Compliance Specialist, Commercial Contracts

Job Description

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Compliance Specialist, Commercial Contracts

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International Society of Automation (ISA) · Remote/Full-time

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You know the moment. A Fortune 500 procurement team sends over a 60-page master agreement, says every clause is non-negotiable, and expects the smaller party to sign. You read it, find the three terms that actually matter, and come back with a position that holds. The deal closes, and ISA keeps its content, its neutrality, and its balance sheet intact.

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ISA sells standards, training, and certification to corporate, government, and institutional buyers around the world, many of them multinationals with their own paper, portals, and addenda. We are hiring the person who owns the contractual side of that revenue: first-line reviewer on everything inbound, the negotiator across the table from in-house counsel and sourcing teams, and the builder of the playbook, templates, and repository that let ISA sign from a prepared position every time.

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This is a business role, not a legal one, and it sits deliberately outside the sales department. You partner with account executives from qualification to signature, but you are never measured on revenue. You have an unrestricted line to the COO and CEO. Your job is to keep ISA from signing what it should not sign, and to get the rest signed fast.

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What you'll do:

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Review and negotiate. Be the first set of eyes on every MSA, PO terms, supplier portal, SOW, NDA, DPA, and security addendum that comes in. Sort real exposure from survivable discomfort. Negotiate liability caps, indemnification, IP, warranties, insurance, audit rights, termination, payment, governing law, and data protection directly with counterparty procurement and legal. Push back when "non-negotiable" is really just habit.

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Guard what makes ISA, ISA. Protect our standards, curricula, certification materials, and assessments from work-for-hire and perpetual-license language. Catch and escalate anything that threatens our neutrality or tax-exempt status: exclusivity, most-favored-nation pricing, non-competes, endorsements. Pressure-test flow-down obligations (government clauses, export control, anti-bribery, accessibility, cyber frameworks) before ISA commits to them.

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Make sales process smoother. Join customer calls when terms are the obstacle. Translate contract concepts into language account executives can use in the room. Coach them to spot high-risk terms early, sequence a negotiation, and know when to trade, reframe, or walk. Give leadership honest turnaround expectations so contract cycle time shows up in the forecast.

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Build the infrastructure. Own the contract playbook: preferred position, tiered fallbacks, and walk-away threshold for every material clause. Maintain the template library across customer, SOW, NDA, reseller, instructor, and licensing agreements. Propose and administer a delegation-of-authority matrix so you can approve defined deviations yourself. Keep a risk register of every accepted deviation, with its rationale, approver, and expiration.

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Run the lifecycle. Administer intake, routing, version control, execution, and storage. Keep the repository as the authoritative record of obligations, renewal dates, notice periods, and auto-renewal triggers. Start renewal and re-negotiation cycles ahead of the deadline, not at it.

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Connect the dots. Work with Finance on payment terms, credit exposure, and insurance adequacy; with IT and data governance on privacy and security commitments; with the Manager of Intellectual Property and Licensing on anything that licenses ISA content. Escalate in writing with the exposure, the options, and your recommendation.

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What you bring:

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You have spent at least seven years in commercial contract management, contract negotiation, or sales operations with real contract ownership, and at least three of those negotiating on the other side's paper as the smaller party and improving the terms rather than accepting them. You have sat across from in-house counsel at large enterprises, governments, or institutions and held your ground. You have worked embedded with or alongside a sales team and coached non-lawyers through a negotiation.

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You have built, or substantially contributed to, a playbook, template library, fallback framework, or delegation-of-authority structure, and you have run a repository and tracked post-signature obligations and renewals. International experience, including cross-border data transfer, export control, and non-U.S. governing law, is a plus.

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How you work

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• You can tell the difference between a counterparty's binding policy, its negotiating posture, and boilerplate nobody has read, and you press accordingly.
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• You separate genuine risk from theoretical risk and make a defensible, documented call under deal pressure.
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• You can say no, keep the deal and the relationship, and recognize the point where ISA should walk away.
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• You write and speak in plain language that executives, salespeople, and a volunteer Board can act on.
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• You understand what is different about a nonprofit: neutrality, antitrust sensitivity, tax-exempt status, and proprietary content that is the organization's core asset.
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• You keep a high volume of concurrent agreements moving without losing the thread.
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• You are at home in a CLM tool, a CRM (Salesforce preferred), e-signature, document management, and Microsoft 365.
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Education and credentials

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• Bachelor's degree required.
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• JD, paralegal certificate, or equivalent formal contracts training strongly preferred.
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• CPCM or CCCM (NCMA), CCM Practitioner or Advanced Practitioner (World Commerce & Contracting), or NALA Certified Paralegal / NFPA Registered Paralegal preferred.
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• CIPP/US or CIPP/E is an asset given the volume of data-protection terms in scope.
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If you hold an active law license, that is welcome. The role remains a business role: ISA does not engage you to practice law or serve as its counsel, and you observe the professional responsibility rules of your licensing jurisdiction.

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Why ISA?

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ISA is the nonprofit that writes the standards the world's automation runs on, and trains and certifies the people who run it. We are small enough that one person owns this entire function, and we mean it: you set the positions, write the playbook, hold the delegated authority, and report to leadership on how ISA's contractual risk is trending. You will not inherit a mature contracts operation. You will build one, and it will be yours. The counterparties are serious: global manufacturers, energy companies, government agencies, universities.

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The details

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• Full-time, no direct reports.
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• Occasional travel, generally under 10 percent, for ISA events and professional development.
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• Location and work arrangement: Remote
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• Reasonable accommodations are available to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions of this position.
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• No agencies or recruiters please
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• Candidates must be able to work for any US employer
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