Sr Analyst Vendor Management

CREATIVITY IS OUR SUPERPOWER. It’s our heritage and it’s also our future. Because we don’t just make toys. We create innovative products and experiences that inspire fans, entertain audiences and develop children through play. Mattel is at its best when every member of our team feels respected, included, and heard—when everyone can show up as themselves and do their best work every day. We value and share an infinite range of ideas and voices that evolve and broaden our perspectives with a reach that extends into all our brands, partners, and suppliers. The Senior Software Asset Management (SAM) License Analyst is an experienced SAM practitioner responsible for independently managing complex software licensing, entitlement, compliance, optimization, audit, and risk activities across a portfolio of enterprise publishers. The role serves as a senior functional resource and escalation point for the SAM team, providing licensing judgment, reviewing and challenging complex Effective License Positions, resolving unfamiliar licensing issues, supporting material true-ups and renewals, and coaching less-experienced SAM practitioners. The Senior SAM License Analyst also provides specialized depth in software audit readiness, audit response, and license-compliance risk management, preserving an important capability within the SAM operating model while remaining capable of supporting the broader SAM service. This is a hands-on senior practitioner role. The successful candidate must be capable of operating independently, working complex or unfamiliar licensing problems to a defensible position, communicating material risks and recommendations to stakeholders, and helping other analysts develop stronger SAM judgment. All members of the SAM team participate in shared operational service delivery. The Senior SAM License Analyst therefore supports both complex strategic/licensing work and day-to-day SAM operations, including queue coverage, escalations, publisher issues, data-quality challenges, and cross-functional requests. Key Responsibilities Complex Publisher & License Governance - Independently manage complex licensing positions across multiple enterprise publishers and licensing models. - Develop, review, and challenge Effective License Positions using contractual entitlements, deployment, assignment, usage, workforce, publisher, and other relevant data. - Interpret complex product-use rights, licensing metrics, subscription terms, consumption models, virtualization rules, cloud-use rights, and other publisher requirements. - Work unfamiliar licensing issues to a defensible position using appropriate evidence, publisher terms, contracts, licensing documentation, and professional judgment. - Identify material entitlement gaps, over-deployment, licensing exposure, optimization opportunities, and unresolved assumptions. - Review licensing analysis prepared by other analysts and provide guidance where conclusions or evidence require improvement. - Maintain sufficient publisher breadth to support service continuity and cross-team coverage. Senior Operational Support & Escalation - Serve as a senior escalation point for complex SAM queue requests, licensing questions, entitlement issues, and operational exceptions. - Participate actively in shared SAM service delivery and ServiceNow queue activities. - Guide analysts in determining appropriate licensing, governance, fulfillment, or escalation pathways. - Review material or complex work for quality, completeness, evidence, and alignment with established SAM standards. - Help identify workload, process, data, or service risks requiring SAM Lead or Manager attention. - Provide functional coverage across the broader SAM service as operational priorities require. Audit Response & Management - Serve as a senior SAM point of contact for internal and external software license audits. - Coordinate with IT, Procurement, Contract Management, Legal, Finance, Product Owners, and other stakeholders to gather required evidence. - Interpret auditor requests and help ensure responses are accurate, complete, appropriately scoped, and supported by defensible evidence. - Manage or support audit timelines, data requests, assumptions, findings, and remediation activities. - Ensure audit activity remains within applicable contractual and legal boundaries in coordination with accountable Legal and Contract Management stakeholders. - Protect Mattel's interests by challenging unsupported assumptions, inappropriate data requests, or conclusions where appropriate. Audit Landscape & Compliance Risk - Maintain awareness of high-risk publishers, licensing practices, audit behavior, and material compliance exposures. - Develop and maintain audit-risk profiles or other risk intelligence for material publishers where appropriate. - Identify conditions that could create audit or compliance exposure before they become formal audit findings. - Use entitlement, deployment, usage, contractual, workforce, and other evidence to assess potential exposure. - Recommend mitigation or remediation actions and communicate material risks to SAM leadership. - Support internal compliance reviews, mock audits, and readiness assessments. Optimization & Financial Value - Identify and evaluate opportunities for reclamation, rightsizing, reassignment, downgrade, consolidation, and avoidance of unnecessary software spend. - Review optimization analysis prepared by License Analysts and challenge assumptions where appropriate. - Quantify material cost avoidance, savings opportunities, licensing exposure, and financial implications using approved methodologies. - Support complex renewals, true-ups, capacity decisions, and publisher negotiations with licensing and utilization intelligence. - Distinguish legitimate business demand from avoidable consumption while respecting Product Owner and business ownership of demand. - Help translate licensing and consumption data into decision-ready financial and operational recommendations. Discovery, Inventory & Data Judgment - Evaluate whether