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Procurement & Finance Operations Manager

Periodic Labs· Business and Operations
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Menlo Park, CA$225k - $275kFull-timePosted 5mo ago

About the role

Analytical, systems-oriented role owning procurement, inventory strategy, operational finance, and purchasing systems across laboratory and R&D environments to scale experimentation while maintaining financial discipline and operational efficiency.

Responsibilities

  • Own purchasing operations across lab consumables, specialty materials, gases, chemicals, equipment, and operational supplies
  • Develop inventory forecasting systems and consumption tracking processes to prevent stockouts and support rapidly scaling experimental throughput
  • Build systems to analyze and track the true cost of scientific experiments across materials, compute, equipment utilization, and operational overhead
  • Own purchase order generation, invoice reconciliation, and three-way matching workflows across procurement and accounting processes
  • Track operational and capital expenditures against budgets and support forecasting, reporting, and cost optimization initiatives
  • Design and implement scalable procurement, inventory, and operational finance systems as the organization grows
  • Improve workflows through automation, tooling, inventory tracking systems, dashboards, and process optimization initiatives
  • Partner closely with scientists, engineers, lab operations, finance, and leadership teams to support evolving experimental needs
  • Manage supplier and vendor relationships, including pricing negotiations, lead times, and purchasing agreements
  • Identify operational bottlenecks and help build the infrastructure and processes required to scale high-throughput R&D environments

Qualifications

  • 5+ years of experience in procurement, operational finance, lab operations, supply chain, or related operational roles
  • Experience supporting technical, scientific, manufacturing, hardware, or R&D environments
  • Strong understanding of budgeting, forecasting, spend tracking, and operational analytics
  • Experience owning procurement workflows, purchasing operations, and vendor management
  • Experience with PO, accounting, and spend management systems (e.g., Ramp, QuickBooks, NetSuite, SAP, Coupa, Quartzy, etc.)
  • Strong systems-thinking mindset with demonstrated process improvement experience
  • Comfortable operating in ambiguous, fast-changing startup environments
  • Highly organized with exceptional attention to detail
  • Strong cross-functional communication skills and ability to work closely with technical teams

Skills

Required:Procurement operationsInventory forecastingCost modeling and analytics

Benefits

  • Not specified in the description
Last updated Oct 14, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

About Periodic Labs

From bits to atoms.

Periodic Labs is an artificial intelligence research company pioneering the next leap in scientific discovery. We operate at the intersection of machine learning and scientific experimentation under the thesis that that true understanding of the universe is only possible by interacting and experimenting on it.

artificial intelligencescientific discoverymachine learningscientific experimentation
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