Technical Sourcing Manager

Lambda, The Superintelligence Cloud, is a leader in AI cloud infrastructure serving tens of thousands of customers. Our customers range from AI researchers to enterprises and hyperscalers. Lambda's mission is to make compute as ubiquitous as electricity and give everyone the power of superintelligence. One person, one GPU.

If you'd like to build the world's best AI cloud, join us.

*Note: This position requires presence in our San Jose office location 4 days per week; Lambda’s designated work from home day is currently Tuesday.

The Operations team plays a critical role in ensuring the seamless end-to-end execution of our AI-IaaS infrastructure and hardware. This team is responsible for sourcing all necessary infrastructure and components, overseeing day-to-day data center operations to maintain optimal performance and uptime, and driving cross company coordination through product management organization to align operational capabilities with strategic goals. By managing the full lifecycle from procurement to deployment and operational efficiency, the Operations team ensures that our AI-driven infrastructure is reliable, scalable, and aligned with business priorities.

What You’ll Do

• Partner in leading the sourcing strategy for AI infrastructure components, including vendor sourcing for new products & technologies

• Seek out, establish, new vendors for key infrastructure components, technically vetting new vendor’s capabilities

• Develop category sourcing strategies to ensure suppliers are capable of meeting Lambda’s current and future technical and business requirements.

• Build deep supplier engagement programs to secure critical allocations during constrained market conditions.

• Establish the supplier selection process, evaluate alternate suppliers, drive the RFI/RFQ/RFP process, to improve the TCO and quality

• Negotiate with suppliers and partners to establish best in class pricing, quality, delivery, payment, and service terms. Develop benchmarks and should cost models

• Build an end to end OEM/ODM strategy to support Lambda’s growing cloud hardware scale

• Establish and manage strategic supplier and commercial relationships with our key partners at the executive level. Influence supplier’s business models, roadmaps, and support models

• Partner closely with Engineering, Data Center Operations, and Finance teams to align supplier capabilities with technical roadmaps and scaling needs.

• Manage contractual agreements including master supply agreements, statements of work, and service level agreements.

• Develop a supplier management framework, including QBRs, scorecards, and supplier performance (SLAs) 

• Monitor market dynamics (pricing, availability, emerging technologies) and advise on sourcing risk management strategies.

You 

• Bachelor’s degree in Supply Chain, Engineering, Business, or related field.

• 10+ years of supply chain experience in data center, cloud, compute, networking, and/or AI hardware

• Proven experience working with server, networking, storage, and/or data center technology vendors and OEMs.

• Strong technical literacy — comfortable collaborating with engineers on component specifications, product architectures, and build materials (BOMs).

• Exceptional negotiation and relationship management skills; capable of influencing internal and external stakeholders

• Have direct experience managing OEMs, ODMs, and JDM suppliers and communicating with senior leadership

• Deep understanding of cost structures, value chain analysis, and total cost of ownership (TCO) modeling

• Experience in structuring, negotiating, and executing contracts (MSAs, MPAs, and SOWs) and complex agreements

• Proficiency with supply chain management tools (e.g., ERP systems like NetSuite, SAP, Oracle).

• Demonstrate sound interpersonal and communication skills, including presenting strategic decisions to the executive team

Nice to Have

• Experience sourcing hardware for AI/ML infrastructure deployments (e.g., H100, B200 clusters).

• Familiarity with sourcing and integration of liquid cooling infrastructure for high-density AI data centers.

• Prior work with tier-1 hyperscale cloud providers or AI infrastructure startups.

• Master’s degree (MBA, MS Supply Chain, or Engineering Management).

• Experience with global sourcing strategies including Asia-based ODMs (e.g., Wistron, Pegatron, Foxconn).

Salary Range Information 

The annual salary range for this position has been set based on market data and other factors. However, a salary higher or lower than this range may be appropriate for a candidate whose qualifications differ meaningfully from those listed in the job description.

About Lambda

• Founded in 2012, with 500+ employees, and growing fast

• Our investors notably include TWG Global, US Innovative Technology Fund (USIT), Andra Capital, SGW, Andrej Karpathy, ARK Invest, Fincadia Advisors, G Squared, In-Q-Tel (IQT), KHK & Partners, NVIDIA, Pegatron, Supermicro, Wistron, Wiwynn, Gradient Ventures, Mercato Partners, SVB, 1517, and Crescent Cove

• We have research papers accepted at top machine learning and graphics conferences, including NeurIPS, ICCV, SIGGRAPH, and TOG

• Our values are publicly available: https://lambda.ai/careers

• We offer generous cash & equity compensation

• Health, dental, and vision coverage for you and your dependents

• Wellness and commuter stipends for select roles

• 401k Plan with 2% company match (USA employees)

• Flexible paid time off plan that we all actually use

A Final Note:

You do not need to match all of the listed expectations to apply for this position. We are committed to building a team with a variety of backgrounds, experiences, and skills.

Equal Opportunity Employer

Lambda is an Equal Opportunity employer. Applicants are considered without regard to race, color, religion, creed, national origin, age, sex, gender, marital status, sexual orientation and identity, genetic information, veteran status, citizenship, or any other factors prohibited by local, state, or federal law.