Contract Research Associate Jobs in Michigan (NOW HIRING)

States considered: MI

Role Description
Position Summary:
The Category Sourcing Manager is responsible for supporting several categories of scientific services spend for Zoetis Veterinary Medicine Research & Development (VMRD) to meet the business needs of the organization. This role partners closely with Finance, Legal, and other Procurement teams (Corporate and Manufacturing) to ensure purchases are within budget and compliant with Zoetis Finance, Legal, and Procurement policies. In partnership with key stakeholders, the role builds category and vendor strategies, identifies supply and commercial risks, and develops mitigation plans to protect continuity, quality, and cost. The role also leads supplier relationship management activities to drive performance, collaboration, and continuous improvement across the supplier base.

Key Responsibilities:

• Serve as the primary point of contact for internal customers: identify potential vendors, analyze competitive bids, negotiate costs and terms, document competitive/negotiated savings, and recommend the appropriate purchasing method.
• Drive vendor strategies and cost-savings initiatives across assigned scientific-services categories (e.g., CRO/contract research services and regulatory outsourced services such as translations).
• Issue RFQs/RFPs to approved suppliers; coordinate stakeholder -supplier Q&A; and compile side-by-side bid comparisons (pricing structure, timelines, assumptions/exclusions, and risk/capacity signals).
• Manage supplier relationships by coordinating regular business reviews, vendor presentations, performance discussions, and acting as the main communications point of contact.
• Interface with external partners to troubleshoot business, service, and relationship issues to ensure contractual obligations and service levels are met.
• Support development of a competitive vendor base to create and sustain advantage for VMRD and better leverage external spend.
• Partner with Procurement Associates to resolve complex invoicing issues, respond to internal customer inquiries, support purchasing and financial systems, and review purchase order requests.
• Work with Legal to ensure appropriate agreements are in place (e.g., MSAs, SOWs, confidentiality, data/privacy, IP/ownership, and publication terms as applicable) to enable continuity of internal customers' work.
• Analyze VMRD spend and trends; maintain and refresh category plans/strategies, preferred supplier lists, and sourcing pipelines as needed.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in business, Finance, Supply Chain, or a scientific discipline.
• 3+ years of strategic sourcing/procurement experience within an R&D organization or supporting scientific services spend.
• Demonstrated experience running end-to-end sourcing events (RFx), negotiating terms, and documenting savings/value.
• Working knowledge of contracts and common scientific-services commercial structures (rate cards, milestone-based SOWs, T&M, change controls).
• Proficiency with MS Office Suite; experience with procurement/ERP tools such as Oracle and/or SAP, Ariba (CatMan), Spend Control Tower, and BI/reporting tools.

Skills & Attributes:

• Strong stakeholder partnership skills: ability to influence and drive alignment across scientific, finance, and legal partners.
• Analytical mindset with comfort working in ambiguous, fast-moving R&D environments.
• Clear written and verbal communication; able to summarize options, tradeoffs, and recommendations for decision makers.
• High integrity and attention to detail; consistent adherence to policies and documentation requirements.

Work Model:
Hybrid 50% in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Travel: as business needs dictate.

Full timeRegularColleague

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