Business Process Excellence Lead, Third Party Risk Management

Who We Are

Applied Materials is a global leader in materials engineering solutions used to produce virtually every new chip and advanced display in the world. We design, build and service cutting-edge equipment that helps our customers manufacture display and semiconductor chips – the brains of devices we use every day. As the foundation of the global electronics industry, Applied enables the exciting technologies that literally connect our world – like AI and IoT. If you want to push the boundaries of materials science and engineering to create next generation technology, join us to deliver material innovation that changes the world. 

What We Offer

Salary:

$108,000.00 - $148,500.00

Location:

Austin,TX

You’ll benefit from a supportive work culture that encourages you to learn, develop, and grow your career as you take on challenges and drive innovative solutions for our customers. We empower our team to push the boundaries of what is possible—while learning every day in a supportive leading global company. Visit our Careers website to learn more. 

At Applied Materials, we care about the health and wellbeing of our employees. We’re committed to providing programs and support that encourage personal and professional growth and care for you at work, at home, or wherever you may go. Learn more about our benefits. 

Role Summary

The Business Process Excellence Lead, TPRM owns the process architecture, design, and optimization for Third Party Risk Management (TPRM) and its integration with Contracting. The role defines and standardizes how work flows across the TPRM lifecycle, designs risk-appropriate and audit-ready controls, and drives measurable process improvements that expand the team's capacity through smart design and technology enablement.

As the process architect for TPRM, this role translates business needs into clear process requirements that guide technology, automation, and AI investment, and targets manual, effort-intensive work for conversion into reusable capability designed once and reused across the portfolio. It partners with Legal and Contract Management to integrate contracting workflows with risk management processes.

This is an individual contributor role that leads through expertise, governance, and cross-functional partnership. The ideal candidate is comfortable rapidly prototyping process solutions using no-code, low-code, or AI-powered tools to validate design intent. Production build and scale are delivered in partnership with Technology, AI, and Analytics teams.

Key Responsibilities

Process Architecture & Standardization

• Own the end-to-end process architecture for TPRM and its integration with Contracting.
• Design, document, and standardize processes using industry-standard modeling techniques (BPMN, SIPOC, VSM, etc.).
• Define process ownership, hand-offs, decision rights, and escalation paths across the TPRM lifecycle and cross-functional partners.
• Establish process design standards, taxonomy, and documentation conventions for the function.
• Maintain a single source of truth for process artifacts, versioning, and change history.

Process Optimization & Control Design

• Continuously optimize TPRM processes to reduce cycle time, remove manual effort, and improve quality and consistency.
• Design and refine risk-appropriate, audit-ready controls that balance assurance with efficiency.
• Identify simplification opportunities, redundant steps, and low-value activities; propose and drive changes with stakeholders.
• Partner with internal audit and compliance partners to align control design with audit and regulatory expectations.
• Establish clear success criteria for every process change, including expected impact on cycle time, quality, and risk coverage.

Data-Driven Improvement & Technology Enablement

• Apply process mining and other data-driven techniques to discover, measure, and prioritize improvement opportunities across the TPRM and Contracting processes.
• Establish process performance baselines and improvement KPIs (cycle time, throughput, rework rate, compliance rate) and build a fact-based improvement backlog prioritized by value, feasibility, and risk.
• Translate optimized process designs into clear business requirements that guide technology, automation, and AI investment, ensuring solutions are grounded in process design rather than tool preference.
• Prototype process solutions to validate design intent, using no-code, low-code, or AI-powered tools within Applied's AI governance framework, with production build and scale delivered by Technology, AI, and Analytics teams.
• Serve as the process voice in solution design reviews, ensuring build outcomes match intended process behavior.

Contracts Partnership & Integration

• Partner with Legal and Contract Management to integrate contracting workflows with TPRM processes, ensuring risk decisions translate cleanly into contract terms, clauses, and post-signature obligations.
• Design and govern end-to-end hand-offs between TPRM and Contracting, including intake, risk assessment outcomes, clause requirements, and obligation tracking, to eliminate blind hand-offs, duplicate data entry, and rework.
• Support the design and governance of a risk-related standard clause framework in partnership with Legal and Contract Management, ensuring clause requirements are traceable to underlying risk assessments and controls.
• Partner on obligation and post-signature management processes (e.g., SLA reviews, security attestations, insurance renewals, right-to-audit exercises) so contractual risk coverage is enforced, not just documented.

