If you’re passionate about building a better future for individuals, communities, and our country—and you’re committed to working hard to play your part in building that future—consider WGU as the next step in your career.

Driven by a mission to expand access to higher education through online, competency-based degree programs, WGU is also committed to being a great place to work for a diverse workforce of student-focused professionals. The university has pioneered a new way to learn in the 21st century, one that has received praise from academic, industry, government, and media leaders. Whatever your role, working for WGU gives you a part to play in helping students graduate, creating a better tomorrow for themselves and their families.

About the Role:

The Vendor Relationship Manager will build and maintain positive relationships with third party vendors to monitor and manage vendor performance as well as collaborate with internal stakeholders to drive and deliver upon strategic sourcing and transformation plans. This role will influence change in a highly matrixed organization while ensuring timelines and objectives of departmental strategies and initiatives are met. This role will identify trends to drive informed decision making and address challenges and recommend innovative solutions at the account and national levels. This role will also be tasked with developing and executing managed service agreements.

Location: This position requires you to work in office 3-4 days per week at the WGU headquarters 4001 South 700 East Salt Lake City, UT 84107.

Travel: This position will require occasional travel.

What You’ll Do:

• Provide vendor management lifecycle oversight of critical and complex third-party relationships.
• Establish clear expectations, define KPIs, and regularly evaluate vendor performance against these benchmarks.
• Track and report vendor deliverables and service level agreements, ensure accountability, mitigate potential risks, and uphold the organization’s standards of quality.
• Perform as a functional bridge amongst external vendors and internal stakeholders, collaborating across the organization to coordinator the planning and execution of short and long-term plans.
• Create, document, and facilitate internal change management processes and routines to introduce and drive adherence to vendor management routines.
• Proactively assess and analyze vendor operations to identify any potential risks that may impact the organization’s performance, business continuity, brand and reputation, and security.
• Fosters partnerships with vendors, the broader Procurement team members, and internal business stakeholders to foster collaboration and identify and recommend improvement opportunities.
• Ensures compliance with policies and procedures pertaining to vendor relations by Academic Programs employees.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities You’ll Need to be Successful:

• Exceptional relationship management skills and ability to influence decisions at executive leadership levels.
• Demonstrated ability to lead strategic and organizational change delivering intended results and outcomes.
• Strong executive-level communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to effectively navigate and mediate conflict and foster direct dialog with vendors, external clients, employees, account partners, and internal business teams.
• Strong analytical skillset and critical thinking.
• Ability to recognize and execute on opportunities to leverage resources for better outcomes.
• Excellent organizational and project management skills, including the ability to effectively handle multiple tasks and pay attention to detail.
• Sound judgement and decision-making skills in sometimes charged high stakes environments.
• Deals comfortably with the uncertainty of change

Minimum Requirements:

• Bachelor’s Degree required.
• 8 or more years managing key, complex third-party vendor relationships

Preferred Requirements:

• Master’s Degree preferred

Why Join WGU?

• You will be part of a growing, diverse, inclusive workforce, committed to creating pathways to a better life for our students by expanding access to education for everyone.
• We provide comprehensive dental, vision, and medical benefits, with paid time off, parental leave, and inclusive family forming benefits.
• We offer generous retirement and HSA company contributions.
• You will also have opportunity for continuous learning! Employees and their families receive discounted undergraduate and graduate WGU tuition.

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The salary range for this position takes into account the wide range of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions including but not limited to skill sets; experience and training; licensure and certifications; and other business and organizational needs.

At WGU, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range for their position, and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case. A reasonable estimate of the current range is:

Pay Range: $80,300.00 - $120,400.00WGU will accept applications for this position until 12:00 AM ET, 09/12/2024

How to apply: apply online

Full-time Regular Positions (FT classification, standard working hours = 40)

This is a full-time, regular position that is eligible for bonuses; medical, dental, vision, telehealth and mental healthcare; health savings account and flexible spending account; basic and voluntary life insurance; disability coverage; accident, critical illness and hospital indemnity supplemental coverages; legal and identity theft coverage; retirement savings plan; wellbeing program; discounted WGU tuition; and flexible paid time off for rest and relaxation with no need for accrual, flexible paid sick time with no need for accrual, 11 paid holidays, and other paid leaves, including up to 12 weeks of parental leave.

The University is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or protected veteran status.