Strategic Partner & Vendor Manager

Powering the world’s payments ecosystem

ACI powers the payments ecosystem – globally, and you power ACI. You’ll innovate, collaborate, and grow – in an energetic technology culture with decades of proven success. ACIers – in all roles and levels – are truly your colleagues and many are your friends. Our size and reach allow you to see the global impact of your work. You are visible, your talents are valued, and you are empowered to shape the future of payments.

As a Strategic Partner & Vendor Manager in Omaha, NE or Norcross, GA, you will join a diverse, passionate team, dedicated to powering the world’s payments ecosystem!

The Strategic Partner & Vendor Manager supports the definition and execution of ACI’s Global Technology and Innovation (GTI) partner and vendor strategy across a global ecosystem of strategic providers. The role drives a formal Partner/Vendor Stewardship Program, including governance (QBRs/MBRs/EBRs), performance scorecards, risk and issue management, and cross functional alignment to improve service stability, quality, and cost efficiency. This role will also be responsible for overseeing existing critical contracts and ensuring the vendors deliver in accordance with their contracted SLAs, performance commitments, and defined success metrics.

Operating through influence in a matrixed environment, this role serves as an escalation point and partners closely with stakeholders involved in vendor relationship management to ensure ACI’s most critical partners are aligned to strategic priorities, accountable to outcomes, and managed consistently across the enterprise.

• Define and maintain a clear “Partner vs. Vendor” framework and tiering model (strategic, preferred, tactical) aligned to ACI and GTI’s business and technology priorities.
• Design and drive a formal Partner/Vendor Stewardship Program (cadence, artifacts, roles, and decision forums).
• Analyze and support partner landscape rationalization (fewer, deeper relationships) to improve quality and cost leverage; pinpoint consolidation opportunities and propose sequencing.
• Align partners to the ACI roadmap (capabilities, capacity, reliability) and identify joint improvement plans.
• Orchestrate and facilitate alignment with internal stakeholders for partner priorities and decisions.
• Champion continuous improvement with partners related to service stability, response/repair times, release hygiene and roadmap fit.
• Serve as a trusted escalation point across internal departments including but not limited to GTI, Product, Global Information Security, Enterprise Risk Management, Procurement, and GTI partner(s).

• Establish and maintain partner scorecards and KPIs (e.g., SLA/CSL adherence, availability, incident (Detection, Response, Repair) MTTR trends, release quality, roadmap alignment, escalation)
• Ensure vendors are aware of incidents impacting ACI, contribute to root cause analysis, and commit to preventive actions; track commitments to closure.
• Lead and collaborate with stakeholders including Finance/Procurement/Legal on renewals, addenda, and service agreements and provide data driven input on performance, risk, usage, and improvement plans.
• Provide oversight of mission‑critical contracts, ensuring uptime, capacity, resilience, and operational continuity in alignment with ACI’s business requirements.
• Drive financial discipline across all strategic partners by identifying cost-opportunities, benchmarking rates and consumption, and providing data-driven commercial insights to support renewals, negotiations, and long‑term investment decisions.

• Proactively observe landscape changes that may affect ACI interests; identify issues and barriers; create/maintain a partner risk register with mitigation plans, owners, and timelines.
• Maintain audit‑ready documentation and ensure vendors comply with applicable regulatory obligations (e.g., FFIEC, SOX, DORA, GDPR, GLBA), partnering with Risk, Compliance, and Info Sec to support third‑party risk assessments and regulatory inquiries.
• Contribute insights, risk…