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Salary: USD 120,000 - 145,000 / annual
Crusoe is a vertically integrated AI infrastructure company building the energy-first platform to power the world's most ambitious AI workloads. The Senior Category Manager, Mechanical will own the mechanical category of spend—including enclosures, structural fabrication, doors, sheet metal, and related components—at the strategic level.
This role bridges strategic sourcing and procurement operations. You will lead market intelligence, supplier qualification, commercial negotiations, and proactive risk management across both custom fabrications and standard leverage items. Unlike tactical procurement, you are accountable for establishing the strategic foundation: determining why suppliers earn spots on the Approved Vendor List (AVL) rather than executing daily purchase orders.
Key responsibilities include:
- Tracking supply base capabilities, pricing benchmarks, fabrication lead times, and capacity constraints across mechanical categories
- Owning the mechanical AVL, verifying actual shop-floor fabrication capabilities (tolerances, welding, equipment) to ensure supplier claims match manufacturing reality
- Applying category strategy frameworks (e.g., Kraljic Matrix) to differentiate strategic custom items from leverage standard items, building a 12–24 month roadmap
- Structuring and negotiating MSAs, SLAs, and commercial terms while redlining buyer-adverse clauses
- Monitoring supplier capacity risks during high-volume production cycles and maintaining a category risk register with mitigation strategies and dual-sourcing options
- Evaluating make/buy opportunities where internal fabrication capacity is viable
- Maintaining quarterly supplier scorecards and building standing terms for seamless PO execution
You bring 4–7+ years of dedicated strategic sourcing or category management experience focused on fabricated metal, enclosures, or mechanical components. A Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Business, or related field is required (or equivalent practical experience). You have working familiarity with metal fabrication methods, tolerancing, and shop-floor assessment techniques. You are skilled at reading, structuring, and redlining commercial contracts and legal terms, and proficient with supplier qualification frameworks, RFI/RFQ processes, scorecarding, and category segmentation methodologies.
Bonus experience includes direct evaluation or auditing of supplier welding, machining, or sheet metal shop floors; hands-on ERP experience with systems like Acumatica; or experience in data center infrastructure, modular enclosures, or heavy industrial equipment environments.
