Contract Manager / Contract Operations Manager

About This Role

Caring for contracts across their full lifecycle is the core of this critical role. The person will create visibility into contractual commitments, ensure active contract management, identify risks early, and use insights from existing contracts to improve new ones. The role will work across all types of contracts and partner closely with business, finance, legal, procurement, and other relevant teams.

Responsibilities

• Own the management of contracts from execution through renewal, amendment, expiry, or termination
• Maintain a clear view of contractual obligations, milestones, deliverables, dependencies, renewals, and key dates
• Establish processes and systems to ensure contracts are consistently tracked and managed
• Ensure relevant stakeholders understand and act on their contractual commitments
• Define and track metrics that help us understand contract performance and health
• Build visibility into areas such as contractual obligations, SLA performance, renewals, deviations, commercial commitments, and other relevant measures
• Develop regular reporting and dashboards for stakeholders and leadership
• Identify patterns and opportunities to improve contract performance
• Proactively identify contractual, commercial, operational, and compliance risks
• Establish mechanisms to flag upcoming risks, missed obligations, unfavorable terms, renewal exposure, or performance gaps before they become issues
• Work with relevant owners to drive resolution and escalate where necessary
• Maintain a clear view of key risks across the contract portfolio
• Bring learnings from existing contracts into the contracting process for new agreements
• Identify terms, commitments, SLAs, or operating models that have created challenges in practice
• Provide structured feedback to stakeholders involved in negotiating and signing new contracts
• Help develop standards, playbooks, templates, and guardrails based on real-world contract performance
• Establish a scalable contract-management operating model across the organization
• Define ownership, review cadences, escalation mechanisms, and governance for different contract types
• Improve contract data quality and ensure critical information is easily accessible
• Identify opportunities for automation and better tooling as the contract portfolio grows

Requirements

• Experience in contract management, contract operations, commercial operations, procurement, legal operations, or a related function
• Strong understanding of the end-to-end contract lifecycle
• Experience managing a portfolio of contracts rather than only negotiating or drafting individual agreements
• Strong analytical orientation and comfort defining and monitoring metrics
• Ability to identify risks and translate contractual language into practical business implications
• Strong stakeholder-management skills and the ability to work across multiple functions
• High attention to detail without losing sight of the broader commercial and operational picture
• Ability to build processes in an environment where the contract-management function may still be evolving

Important Details

• Success metrics: A reliable, centralized view of our contracts and contractual commitments; clear ownership and accountability for obligations and key milestones; early visibility into contractual risks rather than discovering them after they become problems; meaningful metrics on the health and performance of our contract portfolio; fewer missed renewals, obligations, milestones, and commercial opportunities; a strong feedback loop where lessons from existing contracts improve the terms and structure of future contracts
• Ultimately, success means moving from contracts as documents we sign and store to contracts as business commitments that we actively manage throughout their lifecycle