Procurement Operations Lead

We're excited to be partnering with a leading institution in the UAE that is building a digital-first, AI-enabled financial services organisation from the ground up. This is a unique opportunity to join at an early stage and help shape the people, operational, and service foundations of a business with significant institutional backing and long-term ambition. If you're passionate about HR operations, payroll excellence, and creating exceptional employee experiences, we'd love to hear from you.Role Purpose:Runs the procurement operations and vendor lifecycle management across all spend categories, spanning sourcing execution, supplier onboarding, contract administration, and vendor governance. Ensures suppliers are onboarded, governed, monitored, and remediated effectively from Day 1, working with the Tech and General Category Leads, who own business requirements and category strategies.Key responsibilities:Maintain a complete inventory of the bank's suppliers across technology, digital, operations, and general-spend categories, with clear ownership and criticality classifications.Run the sourcing process end-to-end, including RFP issuance, evaluation coordination, negotiation support, and contracting, using business requirements and evaluation input from the Tech and General Category Leads.Coordinate due diligence and risk-tiering for new and renewing suppliers, obtaining auditable inputs from Risk, Compliance, Information Security, Finance, Legal, and business stakeholders.Onboard appointed suppliers into operational, contract, purchase-order, and payment processes, ensuring complete documentation, correct delegations, accurate master data, and clear service handover.Operate supplier governance routines, including service reviews, scorecards, issue logs, escalation paths, and improvement plans proportionate to vendor criticality.Monitor supplier performance against SLAs and KPIs, drive corrective actions with service owners, and escalate persistent underperformance to the appropriate governance forum.Maintain vendor and outsourcing-register data, including materiality classifications, control requirements, contract end dates, regulatory notification needs, and exit plans.Coordinate periodic third-party risk reviews covering continuity, data protection, subcontracting, concentration risk, and remediation tracking.Manage contract administration, including approved change requests, renewals, extensions, terminations, requisitions, purchase orders, and invoice validation, using approved AI-enabled procurement and vendor-monitoring tooling.Required Skills & Experience: 8+ years in procurement operations, vendor management, or third-party risk management within banking or financial services, including senior leadership of a procurement operations team.Deep expertise in sourcing execution, supplier onboarding, due diligence, SLA management, contract administration, and structured vendor governance.Proven record building vendor lifecycle processes, outsourcing registers, performance scorecards, and third-party risk controls in a regulated environment.Strong knowledge of relevant CBUAE outsourcing expectations and applicable third-party risk, data-protection, and operational-resilience standards.Exposure to AI-enabled vendor monitoring, workflow automation, and advanced vendor performance and risk analytics.Qualifications & Certifications (Preferred)Bachelor’s degree in business, supply chain, or a related field preferred.Procurement or third-party risk certification (for example, CIPS or CTPRP) preferred.CBUAE Fit & Proper requirements and any applicable controlled-function eligibility criteria, where required.Ready to join us? Apply today and take the next step in your career.