Lead Vendor Management Office (VMO) Analyst

Versant News Operations Support team is looking for a Lead Vendor Management Office (VMO) Analyst. The candidate will lead vendor governance, contract lifecycle management, performance oversight, risk management, and cost optimization across technology, software, SaaS, cloud, infrastructure, and managed-service vendors that support our web, application, API, OTT, and mobile services. This role is a senior-level position for someone with deep hands-on experience in vendor management, contract governance, SLA oversight, financial tracking, and risk and compliance. The Lead VMO Analyst will partner closely with Legal, Finance, Sourcing and Procurement, Cyber Security, Privacy, and Risk teams to ensure every vendor engagement complies with contractual, financial, regulatory, and policy requirements, and will work hand-in-hand with Engineering and Infrastructure teams during vendor onboarding to validate compliance with security policies, architecture standards, SLAs, and operational readiness criteria. The role also mentors junior VMO analysts and drives the maturity of the vendor management practice across the organization.

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end vendor lifecycle management for technology and managed-service vendors, including intake, onboarding, performance oversight, renewals, escalations, and offboarding across the Versant News portfolio.
• Partner with Legal to ensure all vendor contracts, MSAs, SOWs, order forms, amendments, NDAs, and DPAs comply with corporate legal standards, regulatory requirements, and approved contractual language, and serve as the operational owner of contract obligations once executed.
• Partner with Finance on budget alignment, purchase order governance, invoice validation, accruals, charge-backs, and total cost of ownership, ensuring every vendor engagement complies with financial controls, approval thresholds, and accounting policies.
• Partner with Sourcing and Procurement on category strategy, RFx processes, competitive bids, supplier selection, and negotiations, ensuring adherence to procurement policy, delegation of authority, and preferred-vendor frameworks. 
• Partner with Cyber Security, Privacy, and Risk teams on third-party risk assessments covering security, privacy, regulatory, business continuity, and concentration risk, and ensure findings are remediated or formally accepted before contracts are signed or renewed.
• Lead vendor onboarding in close partnership with Engineering and Infrastructure teams, ensuring new vendors meet security policy requirements, architecture and integration standards, data handling and access control requirements, SLA commitments, and operational readiness criteria before they are approved for production use.
• Define, track, and report on vendor performance through SLAs, KPIs, scorecards, and quarterly business reviews, and drive corrective action plans when vendors do not meet contractual or operational commitments.
• Lead contract negotiations and renewals for high-value and strategic agreements in partnership with Sourcing and Legal, identifying cost-savings, risk-reduction, and value-creation opportunities across software, SaaS, cloud, infrastructure, and professional services.
• Maintain an accurate, current vendor inventory, contract repository, and obligation register, and produce executive-level reporting on spend, risk posture, compliance status, renewal pipeline, and savings realized.
• Establish and continuously improve VMO processes, policies, playbooks, templates, and tooling, embedding governance and compliance checkpoints into intake, sourcing, contracting, onboarding, and renewal workflows.
• Lead vendor escalations and incident response coordination with vendors during major production incidents, partnering with Engineering and SRE teams to ensure timely engagement, accountability, and post-incident review participation.
• Mentor and provide direction to junior VMO analysts and cross-functional partners, and act as a subject-matter expert for vendor management and vendor compliance questions across the organization.