Staff Procurement Specialist, Global Travel

Company:

Qualcomm Intl Inc., Mexico Branch Office

Job Area:

Operations Group, Operations Group > Sourcing

General Summary:

The Staff Procurement Specialist, Global Travel, supports procurement, supplier management, and operational transformation initiatives supporting Qualcomm’s global corporate travel program. This role, reporting into the Sr. Manager, Travel, partners with internal stakeholders to identify business requirements, define service strategies, evaluate suppliers, negotiate commercial agreements, and manage supplier performance to deliver best value, operational efficiency, policy compliance, duty of care, and a high-quality traveler experience. 

The Staff Procurement Specialist supports the global travel strategy into scalable operational programs, sourcing strategies, technology improvements, and measurable outcomes. The role supports day-to-day supplier and program performance, leads strategic sourcing and transformation initiatives, and evaluates emerging capabilities, including artificial intelligence, automation, predictive analytics, and self-service technologies, that can improve how employees plan, book, and experience business travel.  

Minimum Qualifications 

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Operations, or a related field. 

• 3+ years of industry-specific experience in Procurement, Travel Operations, or related work experience. 

Preferred Qualifications 

• Master’s degree in Business, Operations, Supply Chain, Procurement, Finance, or a related field. 

• 5+ years of progressive experience in Procurement, Strategic Sourcing, Corporate Travel, Travel Operations, Travel Technology, Employee Services, Supplier Management, or a related field. 

• 3+ years of experience working in a large, global, matrixed organization. 

• 2+ years of experience in a role requiring interaction with senior leadership, including Director-level stakeholders and above. 

• 1+ year of experience in a technical or functional leadership role, with or without direct reports. 

• 1+ year of experience managing operating budgets, project financials, travel spend, or supplier cost models. 

Principal Duties and Responsibilities: 

Strategic Sourcing and Category Leadership 

• Leads medium to complex procurement and global travel projects by enabling the team to identify internal stakeholder needs, operational requirements, traveler needs, policy considerations, and project objectives. 

• Supports and implements procurement and go-to-market strategies for travel-management services, booking technologies, payment solutions, traveler-support services, and other travel-related products and services. 

• Supports stakeholder consultation and requirements gathering across Procurement, Corporate Security, Finance, HR, Legal, Technology, Events, regional teams, and other business functions. 

• Determines and drives the creation of detailed statements of work, business requirements, service specifications, supplier-selection criteria, and performance expectations aligned with stakeholder needs and project goals. 

• Identifies and recommends suppliers that can provide best value to Qualcomm based on category expertise, market intelligence, service capabilities, technology, global coverage, risk, and total cost of ownership. 

• Stays current on corporate travel, supplier, technology, and market trends, including cost drivers, distribution models, artificial intelligence, automation, digital platforms, and emerging traveler-service capabilities. 

• Uses category data, market intelligence, benchmarking, should-cost models, supplier financial information, and other analytics to support sourcing decisions and negotiations. 

• Oversees and evaluates RFPs, RFIs, supplier proposals, sourcing mechanisms, and supplier responses for accuracy, competitiveness, completeness, operational feasibility, risk, and alignment with business requirements. 

• Leads commercial negotiations and coordinates the negotiation of contractual, legal, data-protection, service-level, implementation, and performance terms. 

• Drives sourcing decisions that achieve competitive economics while balancing service quality, traveler experience, operational resilience, policy compliance, duty of care, innovation, and long-term business value. 

Global Travel Operations and Service Excellence 

• Supports and continuously improves global travel operations to promote reliable, consistent, and traveler-centered service across regions and time zones. 

• Supports operational relationships with the travel management company and other travel service providers, including traveler support, case triage, escalations, service recovery, and issue resolution. 

• Establishes clear supplier accountability and ensures timely follow-through on operational issues, corrective actions, and contractual commitments. 

• Identifies recurring traveler pain points and leads preventive, scalable solutions through process improvement, knowledge content, self-service, supplier action plans, and technology. 

• Monitors traveler feedback, service levels, booking behavior, policy compliance, operational trends, and supplier performance to proactively identify risks and improvement opportunities. 

• Balances employee experience, cost effectiveness, business requirements, policy compliance, operational efficiency, and duty of care when making program and supplier decisions. 

• Makes impactful decisions concerning somewhat complex operational and supplier issues and provides direction to junior team members and specialists. 

• Determines when supplier, operational, contractual, financial, or traveler-service issues require escalation to senior leadership. 

Program Transformation, Technology, and AI 

• Supports transformation initiatives that modernize travel processes, improve the online booking experience, and create simpler and more intuitive traveler journeys. 

• Identifies, evaluates, and supports the implementation of artificial intelligence, automation, predictive analytics, self-service, and other emerging capabilities that improve traveler support, supplier performance, productivity, and program efficiency. 

• Develops practical business use cases for new technology and evaluates expected benefits, costs, risks, resource requirements, implementation complexity, and measurable outcomes. 

• Promotes responsible adoption of new technologies and works with appropriate stakeholders to address data, privacy, cybersecurity, legal, and governance requirements. 

• Coordinates with internal stakeholders and external service providers on requirements, system configuration, implementation, testing, deployment, communications, training, and adoption. 

