Procurement Lead

About the role

Parallel is a web infrastructure company whose products are used by leading businesses in sales, marketing, insurance, and coding to build best-in-class AI agents with flexible and powerful programmatic access to the web. The company has raised $230 million from Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia, Index Ventures, Spark Capital, Khosla Ventures, First Round, and Terrain, is currently valued at $2 billion, and is forming a world-class team of engineers, designers, marketers, sellers, researchers, and operational experts.

As the first procurement lead, you will build and lead Parallel's Procurement function as the company scales. You will lead compute negotiations — one of the largest cost centers — structuring commitments with cloud and infrastructure providers that keep pace with fast, hard-to-forecast growth. You will own vendor procurement across software, services, and infrastructure, from intake to signature. You will also own content and data partnership payouts that are key to enhancing product performance. You will partner closely with finance, accounting, legal, and engineering, and help hire the team as the function grows.

Responsibilities

• Lead compute negotiations with cloud and infrastructure providers, structuring commitments that balance cost, flexibility, and growth
• Own end-to-end vendor procurement across software, services, and infrastructure — from intake through contract signature
• Manage content and data partnership payouts that enhance product performance
• Partner with finance, accounting, legal, and engineering teams to ensure clean accounting and smooth operations
• Build and scale the procurement function, including hiring as the team grows
• Use AI tools to accelerate procurement workflows with a lean team
• Enable teams to forecast and buy more easily by engaging early in the process

Requirements

• Have been the first procurement lead at a high-growth tech company and built the function from scratch
• Personally negotiated large, complex deals across cloud, AI, data, and software with demonstrable results
• Deep understanding of compute economics: reserved vs. on-demand, commit sizing, and flexibility levers
• Owned the full procurement lifecycle from request through contract to payment, ensuring accounting integrity
• Leverage AI tools to move faster with a lean team
• Act as a strategic partner who makes forecasting and buying easier for internal stakeholders

Culture & Values

The team works fully in-person between the Palo Alto headquarters and San Francisco office. Parallel is a flat, talent-dense organization dedicated to solving technical and creative problems. The company seeks individuals who share a passion for applying science, creativity, and consistency to big, complex problems with equally big outcomes.

• Own customer impact: It's on us to ensure real-world outcomes for our customers
• Obsess over craft: Perfect every detail because quality compounds
• Accelerate change: Ship fast, adapt faster, and move frontier ideas into production
• Create win-wins: Creatively turn trade-offs into upside
• Make high-conviction bets: Try and fail. But succeed an unfair amount

Benefits

• Generous equity
• Visa sponsorships
• 401K plans
• Daily lunch & office snacks
• Dinner at the office
• Unlimited vacation
• Caltrain pass reimbursement

Pay

Compensation Range: $250K - $350K