Head of Procurement

Interview Plan:

Benefits

• Competitive salary and equity.
• 10-year exercise window for stock options. You shouldn’t feel pressure to purchase stock options if you leave Ashby- do it when you feel financially comfortable.
• Unlimited PTO with four weeks recommended per year. Expect “Vacation?” in our one-on-one agenda until you start taking it 😅.
• Twelve weeks of fully paid family leave in the US. We plan to expand this to employees in other countries as situations arise.
• Generous equipment, software, and office furniture budget. Get what you need to be happy and productive!
• $100/month education budget with more expensive items (like conferences) covered with manager approval.
• If you’re in the US, top-notch health insurance for you and your dependents with all premiums covered by us.
• Ashby’s success hinges on hiring great people and creating an environment where we can be happy, feel challenged, and do our best work. We’re being deliberate about building that environment from the ground up. I hope that excites you enough to apply.
• We're in the talent acquisition software business. We run the end-to-end hiring process through our own platform, and ensure a level playing field for all candidates. Reaching out to hiring managers or recruiters directly won't improve your odds of success. Please focus your energy on the quality of your application.
• Ashby provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetics, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. We are committed to a diverse and inclusive workforce and welcome people from all backgrounds, experiences, perspectives, and abilities.
• Ashby is committed to a fair and transparent hiring process. We confirm that this advertisement is for an active, existing vacancy within our organization. Please be advised that we may use artificial intelligence-driven tools to assist our recruitment team in screening, assessing, and selecting candidates for this position.

Qualifications

• You have significant experience, primarily in procurement or vendor management with a high-growth tech environment. You’ve done this before, not just procurement, but procurement at a company that was really moving quickly.
• You think in systems. You’re as excited about designing a fast and efficient procurement process as you are about negotiating a critical contract.
• You have a bias towards speed and simplicity. You’re allergic to processes that slow everyone down to guard against a small number of edge cases.
• You’re comfortable with ambiguity and building the playbooks on your own. While we have a process and some structure in place, there is a lot of greenfield and you’ll need the confidence and perspective to build for the future.
• You take pride in getting the economics right on a deal but not at the risk of ruining an important vendor relationship.
• You have strong opinions on what good looks like. Whether it’s a review-routing framework or a vendor evaluation methodology, your views are rooted in principled thinking.
• You expect a mature, established process to step into. What exists today needs real tuning and reshaping, not just light maintenance. If you’d rather inherit a finished system than rebuild one, this won’t be the right fit.
• You treat negotiation as a win-at-all-costs game. Getting good economics matters, but not by squeezing a vendor so hard that the relationship is soured. Being on the other side of this isn’t pleasant and it’s important you are aligned with this. If your instinct is to optimize for the deal over the relationship, you’ll create problems that we’re trying to prevent.
• You want to be the approver for every purchase. If your instinct is to insert yourself into every buying decision rather than equip the company to move fast within the right guardrails, you’ll be fighting the design of this role.
• You need close oversight to know what to prioritize. You’ll be expected to identify which vendor relationships, contract negotiations, and process gaps deserve more attention.
• Your default is to treat every buying decision with the same level of scrutiny. If you can’t tell the difference between a contract that deserves a thorough review and one that should be automatic, you’ll either slow the business down or miss the risks that matter.
• You need a team to feel effective. This is an IC role for now and likely for a long time.
• 30 min with Recruiting
• 45 min Hiring Manager Interview with Shane
• Take-home Assignment
• 45 min Take-Home Debrief with Shane
• Final Round (2.5 hours)