Procurement Lead

ABOUT BASETEN Baseten powers mission-critical inference for the world's most dynamic AI companies, like Cursor, Notion, OpenEvidence, Abridge, Clay, Gamma and Writer. By uniting applied AI research, flexible infrastructure, and seamless developer tooling, we enable companies operating at the frontier of AI to bring cutting-edge models into production. We're growing quickly and recently raised our $1.5B Series F https://www.baseten.co/blog/announcing-our-series-f/, led by Altimeter Capital, Conviction Partners, and Spark Capital. Join us and help build the platform engineers turn to to ship AI products. THE ROLE We're looking for a Procurement Lead to build Baseten's procurement function from the ground up. This is a foundational, high-ownership role for someone who wants to define how a company runs procurement, not inherit an existing process. As the company scales across engineering, GTM, and corporate functions, we need to build purchasing workflows and vendor relationships. This is a rare, critical-moment hire: you'll set the leading-practice processes, systems, and policies that the company runs on as it continues to grow, with the mandate and dedicated focus to build something built to scale. This role exists to make procurement a source of leverage for the business, not friction. Your goal is to build scalable process, take on vendor management and RFP work that today sits informally with individual teams, and free up business owners' time and capacity, all while building the guardrails the company needs as it grows. You'll partner closely with Finance, Legal, Security, Compliance, IT, and business owners across the company, and you'll be judged on whether teams feel supported and unblocked, not slowed down. RESPONSIBILITIES Procurement Strategy and Process - Design and implement Baseten's first company-wide procurement process, approval routing, and other workflows - Establish procurement policies (spend thresholds, approval authority, competitive bidding requirements) tailored to a high-growth business - Design processes that scale with the business without adding friction or slowing down how teams buy - Define procurement's operating model and roadmap as the function and team scale Systems and Tooling - Build out procurement workflows within our existing P2P platform, including requisition, approval, and purchase order processes - Build reporting and visibility into company-wide spend by category, vendor, and department Vendor Management and Sourcing - Own vendor onboarding, due diligence, and risk assessment across the company's vendor base, partnering with Security, Compliance, and Legal on vendor risk reviews - Lead or support strategic sourcing, RFPs, and contract negotiations on behalf of business owners, freeing up their time and capacity - Build a vendor management framework covering performance, risk, and renewals Cross-Functional Partnership - Partner with Legal, Security, Compliance, IT, and business owners across the company to understand purchasing needs and build workflows that fit how each team actually operates - Act as a trusted advisor and extension of business teams on sourcing strategy, RFPs, and vendor selection, not a gatekeeper that slows deals down Compliance and Controls - Establish procurement controls that support audit readiness, SOX compliance, and security and data privacy requirements as the company matures, in partnership with Legal, Security, and Compliance REQUIREMENTS - 8+ years of progressive procurement experience, including experience building or significantly maturing a procurement function at a high-growth technology company - Proven experience designing procurement processes, policies, and systems from the ground up - Experience running RFPs and vendor selection processes on behalf of business stakeholders - Experience with strategic sourcing and vendor contract negotiation across multiple spend categories - Experience partnering with Security, Compliance, and Legal on vendor r