Data Management & Strategy - Manager Jobs in Kentucky

Director of Strategic Procurement will lead and mature our vendor sourcing function at a critical stage of company growth. This is a high-visibility, in-office leadership role based in Louisville, KY, responsible for transforming how Wasteology sources, prices, and manages its national subcontractor network of approximately 2,500 partners across the US and Canada.

The Director will lead a team of Sourcing Specialists and report directly to the Chief Operating Officer. The role is accountable for leveraging Wasteology's existing volume to negotiate competitive rates, building data-driven benchmarking capabilities, implementing a formal Vendor Scorecard program, and creating the procurement infrastructure that directly supports the company's ability to win and retain large, complex national accounts.

The ideal candidate brings a demonstrated track record of building strategic sourcing programs from the ground up, strong data and analytics capability, and the leadership discipline to drive cost and performance outcomes at scale. This role sits at the intersection of operational excellence, commercial competitiveness, and company growth.

Team Leadership and Development

• Lead, mentor, and develop a team of Sourcing Specialists, setting clear performance expectations and fostering a culture of accountability and continuous improvement.
• Establish team processes, workflows, and sourcing playbooks that build organizational capability and scale with company growth.
• Conduct regular performance reviews, provide coaching, and identify professional development opportunities for direct reports.
• Serve as an escalation point and strategic resource for the sourcing team across complex vendor negotiations and performance issues.

Strategic Sourcing and Rate Competitiveness

• Design and execute competitive bidding cycles across Wasteology's national subcontractor network, replacing ad hoc pricing with structured sourcing disciplines.
• Leverage Wasteology's existing volume and network growth to negotiate preferred rate structures, passing competitive pricing advantage directly to clients and improving company margin.
• Develop tiered vendor programs that reward performance and volume commitment, creating mutual incentive for subcontractors to grow with Wasteology.
• Partner with Sales and Operations to translate client pricing targets into procurement strategies that make those targets achievable.

Data Benchmarking and Market Intelligence

• Build and maintain a rate benchmarking database across service types, geographies, and market segments to inform pricing decisions and identify sourcing opportunities.
• Develop market intelligence infrastructure that allows Wasteology to enter new geographies or service categories with data-backed rate expectations rather than reactive vendor selection.
• Use Wasteology's Waste Data Platform and Power BI environment to surface procurement analytics for leadership and client-facing reporting.
• Apply AI-driven tools and millions of data points across the portfolio to automatically identify cost saving opportunities, benchmark subcontractor rates against actual market performance, and flag overage, contamination, and billing anomalies before they reach client invoices.

Vendor Performance Evaluation and Total Relationship Value

• Design and implement a formal Vendor Scorecard program measuring each subcontractor across billing accuracy, invoice timeliness, customer service responsiveness, on-time service delivery, and overall partnership quality.
• Quantify the financial impact of vendor behavior outside of rate, including costs associated with billing errors, service failures, and delayed responses that create downstream labor and client satisfaction exposure.
• Use scorecard data to inform tiering decisions, renewal terms, and volume allocation so that the best-performing vendors earn more of Wasteology's business while underperformers are held accountable or replaced.
• Partner with Operations and Customer Service to ensure scorecard inputs reflect real-world performance data rather than self-reported metrics.
• Present vendor performance trends to leadership on a regular cadence, connecting behavioral patterns to their measurable financial impact on the organization.

Vendor Network Development and Compliance

• Standardize vendor onboarding, contracting, and renewal processes to reduce risk exposure and support Wasteology's vendor compliance function.
• Develop a preferred vendor framework that tiers subcontractors by service type, geography, capacity, and performance, enabling faster vendor selection during new business implementation.
• Partner with Vendor Compliance to ensure procurement standards reinforce compliance requirements from the front end of each vendor relationship.

RFP and Competitive Bid Support

• Serve as a named procurement resource in large RFP responses, providing credibility, documented sourcing methodology, and confidence to enterprise buyers evaluating Wasteology's subcontractor management capability.
• Participate in supplier briefings and client presentations where procurement strategy is a component of the evaluation.
• Support pricing model development during RFP responses by providing current market rates, benchmarks, and volume-based cost projections.

M&A and Growth Integration

• Lead subcontractor network rationalization during acquisition integration, identifying overlap, consolidating vendors, and capturing cost synergies.
• Build procurement infrastructure that scales with Wasteology's growth, including playbooks, contract templates, and sourcing tools.

Education

• Bachelor's degree in Business, Supply Chain Management, Finance, Operations, or a related field required.
• MBA or relevant advanced degree preferred but not required.
• CPSM, CSCP, or equivalent professional procurement certification is a plus.

Experience

• 8 or more years of progressive procurement, strategic sourcing, or vendor management experience, with at least 3 years in a leadership role managing a team.
• Demonstrated track record of building or transforming a sourcing function, not simply managing within an established one.
• Experience leveraging spend volume across a large vendor or subcontractor network to drive measurable rate improvement.
• Background in data analysis and benchmarking as a core sourcing tool, with demonstrated comfort in Power BI, Excel modeling, and spend analytics platforms.
• Experience designing or operating vendor performance programs, scorecards, or supplier relationship management frameworks.
• Experience supporting RFP processes or enterprise sales cycles in a sourcing or supply chain capacity is strongly preferred.
• Background in managed services, facilities services, waste management, logistics, or a similarly distributed subcontractor-dependent business model is a strong plus.

Core Competencies

• Analytical and data-driven. Leads with numbers before opinions and builds recommendations on verified data.
• Commercially oriented. Understands that procurement outcomes directly affect competitive win rate, margin, and client satisfaction.
• Collaborative and credible. Builds productive relationships across operations, sales, finance, and technology without needing to own everything.
• People leader. Develops team capability, sets clear expectations, and holds direct reports accountable with care and respect.
• Structured and disciplined. Builds processes and systems that outlast individual vendor relationships.
• Direct communicator. Presents complex sourcing strategy to a C-suite and an operations manager with equal clarity.