Senior Commercial Manager (Deal Desk & Contracts) in Palo Alto, California at Instrumental, Inc.

Instrumental transacts with some of the most admired electronics companies in the world. Our Manufacturing Acceleration Platform leverages signals generated from global factories, performance data, and deep contextual understanding to identify opportunities for and deliver improved yield and higher throughput. NVIDIA, Meta, and L3Harris rely on Instrumental to accelerate new product development and scale their manufacturing. We’re growing rapidly and looking to mature our commercial operations.
We’re seeking a business-savvy Senior Commercial Manager to partner with our revenue function to own commercial transactions end-to-end. From deal desk to legal review and redlines, to commercial and legal negotiation, and execution – this role has a direct and consequential impact on Instrumental’s growth. You’ll build the process and run the ship, earning decision-making authority as you ramp up on the intricacies of our product, pricing, and legal needs.
What You’ll Be Doing:

• Run Deal Desk: Leverage deep product knowledge and business savvy to partner with account executives (AEs) on quotes, discounting, and nonstandard arrangements.
• Manage contract negotiations: Own NDAs, MSAs, and Order Forms alongside the AE. Balance your direct work with outside counsel to protect the company with the startup pragmatism that “time kills all deals”. Ruthlessly prioritize which issues must be resolved and plot a strategic path to get there in the negotiation. Operate with growing authority over time, based on contract playbooks that you build and maintain.
• End-to-end transaction management: Own customer procurement onboarding, agreement execution, PO collection and reconciliation, and the handoff Finance needs to invoice on time.
• Build the function while building the business: You will bring your expertise and combine it with real experience in the trenches with our finance and revenue teams to establish negotiation playbooks, approval thresholds, templates, workflows, and automation that enable scale.
• Expanding scope: Over time, this role will expand into revenue or broader operations based on the person’s strengths and the needs of the business. We’re looking for someone with the range to grow with the complexity of the company.

We’re Looking for Someone Who:

• Has demonstrated success in at least one startup owning all or a portion of these key responsibilities – and is explicitly only seeking small company opportunities.
• Has direct experience independently owning contract negotiations as the “small fish”. Most of our customers are Fortune 50 companies – we have to adapt our terms and needs to their paper. You are someone who has successfully “found a way” to achieve comfortable resolutions for all parties while maintaining deal momentum and speed. As a bonus, you also have insider experience at a large tech company, and understand how they think about legal negotiations and risk.
• Has demonstrated their ability to sponge up product intricacies that impact deal terms, data rights, and information security. Bonus: experience with EAR/ITAR and other export provisions.
• Loves working on a mission-driven, fast-paced team with smart and engaged teammates and embodies Instrumental’s operating principle of “Why not today?”

We’re a growing team that works collaboratively, supports each other, and is energized by having impact. We value passion and the ability to learn – you’re encouraged to apply even if your experience doesn’t match the job description precisely!
The following is a representative annual base salary range for this position within the Bay Area: $209,000 - $235,000, plus bonus. In addition, job level and salary opportunities are evaluated through our interview process – we review the experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities of each applicant.
Instrumental is proud to offer a highly-rated variety of benefits, including health, vision, dental, commuter plans, and parental leave.
At Instrumental, protecting company and customer information is a shared responsibility. Employees are expected to handle sensitive employee, financial, and company information in accordance with company security, confidentiality, and privacy policies, and promptly report suspected security incidents or policy violations.