Powering the agentic revolution in travel. Sabre is an AI-native technology leader, backed by one of the world’s largest travel data clouds. Built on an open, modular, cloud-native architecture, Sabre serves as the backbone for both established leaders and bold, new disruptors, guiding them to the next age of travel retailing through intelligent, connected, and personalized experiences. With AI at its core and operating at unparalleled scale, Sabre transforms insights into innovation, empowering airlines, hoteliers, agencies and other partners to retail, distribute and fulfill travel worldwide.
We are seeking a Principal Category Manager to join our global Procurement team, where innovation knows no borders. This team ensures our enterprise operates with efficiency, high quality, and optimal commercial performance across all third-party supplier partnerships. It connects business strategy with market intelligence and rigorous spend analysis to mitigate risk, optimize supplier value, and drive sustainable growth. With an inclusive culture and flexible work environment, we work together with boldness, curiosity and commitment so we can all win together.
As a Principal Category Manager, you will serve as a strategic architect and trusted advisor providing end-to-end category ownership across third-party service suppliers, with a strong focus on Professional Services and Labor. You will oversee supplier selection, complex commercial redlines, contract lifecycle planning, and risk assessment coordination across global business units. You will possess broad decision-making autonomy at the project level to execute strategic sourcing opportunities, optimize workflows, and build cross-functional alignment across Legal, Contracts, Risk, Security, and executive stakeholders.
What you'll do
- Lead the end-to-end procurement lifecycle for third-party services, directing intake, pipeline management, commercial negotiations, pricing structures, and redlining to secure execution.
- Direct deep spend analyses, market intelligence, and contract portfolio reviews across the Professional Services and Labor categories to capture tangible cost-savings and business efficiencies.
- Coordinate and lead comprehensive Risk Assessment processes across Legal, Risk, Compliance, and Security partners to resolve potential execution barriers and eliminate enterprise risk prior to contract execution.
- Act as an expert advisory sounding board for business stakeholders, guiding cross-functional teams on category trends, sourcing pathways, and practical risk mitigation strategies.
- Partner with Procurement leadership and internal stakeholders to drive enterprise-wide workflow standardization, leveraging automation and procurement systems like SAP and Coupa to eliminate operational friction.
What you'll bring Required qualifications
- Minimum 5–7 years of experience in strategic sourcing, procurement, or supply chain management with demonstrated category expertise in Professional Services.
- Direct capability in designing and executing complex RFx processes, commercial negotiations, custom Excel financial models, and commercial redlines.
- Hands-on experience with ERP, Contract Management, and Purchasing systems (such as SAP or Coupa).
- Proven success managing cross-functional alignment across Legal, Risk, Security, and executive business partners while balancing competing deadlines and priorities.
Preferred qualifications
- Expertise in the Labor category.
- Bachelor’s degree in Business, Supply Chain Management, or a related discipline.
Benefits that support you
We know support looks different for everyone. That is why Sabre offers benefits beyond medical and financial coverage, with programs designed to support your well-being, growth and life outside work:
- Competitive pay and performance-based bonuses
- Flexible work options
- Comprehensive healthcare coverage
- Generous PTO and holidays
- Strong retirement planning support
- Family-friendly benefits
- Professional development opportunities
Reasonable Accommodation
Sabre is committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodation to applicants with disabilities. Applicants applying for a Sabre position with a disability who require a reasonable accommodation for any part of the application or hiring process may contact Sabre at [email protected].
Determinations on requests for reasonable accommodation will be made on a case-by-case basis.
Equal Employment Opportunity
Sabre is an equal employment opportunity employer and is committed to providing employment opportunities to minorities, females, veterans and disabled individuals. EEO IS THE LAW
#LI-Hybrid#LI-KN1
Skills Required
- Minimum 5-7 years of experience in strategic sourcing, procurement, or supply chain management, with demonstrated Professional Services category expertise.
- Experience designing and executing complex RFx processes.
- Experience conducting commercial negotiations.
- Experience building custom Excel financial models.
- Experience with commercial redlining.
- Hands-on experience with ERP, contract management, and purchasing systems such as SAP or Coupa.
- Proven success managing cross-functional alignment across Legal, Risk, Security, and executive business partners.
- Ability to balance competing deadlines and priorities.
- Expertise in the Labor category.
- Bachelor's degree in Business, Supply Chain Management, or a related discipline.
Sabre Corporation Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Sabre Corporation and has not been reviewed or approved by Sabre Corporation.
-
Leave & Time Off Breadth — Time off is expansive, with five weeks of PTO from day one, eight paid holidays, floating holidays, and a companywide year‑end break. Paid volunteer time further broadens available leave.
-
Parental & Family Support — Parental leave provides 12 weeks fully paid for birth or adoption, complemented by generous bereavement leave up to 15 paid days. Disability coverage and dependent eligibility to age 26 reinforce family support.
-
Retirement Support — A 401(k) with a strong company match underpins long‑term savings. This foundation strengthens overall financial security alongside core benefits.
Sabre Corporation Insights
What We Do
We are a software and technology company that powers the global travel industry. With decades of revolutionary firsts, our team of experts drive innovation and ingenuity in the industry. Today, we are creating a new marketplace for personalized travel. We partner with airlines, hoteliers, agencies and other travel partners to retail, distribute and fulfill travel. We are committed to helping customers operate more efficiently, drive revenue and offer personalized traveler experiences with next-generation technology solutions. Positioned at the center of the business of travel, our platform connects people with experiences that matter in their lives. Sabre's technology powers the nearly US$8 trillion travel industry. Our technology and data-driven solutions help our airline, hotel, travel agency and corporate customers grow their businesses and transform the traveler experience. The scale, breadth and depth of our technology is unmatched and sustains a complex industry. We provide an open and stable platform to deliver flexible, reliable and scalable solutions. Over the years, we have shaped and modernized the travel industry. We pioneered online travel agencies, corporate booking tools, revenue management, and web and mobile itinerary tools, to name a few. Our travel marketplace transacts more than US$120 billion of travel spend per year. And we are the world’s largest provider of airline and hotel technology. We have been named to the InformationWeek 500 list of the most innovative technology companies for 11 consecutive years. And InformationWeek named Sabre seventh on its list of the “Greatest Software Ever Written.”
