Director - Procurement

Navan is seeking a high-energy, hands-on Director of Procurement to lead, optimize, and scale our procurement organization. Serving as a strategic partner and trusted advisor to executive leadership, you will oversee enterprise spend—with a focus on Marketing, Professional Services (Consulting, Legal, Contingent Labor), and GTM, while driving cost optimization and operational excellence across the organization.

What You’ll Do:

• End-to-End Ownership: Act as a trusted advisor on purchasing strategy, drive cost reduction, build cross-functional alignment, and maintain spend transparency for executive leadership.
• Complex Vendor Negotiations: Drive commercial and contractual negotiations across external suppliers. Partner closely with internal stakeholders, Legal, GRC, and FP&A to maximize value, optimize total cost, and mitigate risk.
• Category Strategy: Align with executive leadership to develop and execute comprehensive category strategies across Enterprise functions, GTM, Marketing, and Professional Services.
• Operational Excellence & Workflow Rebuilding: Rebuild, streamline, and optimize end-to-end procurement workflows and contract management processes within Zip to fix operational bottlenecks and scale efficiently
• Team Leadership & Development: Lead, mentor, and scale a team of procurement professionals. Set operational benchmarks and empower the team to deliver strategic sourcing value across all business units.

What We’re Looking For:

• Experience: 8–10+ years of progressive strategic sourcing and procurement experience, specifically managing Enterprise technology spend, Professional Services, and Marketing. Prior experience in a fast-paced technology or fintech environment is preferred.
• Education: Bachelor’s degree in Business, Supply Chain, Finance, or a related field.
• Procurement SME: Deep subject matter expertise across core procurement fundamentals, P2P architecture, and contract negotiations (must be able to operate autonomously from day one).
• Hands-On Technical Proficiency: Demonstrated expertise configuring, troubleshooting, or rebuilding procurement and contract workflows in Zip or similar P2P platforms.
• Negotiation & Stakeholder Mastery: Possesses an aggressive negotiator mindset combined with the emotional intelligence to navigate complex internal stakeholder dynamics.
• Leadership Style: Proven ability as a "player-coach" who can pivot seamlessly between executive-level strategy and hands-on tactical execution.