Governance & Continuous Improvement

• Establish a continuous-improvement discipline (e.g., Lean, Six Sigma principles) within the TPRM function.
• Track and report process performance and improvement outcomes to leadership on a regular cadence.
• Capture lessons learned and build a reusable library of process patterns, templates, and playbooks that scale as the Risk & Compliance function matures.
• Coach process owners and business partners on process thinking, improvement techniques, and disciplined change adoption.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Engineering, Information Systems, Data Analytics, or a related field.
• 6+ years of process excellence, business process management, or equivalent experience, including hands-on process design and control optimization.
• Demonstrated process-architecture ownership and control optimization in a complex and/or regulated environment.
• Hands-on process mining experience (e.g., Celonis, Signavio, SAP Process Intelligence, or Power Automate Process Mining).
• Demonstrated ability to design new capabilities or operating models from concept through enterprise adoption.
• Proven ability to lead through influence in a matrixed, cross-functional environment, partnering with legal, technology, analytics, and business stakeholders.
• Strong executive communication skills, including the ability to translate complex process work into clear, decision-ready narratives.
• Data literacy and comfort using process performance metrics to drive prioritization and continuous improvement.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in procurement, TPRM, risk management, compliance, or supply chain process domains.
• Familiarity with contract lifecycle management (CLM) platforms and third-party risk platforms.
• Lean Six Sigma certification (Green or Black Belt) or equivalent process discipline credential.
• Familiarity with automation (RPA, workflow, integrations) and/or AI-powered solutions (e.g., agents, chatbots), including partnering with technology teams to bring solutions to enterprise scale.
• Familiarity with no-code, low-code, or AI-powered tooling for prototyping and design validation.

Key Skills / Competencies

• Process Architecture & Design. Structured process modeling, standardization, and end-to-end ownership across complex, cross-functional workflows.
• Control Design & Risk Discipline. Designs risk-appropriate, audit-ready controls that balance assurance with efficiency and align to audit and regulatory expectations.
• Data-Driven Improvement. Applies process mining and performance metrics (cycle time, throughput, rework rate, compliance rate) to prioritize and drive measurable improvements.
• Technology & AI Enablement. Translates process design into clear business requirements for technology, automation, and AI, and prototypes solutions using no-code, low-code, or AI-powered tools to validate design intent.
• Cross-Functional Partnership & Influence. Leads through influence in a matrixed environment, partnering with Legal, Contract Management, Technology, AI, Analytics, and business stakeholders without direct authority.
• Executive Communication & Continuous Improvement. Translates complex process work into clear, decision-ready narratives, and coaches process owners and business partners on process thinking and disciplined improvement.

Additional Information

Time Type:

Full time

Employee Type:

Assignee / Regular

Travel:

Yes, 10% of the Time

Relocation Eligible:

No

The salary offered to a selected candidate will be based on multiple factors including location, hire grade, job-related knowledge, skills, experience, and with consideration of internal equity of our current team members. In addition to a comprehensive benefits package, candidates may be eligible for other forms of compensation such as participation in a bonus and a stock award program, as applicable.

For all sales roles, the posted salary range is the Target Total Cash (TTC) range for the role, which is the sum of base salary and target bonus amount at 100% goal achievement.

Applied Materials is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, national origin, citizenship, ancestry, religion, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, disability, veteran or military status, or any other basis prohibited by law.

In addition, Applied endeavors to make our careers site accessible to all users. If you would like to contact us regarding accessibility of our website or need assistance completing the application process, please contact us via e-mail at Accommodations_Program@amat.com, or by calling our HR Direct Help Line at 877-612-7547, option 1, and following the prompts to speak to an HR Advisor. This contact is for accommodation requests only and cannot be used to inquire about the status of applications.