discovery, inventory, entitlement, usage, workforce, and publisher data is sufficiently complete, accurate, current, and reconciled for material licensing decisions. - Investigate complex discrepancies across Flexera, ServiceNow, publisher portals, endpoint technologies, workforce information, and other authoritative sources. - Challenge system-generated results where underlying evidence is incomplete or inconsistent. - Identify material data-quality issues before they affect ELPs, audits, renewals, compliance, or optimization decisions. - Work with accountable technical and source-system owners to resolve data-quality issues. - Support acceptance and validation of automated ELPs, connectors, integrations, and other SAM automation. SAM Technology & Automation Enablement - Provide functional licensing requirements for SAM tooling and automation resources. - Support Flexera One, automated ELP, Publisher Intelligence, reporting, and exception-management initiatives from a senior SAM practitioner perspective. - Validate that automation reflects approved licensing rules, business rules, decision thresholds, and appropriate human-review requirements. - Identify recurring analytical or operational activities suitable for simplification or automation. - Help ensure automation reduces manual effort without removing necessary professional judgment. Renewal, True-Up & Lifecycle Support - Provide senior licensing analysis supporting complex publisher renewals, true-ups, expansions, contractions, and lifecycle decisions. - Evaluate current entitlement, consumption, utilization, compliance, optimization, and known demand inputs before material commercial decisions. - Identify unresolved licensing, data, ownership, or governance conditions requiring action before renewal or true-up. - Provide licensing recommendations to Product Owners, Procurement, Contract Management, Finance, and SAM leadership. - Support software rationalization, consolidation, replacement, and retirement decisions where licensing expertise is required. Stakeholder Engagement & Decision-Ready Intelligence - Communicate complex licensing, audit, compliance, data, optimization, and financial issues clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders. - Provide decision-ready analysis describing the position, driver, risk or trend, mitigation, and required action or decision. - Partner with Product Owners, Procurement, Contract Management, Finance, Legal, IT, Security, Architecture, Software Support, and other stakeholders. - Provide SAM intelligence without assuming business-demand, Product Owner, commercial, or administrative responsibilities belonging to other functions. - Support leadership discussions where senior licensing expertise is required. Coaching, Knowledge Transfer & Capability Development - Coach and mentor SAM License Analysts in licensing methodology, entitlement analysis, ELP development, compliance, optimization, data judgment, and problem solving. - Review analyst work and explain reasoning rather than simply providing answers. - Help analysts develop broader publisher capability and greater independence. - Support cross-training to reduce single points of failure across the SAM team. - Participate in transition, shadowing, reverse-shadowing, and hyper care activities. - Help convert tribal knowledge into sustainable documentation, publisher playbooks, business rules, SOPs, and repeatable practices. - Support onboarding and development of new SAM team members. Documentation, Controls & Continuous Improvement - Maintain defensible documentation supporting material licensing positions, audits, assumptions, findings, and decisions. - Develop and improve audit-response templates, checklists, workflows, and supporting controls. - Support creation and maintenance of SAM SOPs, publisher playbooks, business rules, and operational documentation. - Identify recurring service, governance, data, or process issues requiring improvement. - Recommend changes that strengthen compliance, decision quality, operational efficiency, scalability, or service resilience. Decision & Escalation Expectations The Senior SAM License Analyst is expected to independently resolve complex licensing and compliance issues within established SAM governance and delegated authority. The role may: - establish and recommend licensing positions supported by defensible evidence; - review and challenge analysis produced by other SAM practitioners; - provide senior functional guidance on complex SAM issues; - coordinate complex compliance and audit activities; - recommend remediation, optimization, and licensing actions; - represent SAM in cross-functional discussions within delegated authority; and - coach other analysts on established SAM methodology and business rules. The role should escalate when: - material enterprise financial or compliance exposure exceeds delegated thresholds; - risk acceptance is required; - commercial commitment or contractual interpretation requires accountable commercial or Legal authority; - evidence remains insufficient to establish a defensible position; - a material cross-functional ownership or governance conflict exists; - executive or management-level engagement is required; or - The matter requires SAM Lead or SAM Manager authority. Preferred Qualifications & Experience Mattel will consider candidates based primarily on demonstrated capability, independence, breadth, and professional judgment rather than years of experience alone. Relevant experience may include: - Approximately 5–8+ years of progressively responsible experience in Software Asset Management, IT Asset Management, software licensing, license compliance, audit management, or closely related disciplines. - Demonstrated ability to independently manage complex software licensing or compliance work. - Proven experience supporting or leading third-party software audits involving publishers such as Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, Adobe, VMware/Broadcom, or comparable enterprise vendors. - Demonstrated experience developing, reviewing, or