Contracts Administrator

The role: 

As the Contracts Administrator on Newsela’s Legal team, reporting to Commercial Counsel, you will assist with and/or drive opportunity assessments (RFQ/RFP), customer agreements, and vendor relationships. You will be primarily responsible for reviewing, drafting, and negotiating a variety of customer and third-party contractual relationships, including agreements with school districts, vendor agreements, content licensing agreements, master services agreements, work orders, amendments, NDAs, and others. You will pivot seamlessly between reviewing and negotiating inbound and outbound agreements, and be the primary point of contact for internal Newsela teams (Sales, IT, Finance, People, Product, Marketing, & Information Security) to liaise with the Legal team on commercial transactions. You’ll help escalate specific commercial transactional and privacy issues, as needed, to counsel for approval. You’ll also be responsible for interpreting and explaining complex contractual requirements and associated risks to internal business stakeholder and external parties. This role requires an advanced understanding of contractual terms and conditions, superior drafting skills, and experience managing multiple complex negotiations simultaneously in a high volume, rapidly growing technology company.

Why you’ll love this role:

• You’ll join a mission driven, rapidly growing education technology company, working collaboratively to build a best-in-class legal and risk management framework
• We’ll trust you to independently manage and perform end-to-end contract lifecycle management activities (including template generation, reviewing, negotiating, drafting and post-signature activities) for RFPs, customer contracts, data protection documents, and vendor contracts
• You’ll also have the opportunity to develop and improve strategies and processes for sourcing, vendor management, negotiation, productivity, and customer/vendor relationships that will help scale Newsela’s operations and reach, ultimately bringing engaging, culturally responsive learning content to more K-12 classrooms nationwide

Why you’re a great fit: 

• You’re an experienced contract management professional with 2+ years as a contracts administrator negotiating complex agreements
• You have demonstrated experience partnering with business stakeholders to drive contracts to successful execution, and you’ve helped build efficient risk management frameworks to maximize efficiency and transparency
• You have demonstrated experience with government and commercial agreements, SaaS and software contracts, and technology procurement in general
• You’re comfortable navigating and updating contract lifecycle management, matter management, and electronic signature tools
• You possess excellent verbal and written communication skills, and are able to interpret and explain commercial and legal issues concisely and straightforwardly to a variety of audiences
• You have demonstrated success in managing multiple projects and contract negotiations simultaneously, and proactively manages teams, escalating issues when appropriate
• While not required, experience with Salesforce, Ironclad, Docusign, and/or managing and updating legal matters in a dedicated Jira board are a plus
• A certificate from an ABA approved paralegal or legal studies program is preferred, and JDs welcome

Base compensation range: $75,000–$85,000. Total compensation for this role also includes incentive stock options and benefits. This compensation range may be adjusted based on actual experience.