Manager, Institutional Contracts
Job Description:
We believe in bold ideas, diverse perspectives, and the drive to transform knowledge into impact. Here, your curiosity fuels progress, your voice shapes innovation, and your ambition helps redefine what’s possible within science and learning. We are a culture that obsesses over impact, challenges, and drives what’s next to power infinite possibilities for our customers, colleagues and society at large.
About the Role:
The Manager, Institutional Contracts is a senior individual contributor within the Research Sales Contracts team, responsible for leading the negotiation, drafting, review, and management of complex commercial agreements that support Wiley 's institutional research, publishing, licensing, and strategic growth objectives.
Reporting to the Director, Institutional Contracts, this role serves as a trusted advisor to Sales, Legal, Finance, Compliance, and business stakeholders across multiple lines of business.
The position is responsible for negotiating high-value and high-complexity agreements, including transformational agreements, consortial arrangements, licensing agreements, publishing services agreements, and other strategic commercial contracts. In addition, the role drives operational excellence through the development of contracting workflows, negotiation playbooks, template standardization, AI-enabled contracting solutions, and contract lifecycle management improvements.
The Manager plays a key role in advancing Wiley 's Contracting Center of Excellence by promoting scalable, efficient, and risk-based contracting practices across the organization.
Job Responsibilities:
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Lead the negotiation, drafting, and execution of complex commercial agreements, including transformational agreements, consortial agreements, licensing arrangements, publishing services agreements, and strategic partnership contracts.
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Advise Sales, Legal, Finance, compliance, and business stakeholders on contract strategy, risk assessment, negotiation approaches, and contractual obligations to support revenue growth and risk mitigation.
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Develop and implement contracting standards, negotiation playbooks, templates, and guidance materials that promote consistency, efficiency, and best practices across multiple business lines.
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Drive operational excellence initiatives by improving contracting workflows, optimizing contract lifecycle management processes, and identifying opportunities for automation and continuous improvement.
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Advance AI-enabled contracting capabilities by supporting the evaluation, implementation, and adoption of technology solutions that improve productivity, reduce cycle times, and enhance contract quality.
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Partner with cross-functional stakeholders to build and expand Wiley 's Contracting Center of Excellence, supporting new business models, acquisitions, product offerings, and evolving commercial requirements.
Required Qualifications:
- 7 years of experience negotiating and managing complex commercial contracts.
- Advanced-level contract drafting, contract review, and contract negotiation skills.
- Demonstrated experience negotiating high-value and complex agreements with institutional, enterprise, government, nonprofit, research, publishing, or technology customers in multicultural environments.
- Experience supporting contract operations, process improvement, workflow optimization, or contract lifecycle management initiatives.
- Intermediate to advanced knowledge of contract lifecycle management (CLM) systems, workflow automation tools, and contracting technologies.
- Experience evaluating or utilizing AI-enabled tools, automation solutions, or technology platforms within legal operations, contract management, or business process environments
Preferred Qualifications:
- 10+ years of experience negotiating complex commercial contracts.
- Experience negotiating transformational agreements, read-and-publish agreements, consortial agreements, open access publishi