’t built the muscle ourselves. AI fluency is the foundation we build on; it's core to how we work, and we're committed to helping every new hire integrate it into their day-to-day. As part of our interview process, you'll complete a brief AI-focused exercise or discussion so we can understand how you think about and use AI to drive impact in your role. Feel free to reference any tools, platforms, or workflows you use today.

ROLE OVERVIEW

Benchling is looking for a Head of Procurement to lead how we buy. You'll be a senior individual contributor reporting to the Chief Accounting Officer with broad influence across and responsibility for our third-party spend in cloud infrastructure, enterprise SaaS, and professional services, and over our travel and expense program.

Our procurement function has earned real trust across the business. Teams don't just invite procurement into their deals for compliance, but because it makes their deals better. You'll protect and build on that trust. You'll be a partner to the business: someone who understands what each team is trying to achieve, looks objectively through a broader company-wide lens, finds the best overall value for Benchling, and makes buying easier while improving how it's controlled.

You'll lead negotiations of our largest and most strategic contracts, build coverage to address the tail, and be our expert on what a well-designed procure-to-pay process looks like, guiding our systems and accounting partners toward it. You'll work closely with Engineering, IT, Security, Marketing, Legal, Strategic Finance, Corporate Development, and Accounting, running a regular rhythm that gets to decisions. You'll adjust how involved you are to what each team needs, from running a deal end to end to coaching an experienced owner.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Sourcing and negotiation, together with strategic initiatives, make up roughly 65–70% of your time. Process excellence makes up the remaining 30–35%.

Sourcing, negotiation, and spend management

• Lead vendor negotiation and renewals for our largest and most strategic agreements, including our cloud infrastructure and enterprise SaaS providers.

• Structure deals that hold up over time, including usage-based and committed-spend pricing, multi-year terms, price protections, and exit and data portability rights.

• Enhance our renewal management process, building a renewal strategy with business owners and Strategic Finance, so renewal pricing never comes as a surprise.

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