Procurement and Estimating Manager

Job Description

Job Description

Procurement & Estimating Manager

Duet Design + Duet Build | Denver, CO

You’re the person who reads a set of plans, walks a job site, talks to a vendor about lead times on imported stone, and still closes out the day with every PO clean in JobTread. You’re also the person who notices when a vendor’s invoice has a $100 split-ship fee that wasn’t in the original quote, and picks up the phone to make it go away. That’s a rare combination. If you’ve spent years feeling like your role didn’t have a name, this one does.

We’re hiring a Procurement & Estimating Manager to sit between Duet Design and Duet Build, our sister firms running high-end design and construction in Denver. You’ll own FF&E procurement on the design side, equipment and material procurement on the build side, and estimating support across both. You’ll work alongside the project managers running our active jobs and report to them on the day-to-day.

Why this role exists:

• We’ve been routing procurement through an outside purchasing firm and pushing estimating onto our project managers. Both are working. Neither is right long-term. We’re moving estimating off our PMs so they lead projects without drowning in spreadsheets, and we’re bringing procurement in-house so it lives next to the people doing the work.
• You’re walking into a real role with a real seat. Procurement coverage is being held by an outside partner so the work doesn’t slip while we find the right person. When you start, you’re inheriting a clean operational picture, a defined cadence, and a defined first 90 days. You’re not picking up someone else’s mess.
• This role didn’t exist in this shape before. We built it because we needed it.

How we run procurement here:

We don’t make it up as we go. Here’s the system you’d be running.

• Bi-weekly AP release cycle. Every two weeks, three Studio Designer reports go out: Office Expenses, Open Orders with Vendor Balances Due, Items with Client Funds Applied but not Ordered. The principal releases. You place. The rhythm is the heartbeat of the role.
• A defined status workflow. Released to Order, Need Acknowledgement, In Production, In Transit, Received, Delivered. Plus issue states (Backorder, Need Final Measure, Ready for Pickup) and procurement states (Procurement Fee, Reselect, Cancelled). Every item lives somewhere in this flow. The flow is the truth.
• Weekly summary discipline. Every week you send a tight summary to the design team and the principal: Open Orders issues needing action, AP and invoice issues, past due invoices, upcoming invoices over $2K. Nothing buried. Nothing chased.
• Vendor negotiation as the work, not the favor. When a vendor underquotes yardage, misses a ship window, sneaks in a fee, or sits on an order acknowledgement, you’re the one calling them on it. You don’t wait to be told. You don’t let the cost land on us. Aggressive vendor cooperation is the standard, not the exception.
• Payment protocols. Wires over $5K route through the principal with verbal vendor verification (we’ve been burned, we don’t take chances). Check requests route to ap@. Studio POs are created only after the principal releases. You don’t have to memorize this on day one. You do have to respect that this is a structured operation.
• Solutions, not problems. When something breaks, you walk in with the issue and at least one fix. That’s the bar.

A day in the life:

• 8:15am. Coffee with the design-side PM to review FF&E status on a Cherry Hills project. Three pieces from a workroom in High Point are running behind. You’re already in touch with the vendor on backup options.
• 10am. Teams call with the build-side PM and a kitchen sub. You’re pulling cabinetry specs into the estimate spreadsheet, flagging where the allowance is going to need to flex.
• 11:30am. Site visit with a superintendent. You see the rough plumbing locations, confirm the order against the spec, note one fixture is going to need a backplate that wasn’t in the original scope.
• 1pm. Lunch. Sometimes at your desk, sometimes with the team at the Bellaire office.
• 2pm. Studio Designer release. The bi-weekly AP report is in front of you. You’re moving items from Released to Order, placing POs, uploading order acknowledgements to all items on each PO, and flagging two vendors whose acks are slow.
• 3:30pm. Estimate organization for a new Duet Build project. You’re not pricing it. You’re pulling everything into the format the PM needs to bid it cleanly, under their direction.
• 4:30pm. Vendor call. A workroom is trying to add a storage fee for a delayed install that wasn’t their fault but isn’t ours either. You’re on the line negotiating it down to zero.
• 5pm. Out. We mean that.

How the split works in practice:

On paper, your time is 50/50 between Duet Design and Duet Build. In practice, it flexes with project volume.

You’ll have two direct managers: the project manager running the design side and the project manager running the build side. They own your day-to-day workload, your 1:1s, and your reviews. The firms’ principals sit above the role for escalation and big-picture direction, with a standing weekly sync to allocate your time fairly between the two companies.

When two projects need you on the same day, the rule is simple: client deadlines win, then vendor commitments, then whoever asked first. If it’s still a coin flip, the principals call it together. You won’t ever be the one stuck in the middle of an owner debate. We built this role to end well.