challenging Effective License Positions and entitlement reconciliations. - Strong understanding of perpetual, subscription, SaaS, user/device, processor/core, virtualization, cloud, and consumption-based licensing concepts. - Experience interpreting licensing terms, product-use rights, audit provisions, and deployment metrics. - Experience supporting complex renewals, true-ups, compliance remediation, optimization, or software audits. - Broad experience across multiple enterprise publishers rather than primarily a single publisher. - Hands-on experience with Flexera One, Snow, ServiceNow SAM/ITAM, Aspera, or comparable enterprise SAM technologies. - Demonstrated ability to investigate incomplete or conflicting data rather than relying solely on system-generated output. - Experience coaching or mentoring less-experienced SAM practitioners. - Strong analytical, documentation, stakeholder-management, and communication capability. - Experience working with Procurement, Contract Management, Legal, Finance, IT, Product Owners, or other enterprise stakeholders. - Experience operating in a global enterprise, managed-service, or distributed delivery environment. - Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Business, Accounting, Computer Science, or a related discipline, or equivalent relevant professional experience. - Certifications such as CSAM, CITAM, ITIL, Flexera certifications, publisher licensing certifications, or comparable industry credentials are beneficial. Core Competencies Senior SAM Judgment Independently applies SAM methodology and professional judgment to complex and unfamiliar licensing situations. Publisher Breadth Works effectively across multiple publishers and licensing models and can transfer methodology to unfamiliar licensing scenarios. Audit & Compliance Depth Understands software audit behavior, compliance exposure, evidence requirements, and defensible audit-response practices. Data Judgment Challenges incomplete, conflicting, or unreliable data and understands the effect of data quality on licensing conclusions. Analytical Communication Communicates position, driver, trend, risk, mitigation, and required decisions clearly. Coaching & Development Builds capability in other analysts by teaching reasoning and methodology rather than creating dependency. Operational Ownership Carries complex work through resolution and recognizes risks or dependencies before they materially affect delivery. Decision Discipline Understands the boundaries between SAM intelligence, Product Owner responsibility, business demand, commercial authority, Legal authority, and enterprise risk acceptance. Cross-Functional Leadership Coordinates effectively across technical, commercial, financial, Legal, and business stakeholders without requiring formal management authority. Continuous Improvement Identifies opportunities to simplify, standardize, automate, and strengthen SAM processes and controls. About Us: We are a leading organization committed to leveraging technology to drive business success. Our team is dedicated to innovation, collaboration, and delivering exceptional results. Join us and be a part of a dynamic and forward-thinking company. Don’t meet every single requirement? At Mattel, we are dedicated to an inclusive workplace and a culture of belonging. If you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we still encourage you to apply. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles. How We Work: We are a purpose driven company aiming to empower generations to explore the wonder of childhood and reach their full potential. We live up to our purpose employing the following behaviors: - We collaborate: Being a part of Mattel means being part of one team with shared values and common goals. Every person counts and working closely together always brings better results. Partnership is our process and our collective capabilities is our superpower. - We innovate: At Mattel we always aim to find new and better ways to create innovative products and experiences. No matter where you work in the organization, you can always make a difference and have real impact. We welcome new ideas and value new initiatives that challenge conventional thinking. - We execute: We are a performance-driven company. We strive for excellence and are focused on pursuing best-in-class outcomes. We believe in accountability and ownership and know that our people are at their best when they are empowered to create and deliver results. Our Approach to Flexible Work: We embrace a flexible work model designed to empower a culture of growth, optimism, and wellbeing, where every employee can reach their full potential. Combining purposeful in-person collaboration with flexibility, our focus is to optimize performance and drive connection for moments that matter. Who We Are: Mattel is a leading global toy and family entertainment company and owner of one of the most iconic brand portfolios in the world. We engage consumers and fans through our franchise brands, including Barbie, Hot Wheels, Fisher-Price, American Girl, Thomas & Friends, UNO, Masters of the Universe, Matchbox, Monster High, MEGA and Polly Pocket, as well as other popular properties that we own or license in partnership with global entertainment companies. Our offerings include toys, content, consumer products, digital and live experiences. Our products are sold in collaboration with the world’s leading retail and ecommerce companies. Since its founding in 1945, Mattel is proud to be a trusted partner in empowering generations to explore the wonder of childhood and reach their full potential. Mattel’s award-winning workplace culture has been recognized by Forbes, Fast Company, Newsweek, Great Place to Work, TIME, and more. Visit us at https://jobs.mattel.com/ and www.instagram.com/MattelCareers. Mattel is an Equal Opportunity Employer where we want you to bring your authentic self to work every day. We welcome all job seekers, and all applicants will receive consideration for employment. Videos to watch: The Culture at Mattel Corporate Philanthropy