• Encourages a learning and continuous-improvement mindset by testing new approaches, measuring results, applying lessons learned, and adjusting implementation strategies. 

• Ensures technology and process changes align with broader travel-program objectives, sourcing strategies, supplier contracts, enterprise standards, and regional requirements. 

Supplier Performance and Contract Management 

• Supports supplier selection, contract initiation, commercial negotiation, contract execution, implementation, fulfillment, and ongoing relationship management. 

• Supports strategic and operational relationships with the travel management company, technology providers, and other travel service suppliers. 

• Establishes performance expectations, service-level agreements, key performance indicators, scorecards, governance routines, and corrective-action processes. 

• Uses service data, traveler feedback, root-cause analysis, benchmarking, and contract requirements to evaluate supplier performance and drive sustainable improvements. 

• Conducts or oversees supplier business reviews that clearly communicate performance, risks, improvement opportunities, decisions, commitments, and outcomes. 

• Ensures supplier activities remain aligned with Qualcomm’s organizational objectives, contractual requirements, traveler needs, cost targets, and transformation roadmap. 

• Identifies and mitigates supplier, implementation, commercial, operational, financial, service-continuity, and performance risks. 

• Works with internal and external stakeholders to resolve issues and ensure that supplier or program changes integrate successfully with other project components and enterprise processes. 

Data, Insights, and Executive Communication 

• Develops and maintains reporting, dashboards, supplier scorecards, and performance measures that provide visibility into travel spend, booking behavior, online booking adoption, service performance, policy compliance, traveler experience, and supplier commitments. 

• Improves data quality, reporting discipline, metric definitions, and governance to support more informed sourcing and program decisions. 

• Analyzes category, supplier, operational, financial, and traveler data to identify trends, risks, savings opportunities, service gaps, and transformation priorities. 

• Translates complex information into concise insights, recommendations, action plans, and decision materials for senior leaders and global stakeholders. 

• Creates executive-ready presentations, sourcing recommendations, supplier business reviews, and program updates that clearly communicate performance, risks, opportunities, decisions, and measurable outcomes. 

• Applies intermediate-to-advanced analytical and problem-solving skills when information is incomplete, multiple alternatives are available, or business requirements conflict. 

• Defines and monitors performance metrics to determine whether projects and supplier initiatives are achieving their intended commercial and operational results. 

Global Collaboration and Change Leadership 

• Partners across Corporate Security, Finance, Procurement, HR, Events, Legal, Technology, and regional teams to deliver a cohesive global travel program and traveler experience. 

• Influences stakeholders across functions, regions, and seniority levels while balancing enterprise standards, local market requirements, traveler needs, and business priorities. 

• Supports change-management activities and traveler communications associated with policy, process, supplier, and technology changes. 

• Converts strategic objectives into clear workplans, operating rhythms, decision frameworks, communications, and measurable deliverables. 

• Works with individuals inside and outside the Procurement function to integrate complex projects and ensure that changes align with related enterprise processes and systems. 

• Serves as a strategic thought partner to travel-program and procurement leadership by surfacing supplier insights, market developments, operational trends, commercial opportunities, and innovation recommendations. 

• Supports team priorities, deadlines, resources, and deliverables across large or multiple concurrent projects. 

• Coaches junior team members, where applicable, in sourcing strategy, supplier evaluation, analytics, cost modeling, negotiations, contracting, stakeholder management, and supplier-performance improvement. 

Level of Responsibility 

• Works independently with limited supervision and exercises sound judgment in managing complex procurement, supplier, operational, and transformation activities. 

• Provides supervision, coaching, and work direction to direct reports and junior team members, as applicable. 

• Makes moderate-to-impactful decisions within the function, including decisions related to suppliers, sourcing strategies, negotiations, technology, service delivery, and project execution. 

• Operates within prescribed departmental budget objectives and supports the effective management of travel-program costs, project financials, and supplier commitments. 

• Has a moderate degree of influence over key organizational decisions and is consulted by senior leadership on supplier, sourcing, operational, and travel-program matters. 

• Communicates complex or detailed information to audiences with differing levels of category, technical, financial, or operational knowledge. 

• Uses strong negotiation, executive communication, presentation, and influencing skills with suppliers, cross-functional stakeholders, and senior leadership. 

• Manages work in which tasks frequently do not have predefined steps and require the simultaneous use of commercial, operational, analytical, and stakeholder-management capabilities. 

• Demonstrates creativity in developing new processes, sourcing approaches, supplier solutions, technology use cases, service models, and work products within established guidelines. 

• Applies deductive and inductive problem solving when information is missing or incomplete and evaluates multiple approaches to determine the best course of action. 

• Participates in strategic planning within the assigned category lead or program area and influences immediate and longer-term operations. 

• Escalates significant financial, contractual, supplier-performance, operational, compliance, or traveler-impact issues when senior leadership involvement is required. 

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree and 4+ years of Sourcing or related work experience.
OR
Associate's degree and 6+ years of Sourcing or related work experience.
OR
High School Diploma or equivalent and 8+ years of Sourcing or related work experience.

*Completed advanced degrees in a relevant field may be substituted for up to two years (Master’s = one year, Doctorate = two years) of work experience.

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