What you’ll own:

• Procurement, design side. The full pipeline. Vendor communication, lead time tracking, order status against the workflow above, expediting, damages and replacements, the weekly summary email. Studio Designer entries for soft goods and FF&E line items. CFA and DFA tracking. Alternates research when items go discontinued. Sample ordering and tracking tied to active projects. Receiving warehouse coordination. AP coding on design orders against the bi-weekly cycle.
• Procurement, build side. Material and equipment orders against active projects. Receive and inventory as needed. Vendor lead time logic across plumbing, cabinetry, appliances, and finishes. Coordination with superintendents on what arrives, when, and where.
• Estimating support, build side. Preconstruction estimating support under the build-side PM. You’re not pricing scope. You’re organizing it. Pulling trade scopes into spreadsheets, flagging gaps, comparing sub bids, building the document the PM needs to bid the job cleanly. Change order documentation. Sub bill review and coding against estimates.
• Project coordination across both. Project logistics and timeline tracking. Maintaining accurate project documentation (specifications, vendor details, approvals). Quality checks on what’s leaving the door. Shop drawing, CFA, and custom furniture documentation review with the design team. Inspection and approval workflow support. Weekly project regroup scheduling on assigned projects.
• Sub onboarding, build side. COIs, W-9s, sub agreements, work orders in JobTread. Submittal creation and tracking for architects, designers, homeowners.
• The system that lives on. The Studio Designer SOP is in active development on the design side. You inherit it, extend it, and own its day-to-day. The build-side procurement playbook is yours to build. We don’t want this knowledge in one person’s head ever again.

First 90 days:

• By day 30 , you’ve taken full handoff from our interim purchasing partner. You own every active FF&E procurement queue on the Design side, every active material and equipment order on the Build side, and you’ve shadowed two estimates with the build-side PM. Every open PO is mapped. Every active vendor conversation is documented. Your first weekly summary email goes out the second Friday you’re here.
• By day 60 , you’re running procurement independently on both sides. The bi-weekly AP cycle is yours. You’ve negotiated at least one vendor issue to a result that saved us money. You’ve supported one full estimate alongside the build-side PM and you’ve started a vendor lead-time library that didn’t exist before.
• By day 90 , you’ve identified at least two process improvements we’ve adopted. Procurement-to-PO turnaround is measurably faster than it was when you started. The first version of your build-side procurement playbook is in draft.

Evidence we’re looking for:

• Six or more years of procurement experience in design, construction, or a related field. Residential, commercial, hospitality, healthcare, retail, multifamily. Sector matters less than depth. We want someone who has run a real procurement function inside a firm that takes the work seriously. Exceptional candidates with five years and the right mix of background will be considered. A background in architecture, construction, engineering, or interior design is a strong signal regardless of which sector or which seat you’ve sat in.
• You read floor plans without needing a translator. You don’t need AutoCAD chops. You do need to look at a drawing and understand the spaces, the elevations, the relationship between the millwork and the wall behind it.
• You negotiate vendors hard. You’ve sat across from a workroom, a furniture rep, or a stone yard and pushed back on a fee they tried to slip into an invoice, a yardage they underquoted, a ship date they let slip. You have a story about a specific time you saved your last firm money by refusing to eat a vendor’s mistake. This is not a nice-to-have. This is the work.
• Studio Designer experience, or fluency in another purchasing system you could translate over. We’ll teach the platform. We won’t teach the judgment.
• Excel that goes beyond formulas. You build trackers, you protect cells, you know your way around a pivot table without Googling it.
• Working knowledge of JobTread, Asana, and Bluebeam. Or evidence you’ve picked up software like these fast before.
• Comfort with estimating support, not lead estimating. You’ve sat next to a PM and helped them organize a bid. You’ve translated drawings into line items. You don’t pretend to price scope you don’t own.
• You bring solutions, not problems. When something is going sideways, you walk in with the issue and at least one fix.

What we pay, what you get:

Base salary of $95,000 to $110,000 depending on experience. Healthcare covered. Four-plus weeks of PTO we expect you to use. 401k with employer match. Design discounts on everything we carry. A real seat at the table on both companies. Three days in the Bellaire office, two days remote.

Who we are, honestly:

Our principals came up in big rooms. Large commercial firms, hospitality groups, national architecture and construction practices. We’ve spent careers around big-budget, multi-stakeholder, brutally complex projects. We chose residential because of the personal connection with homeowners and what it feels like to create the spaces people live in. That’s the work that lights us up.

Duet Design has been here since 2011. Duet Build is its sister firm. Duet Forma is our architecture practice. Together we cover the full path from architecture to interior to built. We do livable luxury for clients who care about the difference between done and well done.

We’re a small team that doesn’t believe in hierarchy theater. The principals work next to the project managers, who work next to the procurement and design teams, who work next to the trades. Nobody here thinks they’re above the work.

We’re driven. We have strong opinions. We move fast. We also leave the office in time to be at our kids’ soccer games and we don’t apologize for it. You’ll work hard here. You won’t sacrifice your life for it.

We hire people who are great at what they do, love being at work, and want to be around other people who feel the same way. That’s the bar. That’s the room.

To apply:

Send your resume and answer these three questions in writing, two paragraphs each. Don’t send a cover letter. We don’t read them.

• Tell us about a vendor who tried to charge you a fee that wasn’t yours to pay. What was the fee, what was the conversation, and what was the outcome.
• Walk us through the most complicated procurement situation you’ve handled. What broke. What you did. What you’d do differently.
• Tell us about a time you sat next to a project manager during an estimate and made the estimate better. Be specific about what you contributed.

We read every application. We respond to every application. We move fast when we like what we see.