Purchasing Manager

Location

Sunnyvale, California, USA

Employment Type

Full time

Department

Finance

Compensation

• Base Salary: $150,400 – $195,500 USD YEAR

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About the Position

We build the embodied intelligence that moves real vehicles safely, and the ecosystem a billion machines will run on in the future. Very few people in AI can say this. Every role here, whatever the team, plugs into that.

Here’s what this particular role covers.

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About our Purchasing Team

Wayve’s Purchasing team helps the business scale by ensuring we have the right suppliers, commercial agreements, and procurement processes in place to support our global operations.

As an Indirect Purchasing Manager, you’ll help shape how Wayve sources, manages, and optimizes indirect spend across areas including IT/SaaS, Marketing, People/HR, Facilities, and Security. You’ll work closely with teams across the business to identify the right suppliers, negotiate strong commercial terms, manage risk, and ensure our supplier relationships continue to deliver value as Wayve grows.

This is an opportunity to have a direct impact on how we build a scalable, efficient, and commercially strong procurement function in a fast-moving global environment.

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Your Day-to-Day

You’ll own procurement activities across a broad range of indirect categories, partnering with internal stakeholders to understand their requirements and develop sourcing strategies that balance cost, quality, service, and risk.

You’ll manage the end-to-end supplier and contract lifecycle - from identifying and evaluating suppliers through negotiation, contracting, onboarding, performance management, renewal, and escalation.

You’ll work closely with Legal, Finance, HR/People, IT, Security, Facilities, and Marketing to ensure purchasing decisions align with business priorities and company policies. You’ll also help improve procurement processes, strengthen supplier governance, and use spend and performance data to identify opportunities for savings and greater efficiency.

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What You’ll Be Working On

• Developing and executing indirect procurement and sourcing strategies aligned with business priorities and cost-efficiency targets.
• Managing sourcing activities across categories including IT/SaaS, Marketing, People/HR services, Facilities, Security, and other corporate services.
• Leading supplier identification, evaluation, competitive sourcing, and commercial negotiations.
• Owning supplier contracts from initial negotiation and drafting through execution, renewal, and ongoing compliance management.
• Negotiating and managing commercial agreements including MSAs, SOWs, NDAs, order forms, and supplier terms, in partnership with Legal.
• Building and maintaining strong relationships with global suppliers and monitoring performance, service quality, risk, and compliance.
• Managing contract renewals and identifying opportunities to improve commercial terms, consolidate suppliers, or reduce unnecessary spend.
• Acting as the key point of contact between suppliers and internal stakeholders for commercial issues, escalations, and performance concerns.
• Analyzing spend data, supplier KPIs, market trends, and commercial benchmarks to support sourcing decisions.
• Supporting budget planning and forecasting across indirect spend categories.
• Implementing and improving procurement best practices, including supplier scorecards, spend tracking, contract lifecycle management, and governance.
• Ensuring procurement activities comply with internal policies, ethical sourcing standards, and risk-management requirements.

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Requirements

• 5+ years of experience in procurement, strategic sourcing, supplier management, or a related purchasing role.
• Experience managing indirect spend categories, ideally including IT/SaaS, Marketing, Facilities, People/HR services, Security, or other corporate services.
• Strong end-to-end supplier contract management experience, including negotiation, contract review, execution, renewals, and ongoing vendor management.
• Understanding of global procurement practices, supplier governance, compliance, and third-party risk management.
• Experience partnering closely with Legal, Finance, HR, IT, Security, and other business stakeholders in a matrixed or global organization.
• Confident commercial negotiator who can balance cost, quality, business requirements, and supplier risk.
• Strong communication and stakeholder-management skills and comfortable influencing across different functions and levels of seniority.
• Analytical and comfortable using spend data, supplier performance metrics, benchmarks, and KPIs to make informed decisions.
• Highly organized and able to manage multiple sourcing initiatives, contracts, renewals, and supplier relationships at the same time.
• Comfortable operating in a fast-paced, dynamic environment where priorities can change quickly.
• Experience with procurement or contract-management platforms such as SAP Ariba, Coupa, Ivalua, Oracle Procurement Cloud, or similar tools would be beneficial.

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We Offer

• Competitive salary
• Hybrid working policy
• Relocation support and visa sponsorship where applicable
• Learning and development budgets with support for training, conferences, and growth
• Comprehensive benefits including health insurance, dental, enhanced maternity and paternity leave, retirement or pension where applicable, access to therapists, wellbeing partnerships, team socials, and more

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About the Company

🚀 Wayve is building the leading AI platform for autonomous driving. We are pioneering an end-to-end AI approach that enables vehicles to learn directly from real-world experience, developing the ability to adapt, generalize, and improve at scale. Instead of relying on hand-coded rules or pre-mapped environments, our AI Driver learns to drive by understanding the world around it. The result is technology that navigates complex urban environments with intelligence, precision, and natural flow, unlocking meaningful advances in both safety and efficiency. We believe autonomy represents a once-in-a-generation transformation in how people and goods move, comparable to the shift from horses to cars, and from human-driven vehicles to intelligent machines.

Our ambition is to make autonomy universal. Wayve’s mapless and hardware-agnostic AI platform integrates with global OEM partners, enabling continuous software evolution and unlocking advanced levels of automation from L2 plus through to L4 as our core AI model scales. In a race increasingly defined by intelligence and real-world learning, Wayve is taking a distinct approach, building a generalizable driving intelligence that can power any vehicle, anywhere. By combining embodied AI with scalable deployment, we are creating technology that can be shaped to each OEM brand and driver experience, accelerating the transition to a safer, more intelligent future of mobility.

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The Interview Process

Our process is clear and respectful of your time:

• Initial call / recruiter screen
• Competency Interviews
• Deep-dive technical interviews
• Final interview: mission & values alignment

We’ll always explain the format and work around your availability.

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Commitment to Diversity

At Wayve, we're committed to creating a diverse, fair, and respectful culture that is inclusive of everyone based on their unique skills and perspectives, and regardless of sex, race, religion or belief, ethnic or national origin, disability, age, citizenship, marital, domestic, or civil partnership status, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, pregnancy or related condition (including breastfeeding) or any other basis as protected by applicable law.

For more information, visit Careers at Wayve. To learn more about what drives us, visit Values at Wayve.

DISCLAIMER: We will not ask about marriage or pregnancy, care responsibilities, or disabilities in any of our job adverts or interviews. However, we do look to capture information about care responsibilities and disabilities among other diversity information as part of an optional DEI Monitoring form to help us identify areas of improvement in our hiring process and ensure that the process is inclusive and non-discriminatory.

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Compensation Range: $150,400 - $195,500