Circular IT Specialist

Job description

Circular IT Specialist Function: IT Sustainability Centre of Excellence Reports to: Head of Global IT Sustainability (with strong matrix alignment to Global IT Operations, Procurement, Supply Chain, Security, Legal and Compliance) Location: India/Canada/US Role Summary The Circular IT Specialist is the global process owner and strategic program lead for embedding circular economy principles across the end-to-end IT hardware lifecycle. The role translates enterprise sustainability commitments into operating standards, governance controls, vendor requirements, and measurable outcomes across planning, sourcing, deployment, support, redeployment, recovery, and end-of-life disposition. This role supports a large, multinational IT environment with distributed operations, regional regulatory complexity, and a broad supplier ecosystem. The Lead partners across IT Operations, IT Asset Management (ITAM), Procurement, Supply Chain, Finance, Information Security, Privacy, Legal, Internal Audit, and Sustainability to increase asset longevity, reduce virgin material demand, improve recovery value, strengthen chain-of-custody controls, and ensure compliant management of e-waste and cross-border asset flows. The role also serves as the enterprise subject matter lead for circular IT governance, vendor performance, and global regulatory monitoring related to asset disposition, environmental compliance, and producer responsibility obligations. Core Mandate • Operationalize enterprise circular IT strategy across global IT asset lifecycle processes. • Establish governance, standards, and controls that make reuse, refurbishment, redeployment, and compliant recovery the default path wherever feasible. • Strengthen vendor management across ITAD, refurbishment, leasing, logistics, maintenance, and recycling partners. • Monitor and interpret global asset, e-waste, and environmental regulations that affect IT hardware lifecycle activities, and convert those requirements into operational controls, policy updates, and vendor expectations. • Deliver measurable business value through cost avoidance, residual value recovery, reduced waste, improved reporting quality, and lower lifecycle emissions. Key Responsibilities Strategy and Operating Model • Lead the design and continuous evolution of the global circular IT asset lifecycle strategy in alignment with enterprise sustainability, IT operations, procurement, and finance objectives. • Define the target operating model for circular asset management across device planning, acquisition, deployment, break/fix, refresh, redeployment, collection, disposition, and reporting. • Establish enterprise standards for circular by defaultdecision-making, including repair before replace, redeploy before buy new, and refurbish/resell before recycle where risk, cost, and performance requirements allow. • Build the roadmap, policies, and implementation priorities needed to scale circular practices consistently across regions, business units, and managed service environments. Lifecycle Governance and Process Design • Own end-to-end lifecycle process standards for laptops, desktops, monitors, peripherals, mobile devices, network hardware, and other in-scope IT assets. • Partner with ITAM, CMDB, endpoint engineering, service desk, field support, and regional IT teams to embed circular checkpoints into operational workflows and control points. • Define minimum data requirements for asset traceability, disposition coding, chain of custody, reuse eligibility, residual value capture, component harvesting, and verified downstream treatment. • Identify leakage points where assets are lost, held too long, bypass approved channels, or move to disposal prematurely, then implement corrective actions. Vendor Management and Partner Performance • Own the circular IT vendor governance framework for ITAD providers, refurbishers, recyclers, logistics partners, leasing firms, reverse logistics vendors, repair providers, and other lifecycle partners. • Define vendor selection criteria, due diligence requirements, contractual controls, service-level expectations, audit rights, reporting standards, and escalation paths in partnership with Procurement, Legal, Security, and Compliance. • Lead ongoing business reviews with strategic vendors covering reuse rates, refurbishment yields, resale recovery, on-time collections, chain-of-custody quality, data destruction assurance, downstream transparency, environmental performance, worker protections, and regulatory compliance. • Monitor vendor certifications, permits, subcontractor controls, insurance, geographic coverage, and evidence of compliance with applicable recycling, transport, and waste-handling obligations. • Evaluate market capabilities and emerging partner models to improve circular outcomes, cost efficiency, risk management, and reporting maturity. Global Regulatory Monitoring and Compliance • Establish and maintain a structured monitoring process for global asset, e-waste, waste shipment, recycling, right-to-repair, battery, producer responsibility, and related environmental regulations affecting IT asset lifecycle activities. • Translate regulatory developments into actionable requirements for internal policies, standard operating procedures, approved vendor controls, training content, and contracting language. • Partner with Legal, Compliance, Trade, Privacy, and Security teams to assess regulatory impacts on cross-border returns, asset transfers, storage, remarketing, recycling, and destruction practices. • Maintain a regulatory obligations register and control framework covering jurisdiction-specific requirements, renewal deadlines, reporting obligations, permit dependencies, and evidence-retention expectations. • Support internal audits, customer inquiries, and external assurance activities by ensuring complete documentation of material asset flows, treatment outcomes, and co