Project Management Team Lead

Job Description

Job Description

About the role

We’re hiring a Team Lead to run procurement, vendor management, and project cost control. You will manage a small team responsible for project timing and costing, and vendor quotes. Your job is to keep projects moving fast and within budget by securing the best-fit vendors for each project based on cost, quality, capacity, and speed.

What you’ll do

• Lead the cost control team and manage workload across projects to hit timelines and budgets (spot budget and margin risks early)
• Negotiate vendor rate cards and ad hoc project pricing
• Resolve vendor issues quickly (delays, quality concerns, invoice discrepancies, missing documentation)
• Review the monthly project plan to identify opportunities to optimize timing, sequencing, and resourcing to support business goals.
• Maintain the vendor pool to match business needs, including niche audiences and markets (primary + backup coverage)
• Drive process improvement: simplify workflows, improve speed, and adopt tools/systems that reduce manual work
• Own recurring reporting:

Spend, budget vs actual, margin variance, and team throughput

Power BI dashboards for vendor performance and spend trends

Required qualifications

Procurement, vendor management, operations, or cost control experience (market research or professional services preferred)

Experience managing a team and setting priorities in a fast-moving environment

Strong working knowledge of basic finance concepts: budgets, margin, variance analysis, and invoice controls

Advanced Excel skills (pivot tables required; comfortable with large datasets)

Power BI experience building and maintaining dashboards

Strong negotiation skills and comfort pushing back when scope or cost is drifting

Clear, organized communicator who documents decisions and follows through

Nice to have

Experience with research vendors (panels, recruiters)

Familiarity with vendor onboarding and compliance documents (insurance ,SOWs)

Experience improving operational workflows or implementing systems (templates, dashboards, intake forms, automation)