Contracts Administrator

The role: 

As the Contracts Administrator on Newsela’s Legal team, you will review customer contracts, including RFQ/RFP, manage customer ticket resolution, and coordinate vendor relationships. In addition to supporting customer and RFP work, this role will also lead and organize Newsela’s vendor renewal and procurement processes to ensure operational alignment, timely renewals, and clear communication across internal stakeholders.

Responsibilities may include:

• Be the point of contact for all customer contracting and RFP/RFQ needs.
• Review, draft, and negotiate customer agreements, including master services agreements, terms of service, amendments, and NDAs.
• Manage and resolve customer and RFP tickets by reviewing historical data, filling out ancillary forms, collaborating with Deal Desk and Customer Operations, and ensuring timely, accurate responses or escalations.
• Maintain first-response and resolution times that meet or exceed team SLA targets.
• Review and escalate complex or high-impact commercial and privacy issues to counsel as appropriate.
  

• Responsible for managing the procurement lifecycle for all vendor contracts.
• Proactively identify and address potential bottlenecks in the procurement and renewal process that could impact production schedules.
• Ensure all incoming renewal vendor/procurement requests are properly assigned and tracked through the correct queue.
• Lead weekly internal procurement meetings to set priorities, goals, and deadlines, and apply the Procurement RACI chart to clarify ownership and accountability.
• Maintain clear, regular communication with internal business stakeholders and ensure required notice periods for renewals and non-renewals are met.
• Serve as a liaison between business stakeholders and Legal to ensure contract terms align with operational, compliance, and risk management standards.
  

• Drive internal improvement projects such as record retention workflows, template updates, and process automation initiatives, and support leadership visibility by providing clear, concise summaries of key metrics, progress, and escalations.

Why you’ll love this role:

• You’ll join a mission-driven, rapidly evolving education technology company, working collaboratively to build a best-in-class legal and risk management framework
• We’ll trust you to independently manage and perform end-to-end contract lifecycle management activities (including template generation, reviewing, negotiating, drafting and post-signature activities) for RFPs, customer contracts, data protection documents, and vendor contracts
• You’ll also have the opportunity to develop and improve strategies and processes for sourcing, vendor management, negotiation, productivity, and customer/vendor relationships, translating complex issues into concise updates for senior leadership and proactively escalating key risks or opportunities that will help scale Newsela’s operations and reach, ultimately bringing engaging, culturally responsive learning content to more K-12 classrooms nationwide

Why you’re a great fit: 

• You’re an experienced contract management professional with 2+ years as a contracts administrator negotiating complex agreements
• You have demonstrated experience partnering with business stakeholders to drive contracts to successful execution, and you’ve helped build efficient risk management frameworks to maximize efficiency and transparency
• You are detail-oriented, highly organized and can manage workflows and record-keeping with ease
• You can distill contract or operational issues into clear, concise updates and action plans for leadership, demonstrating sound judgment and executive communication maturity
• You have demonstrated experience with government and commercial agreements, SaaS and software contracts, and technology procurement in general
• You’re comfortable navigating and updating contract lifecycle management, matter management, and electronic signature tools
• You possess excellent verbal and written communication skills, and are able to interpret and explain commercial and legal issues concisely and straightforwardly to a variety of audiences
• You have demonstrated success in managing multiple projects and contract negotiations simultaneously, and proactively manages teams, escalating issues when appropriate
• Experience with the Google Suite, Salesforce, Ironclad, DropBox Sign, and/or managing and updating legal matters in a dedicated Jira board are a plus
• A certificate from an ABA approved paralegal or legal studies program is preferred, and JDs welcome

Base compensation range: $68,550-$78,850. Total compensation for this role also includes incentive stock options and benefits. This compensation range may be adjusted based on actual experience. 

Why you’ll love working at Newsela:

• Health & Wellness: Comprehensive medical benefits with employer contribution to premiums and to HSA accounts. Additional benefits such as pet insurance, free access to the Calm app, and more to help you stay healthy: mind, body, and soul. 
• Work From Home: We are a fully remote company. We provide a monthly tech stipend to support your WFH needs!
• Supporting ALL Families: Inclusive benefits to support you and your family, including parental leave, fertility support, adoption, and more! 
• Financial Wellbeing: Invest in your future with our 401(k) plan, which includes a employer match to help you build long-term financial security.
• Time Off: Flexible PTO plus 10 company holidays plus winter break (Dec 24th - Jan 1st), and Sabbatical Leave offered at tenure.
• Professional Development: Newsela offers an annual learning and development allowance to employees to attend external training sessions, classes, workshops, conferences, and educational materials to foster professional growth within their current role and career aspirations at Newsela.
• Make A Difference: No matter your role or department, the work you do each day helps share the future of education and improves the lives of students and teachers.

Newsela takes authentic, real world content from trusted sources and makes it instruction ready for K-12 classrooms. Each text is published at five reading levels, so content is accessible to every learner. Today, over 3.3 million teachers and 40 million students have registered with Newsela for content that's personalized to student interests, accessible to everyone, aligned to instructional standards, and attached to activities and reporting that hold teachers accountable for instruction and students accountable for their work. With over 15,000 texts on our platform and multiple new texts published every day across 20+ genres, Newsela enables educators to go deep on any subject they choose.