Job Title: Quoting Optimization Lead Contractor
Location: Palo Alto, CA
Duration: 3 months

Team: Product Operations (CPQ & NPI Operations) Location: Palo Alto, CA (on-site / hybrid) Reports to: Director, CPQ & NPI Operations

About the role

• Client is running a focused effort to scale and remove friction from how we quote and sell. Many of our quoting challenges are rooted not in the system itself but in the policies and rules that govern quoting discounting, approvals, packaging, deal structuring, exceptions. We're looking for an experienced operator to come in for roughly three months, get to the bottom of which policies and rules are creating friction, drive the alignment conversations to change them, and then translate those decisions into concrete system changes.
• This is a policy-first role, not a build-first one. You'll spend your time reviewing needs across the field and stakeholders, facilitating the hard alignment discussions, and turning the outcomes into clear, actionable requirements. Success looks like fewer roadblocks in the quoting flow, clearer rules, and a well-defined set of system changes ready to implement.
• We want someone who has done exactly this kind of work before and can hit the ground running.

What you'll do

• Diagnose policy & rule-driven quoting friction
• Review current quoting policies, rules, and guardrails (discount floors, uplifts, approval thresholds, packaging, deal-structuring and exception rules) and identify where they slow deals down or create workarounds.
• Gather needs and pain points from Sales, Deal Desk, Finance, Renewals, and Product to understand where and why quoting breaks down.
• Prioritize the highest-friction policies and rules for change based on impact and effort.
• Drive policy conversations & alignment
• Facilitate cross-functional discussions to challenge, refine, and align on quoting policies and rules.
• Broker trade-offs between speed, control, and commercial risk bringing the business judgment to land decisions, not just document them.
• Secure sign-off from the right stakeholders and owners so changes stick.
• Translate decisions into system changes
• Convert aligned policy decisions into clear, actionable requirements for CPQ / quoting system changes.
• Partner with CPQ config and technical teams to scope, sequence, and hand off the changes for implementation.
• Define how each change will be measured so its impact on friction and cycle time is visible.

What we're looking for

• 8+ years in sales/revenue operations, deal desk, quote-to-cash, or commercial operations, including hands-on ownership of quoting policy and process change.
• A track record of doing exactly this work: reviewing quoting/pricing policies, driving cross-functional alignment on rule changes, and turning decisions into system requirements.
• Strong business and commercial judgment deep comfort with discounting, approvals, packaging, deal structuring, and the trade-offs sales leaders and finance care about.
• Excellent facilitation and stakeholder management able to run alignment conversations across Sales, Finance, Deal Desk, and Product and influence without authority.
• Working familiarity with CPQ (ideally Salesforce CPQ) enough to translate policy decisions into credible system requirements and partner effectively with config/technical teams.
• Self-directed operator who can walk into an ambiguous, in-flight effort, create structure fast, and deliver within a short engagement.

Nice to have

• Experience at a high-growth B2B SaaS or enterprise software company.
• Experience standing up or scaling a Deal Desk or quoting function.
• Exposure to NPI / product launch and how new products enter the quoting flow.
• Engagement details
• Contract role, approximately 3 months, based in Palo Alto, CA.
• Embedded with the CPQ & NPI Operations team within Product Operations.
• Focused on scaling quoting and removing friction policy diagnosis and alignment first, system-change requirements second.