Principal Vendor Operations Manager, ALPR

Join Axon and be a Force for Good.
At Axon, we’re on a mission to Protect Life. We’re explorers, pursuing society’s most critical safety and justice issues with our ecosystem of devices and cloud software. Like our products, we work better together. We connect with candor and care, seeking out diverse perspectives from our customers, communities and each other.
Life at Axon is fast-paced, challenging and meaningful. Here, you’ll take ownership and drive real change. Constantly grow as you work hard for a mission that matters at a company where you matter.
Your Impact
Axon’s Vehicle Intelligence ecosystem—spanning fixed and mobile Automated License Plate Recognition (ALPR), Fleet systems, and connected sensor infrastructure—is expanding at an unprecedented rate across public safety. Rapid national scaling requires a battle-tested, high-density network of specialized third-party installation and field service partners capable of executing high-velocity, high-quality physical deployments.
As the Principal Vendor Operations Manager, you are the single-threaded owner of Axon’s Vehicle Intelligence partner ecosystem across AMER. Sitting as an Individual Contributor on the Vehicle Intelligence PSO Leadership Team, you own the entire operational and commercial lifecycle of our vendor network. You bridge the gap between boardroom commercial strategy and physical job-site execution. You will build and scale the operational machinery that enables Pre-Sales to quote accurately, Deployment Operations to execute without backlogs, and Post-Install Support to maintain long-term reliability at scale.
We need a rare hybrid operator: someone who possesses sharp business and commercial acumen, exceptional executive presence, a scrappy roll-up-your-sleeves mentality, and ground-truth fluency in construction and physical hardware installations.
What You'll Do
1. Partner Validation & Commercial Governance
Operational & Technical Qualification: Partner closely with Strategic Sourcing to evaluate prospective field installation partners. While Sourcing manages enterprise legal terms (MNDA, MSA), you own the operational vetting: technical competency, geographic footprint, crew capacity, equipment availability (bucket trucks, trenching, specialized tooling), and safety records.
Commercial Negotiation & Rate Cards: Architect and negotiate regional and national labor rate cards, time-and-materials (T&M) vs. fixed-fee milestone structures, mobilization charges, and volume discounts. Define pricing floors and ceilings across diverse hardware form factors and installation environments to protect PSO gross margins while ensuring vendor financial viability.
Pricing Integrity & Cost Auditing: Analyze billing trends and pricing discrepancies. Audit contractor invoices against physical milestone sign-offs to eliminate invoice creep, unapproved change orders, and cost leakage.
2. Operational Onboarding, Enablement & Billing Discipline
Field Readiness & Training Enablement: Design and enforce a mandatory partner onboarding framework. Partner with Training to ensure 100% of vendor technicians are certified on Axon mounting standards, power integration, cabling, and field diagnostics before ever touching a customer site.
Standardized Billing & Administrative SOPs: Establish clear, enforceable billing practices, deliverable verification protocols, and work-order milestone sign-offs. Ensure frictionless handoffs between field completion, PO consumption, and invoice approval.
Tooling & Workflow Systems: Integrate partner workflows seamlessly across Salesforce, Asana, and internal dispatch tools to provide real-time visibility into capacity and project progress.
3. Quality Governance, Telemetry & QBRs
Performance Telemetry & Scorecards: Build, instrument, and maintain partner scorecards tracking objective metrics: First-Time Install Pass Rates (FTIR), SLA adherence, mean-time-to-install, workmanship failure rates, and customer sentiment.
Executive Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs): Lead structured, data-driven QBRs with partner executives. Hold leadership accountable to performance standards, review capacity forecasts, resolve billing trends, and enforce Corrective Action Plans (CAPs) when quality slips. Decisively offboard chronic underperformers.
Root-Cause Failure Analysis: Conduct blameless post-mortems on field defects, premature hardware failures, and RMA trends. Distinguish between hardware defects, environmental factors, cabling faults, and contractor workmanship errors to drive upstream corrective action across Product, Ops, and Training.
4. Cross-Functional Scale Strategy (Pre-Sales, Deployment, Support)
Pre-Sales Enablement: Embed real-world partner pricing, regional labor rates, and physical installation constraints directly into Pre-Sales scoping models and quoting calculators so contracts are priced accurately from day one.
Deployment Ops & Capacity Planning: Model 12–24 month rolling labor demand against sales pipeline and seasonal spikes. Ensure Field Project Managers and PSMs have pre-vetted, reliable, on-demand field capacity across every targeted AmER territory.
Support & Warranty Lifecycle: Build the secondary field dispatch model for warranty repairs, RMA hardware swaps, and tier-1 physical troubleshooting, ensuring long-term field maintenance does not degrade the core deployment engine.
Licensing, Permitting & Regulatory Strategy: Architect a multi-state compliance strategy accounting for electrical contractor licensing laws, master electrician requirements, low-voltage regulations, right-of-way/DOT constraints, and union vs. open-shop jurisdictions.
What You Bring
8–12+ years of progressive operational leadership in vendor operations, technical field operations, telecom/broadband deployment, commercial electrical contracting, or systems integration at scale.
Demonstrated experience scaling partner ecosystems: Proven track record taking a regional or fragmented contractor network and scaling it into a high-density, high-performing national partner organization.
Hands-On Construction & Electrical Savvy: Direct understanding of physical infrastructure deployments—conduit bending, bucket truck operations, core drilling, electrical panels, low-voltage wiring, grounding, structural mounting, and job-site safety (OSHA standards). You know what quality work looks like in the dirt and on the pole.
Commercial & Financial Acumen: Proven ability to build unit-economic models, negotiate competitive commercial rate cards, and audit contractor billings without relying on procurement specialists to understand the cost structure.
Scrappy, Systems-Oriented Problem Solver: High bias to action with low ego. You thrive in high-growth environments where processes must be built from the ground up, and you diagnose structural root causes rather than treating surface symptoms.
Executive Presence & High Emotional Intelligence: Outstanding verbal and written communication. Able to command respect from contractor field crews, negotiate firmly with vendor CEOs, and influence cross-functional leaders across Sales, Product, Legal, and Operations.
Regulatory Fluency: Practical understanding of state-by-state electrical licensing requirements, municipal permitting friction, and jurisdictional labor dynamics.
Data & Systems Fluency: Advanced proficiency leveraging Salesforce, Asana, BI dashboards (Sigma, Tableau, PowerBI), and ERP/billing platforms to drive operational discipline.
Benefits that Benefit You
Competitive salary and 401k with employer match
Discretionary paid time off
Paid parental leave for all
Medical, Dental, Vision plans
Fitness Programs
Emotional & Mental Wellness support
Learning & Development programs
And yes, we have snacks in our offices
Benefits listed herein may vary depending on the nature of your employment and the location where you work
Axon is a total compensation company, meaning compensation is made up of base pay, bonus, and stock awards. The actual base pay is dependent upon many factors, such as: level, function, training, transferable skills, work experience, business needs, geographic market, and often a combination of all these factors. Our benefits offer an array of options to help support you physically, financially and emotionally through the big milestones and in your everyday life. To see more details on our benefits offerings please visit https://www.axon.com/careers.
Base Pay Range
$120,060—$192,096 USD
Don’t meet every single requirement? That's ok. At Axon, we Aim Far. We think big with