Senior Contracts Manager

About Hadrian Hadrian is a nonprofit dedicated to ensuring that civilization can withstand and recover from severe biological crises, including AI-enabled pandemics. Hadrian models severe biological crisis scenarios and then delivers the capabilities needed to withstand them, including crisis preparedness and response infrastructure, and highly effective protective equipment, centered on respiratory protection. Hadrian defends all the systems civilization depends on, serving every level of society, including states, industries, organizations, and individuals. Hadrian is rapidly building the organization required to deliver this strategy. It has assembled a highly experienced team, is supported by leading experts and a strong ecosystem of partners, has secured substantial funding, and is finalizing the build-out of a cutting-edge R&D facility. If you want to help solve one of humanity’s greatest problems, work alongside capable and committed colleagues, and grow quickly, Hadrian may be right for you. About Your Team and Role Our Operations function provides the support structure for the organization, spanning people, finance, accounting, legal, IT, AI, and general business operations. These teams manage Hadrian’s resources, systems, and compliance so the rest of Hadrian can move quickly and responsibly. To deliver protective equipment and crisis-response infrastructure at scale, we work with a network of external partners: consultants and technical advisors, suppliers, contract manufacturers, testing laboratories, research partners, and professional services firms. These relationships are essential to achieving our mission. You will own contracts and commercial relationships with external partners end-to-end, from negotiation and redlining through administration and renewals. You will shape Hadrian's contracting standards and terms as our partner network grows, building the contracting framework for the organization. What You Will Own Negotiation and drafting You will own negotiating, redlining, and closing the majority of Hadrian's agreements, including consultant agreements, master services agreements and statements of work, supplier and manufacturing contracts, non-disclosure agreements, and research collaboration agreements.You will engage and manage outside counsel to budget when a matter warrants additional legal support.You will build and maintain our legal templates, standard positions, fallback language, and negotiation playbooks, so recurring terms are resolved consistently and efficiently. Contract administration and compliance You will run the contract lifecycle from intake and approval through execution, repository, and closeout, with workflows and tooling that keep the status of every agreement visible.You will maintain our contract record as the single source of truth on every agreement, complete, accurately tagged, and searchable.You will stay ahead of renewals, expirations, and notice windows, and ensure we meet our confidentiality, data protection, insurance, and reporting commitments. Vendor management You will manage the commercial side of vendor relationships, running competitive selection and pricing negotiations.You will own vendor onboarding and ongoing performance management, including supplier consolidation and the decision to renew, renegotiate, or exit at each term end.You will align contracting with purchasing, spend approval, and payment, so every commitment we sign is visible to Finance and reflected in our budgets. Who You Are Must have You have negotiated and redlined a broad range of commercial agreements and can take a contract from first draft to signature with limited supervision.You understand where risks reside in an agreement, including indemnification, liability caps, intellectual property, confidentiality, data protection, and termination, and you can explain the tradeoffs in plain language.You have worked closely with internal and external lawyers and can balance, proportionate to the risk and value at stake, what to resolve yourself as opposed to investing legal spend for additional support.You have built or substantially improved contract administration tools: templates, intake and approval routing processes, contract records, obligation tracking, and renewal management.You can balance concurrent matters and deadlines without losing track of obligations and can be relied on to know the status of any agreement and move contracts forward at the speed colleagues need.You have managed supplier relationships commercially, including competitive selection, pricing negotiation, and performance management through to renewal or exit.You are direct and constructive with counterparties, building and maintaining win-win partnerships where possible.You demonstrate Hadrian’s values, described on the Careers page of the website Nice to have You have experience contracting in life sciences, biotechnology, medical devices, or manufacturing.You use AI tools frequently, adopt new ones readily, and have the discipline to verify their outputs.You have worked with government, philanthropic, or grant-funded agreements, including flow-down and reporting obligations.You have experience selecting or implementing a contract lifecycle management system.You have a law degree, paralegal qualification, or contract management certification. We assess candidates on demonstrated capability, not on whether they check every box. If you meet most of what we've described and believe you could do this work, we encourage you to apply, even if your background doesn't match the list exactly. Strong candidates often underestimate their fit, and we would rather hear from you than have you rule yourself out. Your Salary and Benefits The expected base salary range for this position is $155,000 to $185,000 per year. Actual base pay will be determined based on factors such as relevant experience, education, skills, and geographic location.In addition to base pay, this role is eligible for a comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401(k) plan with company match and flexible PTO. Equal Opportunity Employer Hadrian is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are committed to providing equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or expression, national origin, age, marital status, medical condition, genetic information, reproductive health decision-making, disability, military and veteran status, or any other legally protected characteristic. California Applicants Under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), we collect personal information from applicants solely for recruitment purposes and do not sell applicant data.