Manager - Third Party Governance & Awareness - Atlanta, GA

Who You'll Work With · You are someone who thrives in a high-performance environment, bringing a growth mindset and entrepreneurial spirit to tackle meaningful challenges that have a real impact. · In return for your drive, determination, and curiosity, we'll provide the resource ...

Job description

Who You'll Work With
You are someone who thrives in a high-performance environment, bringing a growth mindset and entrepreneurial spirit to tackle meaningful challenges that have a real impact.

In return for your drive, determination, and curiosity, we'll provide the resources, mentorship, and opportunities to help you quickly broaden your expertise, grow into a well-rounded professional, and contribute to work that truly makes a difference.

When you join us, you will have:

• Continuous learning: Our learning and apprenticeship culture, backed by structured programs, is all about helping you grow while creating an environment where feedback is clear, actionable, and focused on your development. The real magic happens when you take the input from others to heart and embrace the fast-paced learning experience, owning your journey.
• A voice that matters: From day one, we value your ideas and contributions. You'll make a tangible impact by offering innovative ideas and practical solutions, all while upholding our unwavering commitment to ethics and integrity. We not only encourage diverse perspectives, but they are critical in driving us toward the best possible outcomes.
• Global community: With colleagues across 65+ countries and over 100 different nationalities, our firm's diversity fuels creativity and helps us come up with the best solutions. Plus, you'll have the opportunity to learn from exceptional colleagues with diverse backgrounds and experiences.
• Exceptional benefits: In addition to a competitive salary (based on your location, experience, and skills), we offer a comprehensive benefits package, including medical, dental, mental health, and vision coverage for you, your spouse/partner, and children.

Your Impact
Optimize is McKinsey's global procurement capability—dedicated to enhancing and protecting the firm's resources and reputation by making responsible buying easy and enabling innovative, sustainable solutions across our supplier ecosystem.

As a Manager of Third-Party Governance and Awareness you will lead the implementation, oversight, and continuous improvement of our procurement governance program. This role will be responsible for developing and ensuring adherence to policies, delivering training, and executing the long-term vision, strategy, and roadmap for managing third-party procurement-related governance processes across the enterprise.

This is an exciting opportunity to play a key role in McKinsey's global procurement transformation in the areas of governance and awareness. In this role, you will help develop and implement policies and processes, with continuous focus on optimization and risk reduction.

As the Third-Party Governance and Awareness Manager, you will play a critical role in driving process optimization, policy adherence, and cross-functional alignment across the organization. You will bring a consultant's mindset, a lawyer's eye for detail, and an analyst's ability to connect data points to build solutions that are pragmatic, scalable, and sustainable.

Your responsibilities will include leading the identification, evaluation, and mitigation of procurement governance risk events. You will manage the third-party governance program, identify inefficiencies and control gaps and implement solutions to enhance effectiveness. A key aspect of this role is to champion program maturity and cultivate a compliance-aware culture across procurement and its business partners.

You will be responsible for implementing and overseeing the strategic roadmap for third-party governance. This includes developing and maintaining risk event mitigation processes, controls, and guidelines, as well as ensuring procurement processes are well-documented, accessible, and regularly updated.

In support of policy and compliance efforts, you will develop and refine policies, standard operating procedures, and program documentation. You will also lead the creation and execution of training programs and internal communications that drive awareness, foster accountability, and ensure consistent adoption of procurement risk practices. Ensuring organizational alignment to governance standards and regulatory requirements will be central to your mandate.

You will build and maintain strong partnerships with key stakeholders across Optimize, Legal, Compliance, Finance, Technology, and other relevant functions. Collaboration is a key aspect of this role. You will collaborate with a cross-functional and senior stakeholder group across our firm in a timely and efficient manner. By collaborating across these teams, you will help align strategies and drive cross-functional initiatives that strengthen procurement governance across the third-party lifecycle.

To measure success, you will design mechanisms to track process effectiveness, control adherence, and program performance through clearly defined metrics, SLAs, and KPIs. These insights will be used to identify gaps, improve compliance, and enhance operational efficiency. You will support the enhancement of tools, systems, and metrics on governance matters (e.g., development, testing and training). Through regular reporting and actionable insights, you will support senior management in decision-making and continuous improvement efforts.

You will have the unique opportunity to shape McKinsey's global procurement governance program and make a lasting impact on how we manage third-party compliance across the enterprise.

Your Qualifications and Skills

• Bachelor's/university degree required; degree in business, law, supply chain, or related field; advanced degree (JD, MBA, or equivalent) preferred
• 7+ years of relevant experience in procurement governance, compliance, or consulting/legal environments
• Deep understanding of procurement processes, internal controls, and risk event frameworks
• Demonstrated expertise in policy design, process development, and procedure creation, with experience driving organization-wide adoption
• Familiarity with regulatory standards (e.g., SOX, GDPR, ESG, Anti-Bribery/Corruption)
• Strong project management skills, with proven ability to lead cross-functional initiatives from design through execution
• Strong influence with a collaborative style: ability to offer new ideas, constructive challenge conventional wisdom, and work collaboratively
• Excellent problem-solving and analytical skills: proven ability to connect dots, generate insights, and translate them into practical solutions
• Ability to build strong relationships: establish trust with colleagues across geographies, roles, and levels, and maintain a non-hierarchical approach with strong influencing capabilities
• Strong organizational and process management skills: ability to manage multiple tasks, prioritize effectively, and drive projects to high-quality results
• Outstanding communication and proactivity: strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to convey information effectively to senior leaders and stakeholders