Senior Vendor Governance Specialist

🏗 We're Hiring: Senior Vendor Governance Specialist
Location: United Arab Emirates (Remote)
Employment Type: Full-Time
Experience Level: Mid-Level to Senior
Work Arrangement: Fully Remote
About Us
We are a construction-focused organization committed to delivering complex projects through disciplined contract management, procurement governance, operational excellence, and collaborative project delivery. Our distributed teams collaborate across Project Management, Construction, Engineering, Procurement, Commercial, Legal, Finance, Human Resources, Design, Quality, HSE, Consultants, Contractors, Suppliers, Logistics, Administration, Information Technology, and Executive Leadership to strengthen vendor relationships, improve accountability, maintain procurement integrity, and ensure consistent service delivery across projects and business functions.
The Role
We are seeking an experienced Senior Vendor Governance Specialist to establish, maintain, and improve vendor governance frameworks, policies, controls, and performance management practices across the organization. The ideal candidate will bring strong expertise in vendor lifecycle management, procurement governance, third-party oversight, contract compliance, performance monitoring, risk management, and stakeholder coordination.
This role will focus on ensuring vendors are appropriately qualified, contractually aligned, operationally accountable, and compliant with organizational standards and applicable regulatory requirements. The Senior Vendor Governance Specialist will collaborate with procurement, commercial, legal, finance, project management, engineering, quality, HSE, information technology, and logistics teams to strengthen vendor oversight, improve service quality, mitigate third-party risks, and promote transparent and consistent vendor management practices in accordance with applicable United Arab Emirates laws and regulations.
Key Responsibilities
Develop, implement, and maintain vendor governance frameworks aligned with organizational objectives and procurement policies.
Establish standardized vendor management policies, procedures, control requirements, and operating guidelines.
Define governance principles covering vendor selection, onboarding, performance monitoring, contract management, periodic reviews, and offboarding.
Ensure vendor governance practices are consistently applied across departments, projects, business units, and procurement categories.
Establish clear roles, responsibilities, approval authorities, and accountability requirements for vendor-related activities.
Review existing vendor governance processes to identify control weaknesses, inconsistencies, duplication, and improvement opportunities.
Develop governance standards for vendor registration, qualification, evaluation, approval, and ongoing monitoring.
Ensure vendor onboarding processes include appropriate documentation, verification, due diligence, and authorization.
Coordinate with procurement teams to confirm vendors meet established qualification criteria before engagement.
Establish standardized vendor assessment criteria covering technical capability, financial stability, service quality, delivery reliability, and compliance.
Maintain vendor classification frameworks based on business criticality, contractual exposure, service complexity, and operational dependency.
Define enhanced governance requirements for critical vendors, high-risk suppliers, and strategically important service providers.
Monitor vendor compliance with contractual commitments, organizational policies, service standards, and agreed performance requirements.
Establish vendor performance scorecards, evaluation methodologies, and periodic review schedules.
Track vendor performance indicators, including delivery reliability, quality, responsiveness, cost effectiveness, and corrective action completion.
Analyze performance results to identify recurring deficiencies, emerging risks, and opportunities for improvement.
Coordinate vendor performance reviews with procurement, project managers, commercial teams, and relevant operational stakeholders.
Ensure vendor performance concerns are documented, assigned to responsible owners, and monitored through resolution.
Develop corrective action processes for vendors that fail to meet contractual or operational requirements.
Monitor remediation plans and verify that agreed corrective actions are completed effectively.
Escalate persistent underperformance, significant contractual breaches, and material governance concerns to management.
Collaborate with legal and contract management teams to ensure vendor agreements contain appropriate governance provisions.
Review contract requirements relating to service levels, reporting, audit rights, confidentiality, compliance, and performance obligations.
Ensure vendor agreements are appropriately reviewed, approved, recorded, and maintained throughout the contract lifecycle.
Monitor contract expiry dates, renewal requirements, extension approvals, and other important contractual milestones.
Coordinate vendor contract reviews to confirm that commercial and operational arrangements remain appropriate.
Support contract variations, scope changes, and amendments by ensuring appropriate governance and approval procedures are followed.
Maintain records of vendor approvals, contractual commitments, performance reviews, exceptions, and governance decisions.
Ensure vendor-related documentation is accurate, traceable, appropriately retained, and accessible to authorized personnel.
Establish document control requirements for vendor registration records, certificates, insurance documents, licenses, and compliance evidence.
Monitor the validity and completeness of required vendor documentation and coordinate timely renewals.
Collaborate with finance teams to strengthen controls over vendor master data, payment details, invoice validation, and financial approvals.
Support appropriate segregation of duties across vendor creation, procurement approvals, contract authorization, and payment processing.
Identify potential weaknesses in vendor master data controls and coordinate corrective actions.
Work with procurement and finance teams to investigate duplicate vendor records, inconsistent information, and unauthorized changes.
Support vendor-related financial control assessments and internal reviews.
Coordinate with compliance teams to ensure appropriate due diligence, ethical standards, and regulatory checks are incorporated into vendor governance.
Support anti-bribery, anti-corruption, conflict-of-interest, sanctions, and other applicable third-party compliance procedures.
Identify potential governance breaches, conflicts of interest, and inappropriate vendor relationships and escalate concerns through approved channels.
Ensure vendor engagement practices promote fairness, transparency, competition, and documented decision-making.
Maintain clear records of vendor selection decisions, evaluation results, exceptions, and approval justifications.
Review procurement exceptions and deviations from standard vendor governance procedures.
Ensure exceptions are appropriately justified, risk-assessed, approved, documented, and periodically reviewed.
Develop vendor governance risk registers covering contractual, financial, operational, compliance, cybersecurity, and reputational risks.
Coordinate with risk management teams to assess vendor exposure and determine appropriate monitoring requirements.
Establish risk-based governance controls for vendors supporting critical construction activities and essential business services.
Collaborate with HSE and quality teams to ensure vendors and subcontractors meet applicable safety, environmental, and quality requirements.
Verify that vendor governance arrangements support project-specific technical standards and operational requirements.
Work with information technology and information security teams to assess vendor access to company systems and sensitive information.
Ensure appropriate controls exist for vendor confidentiality, data protection, information access, and cybersecurity obligations.
Monitor third-party compliance with relevant policies and contractual security requirements.
Support vendor audits, compliance assessments, documentation reviews, and operational performance evaluations.
Coordinate with internal audit to provide evidence of governance controls and support the resolution of audit findings.
Track audit observations, vendor-related control deficiencies, and remediation activities through completion.
Develop governance dashboards and reports covering vendor compliance, performance, contract status, risk exposure, and outstanding actions.
Prepare regular management reports highlighting material governance issues, emerging trends, and recommended interventions.
Analyze vendor data to identify concentration risks, governance inconsistencies, and opportunities to strengthen oversight.
Establish consistent reporting standards to improve transparency and comparability across vendor categories.
Support the development of vendor governance procedures for construction materials, subcontracted services, consultants, logistics providers, and specialist contractors.
Coordinate with project management teams to ensure vendor governance requirements are integrated into project planning and

Work arrangement
Yes