SAM - Lead

Company Description

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 Team:

Job Description

The Opportunity: 

What Your Impact Will Be: 

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 to all our brands, partners, and suppliers.

Job Description

Position Summary

The Software Asset Management (SAM) Lead – India Technology Center (MTIC) serves as the senior operational and functional lead supporting Mattel’s global Software Asset Management capability.

This is a hands-on SAM leadership role responsible for helping coordinate day-to-day service delivery while independently performing complex SAM work across publishers, licensing models, software requests, Effective License Positions (ELPs), compliance, optimization, audits, renewals, data quality, and operational governance.

The SAM Lead serves as a key point of continuity between the Global SAM Manager and the MTIC SAM team and may act as the delegated functional representative for SAM when the Global SAM Manager is unavailable. The role therefore requires broad SAM experience, sound licensing judgment, strong analytical capability, and the ability to communicate defensible SAM positions to technical teams, Product Owners, Procurement, Finance, Contract Management, leadership, and other stakeholders.

The role provides functional leadership, work coordination, mentoring, quality oversight, and operational direction but does not inherently require formal direct people-management responsibility. Formal people-management responsibilities, if any, will be determined separately by the organizational structure.

The successful candidate must be capable of operating independently within established SAM governance and decision rights while knowing when material licensing, financial, compliance, data, or organizational matters require escalation to the Global SAM Manager.

Location: Hyderabad, India
Department: Global Technology Organization / Partner Strategy
Reports To: Global Software Asset Management Manager
Employment Type: Full-Time

Key Responsibilities

SAM Service Leadership & Operational Continuity

• Serve as the senior day-to-day operational lead for the MTIC SAM service.
• Support execution of the global SAM operating model, governance framework, service standards, priorities, and controls.
• Coordinate operational workload across the MTIC SAM team while remaining actively engaged in SAM service delivery.
• Participate in the shared SAM request queue and independently resolve or appropriately route software licensing, entitlement, compliance, optimization, and governance requests.
• Monitor workload, aging, service risks, dependencies, and operational exceptions and escalate material issues appropriately.
• Provide functional guidance and coaching to SAM analysts while promoting consistent decision-making and service quality.
• Review complex or material SAM work for quality, completeness, and alignment with established standards.
• Maintain service continuity during planned or unplanned absence of the Global SAM Manager.
• Serve as the delegated SAM functional representative when requested or when the Global SAM Manager is unavailable, within established decision rights and escalation thresholds.
• Represent SAM accurately in cross-functional discussions and ensure material decisions requiring Global SAM Manager authority are appropriately escalated.

Publisher & License Governance

• Perform and oversee SAM activities across a broad portfolio of enterprise and SaaS publishers.
• Develop, review, and maintain defensible Effective License Positions using entitlement, deployment, usage, contractual, and publisher data.
• Interpret licensing metrics, product-use rights, subscription terms, and other licensing requirements across multiple publishers and licensing models.
• Support true-ups, renewals, publisher reviews, internal compliance assessments, and software audits.
• Identify licensing exposure, over-deployment, entitlement gaps, data anomalies, and other conditions requiring remediation or escalation.
• Work with SAM analysts to ensure licensing positions are supported by appropriate evidence and documented assumptions.
• Maintain sufficient publisher breadth to support service continuity rather than relying exclusively on single-publisher specialization.

Optimization & Financial Value

• Identify opportunities for software reclamation, rightsizing, reassignment, downgrade, consolidation, and avoidance of unnecessary purchases.
• Support optimization campaigns using usage, assignment, entitlement, workforce, business, and Product Owner information.
• Distinguish legitimate business demand from avoidable consumption and ensure reclamation is used as an optimization control rather than as a substitute for demand management.
• Quantify and document optimization results, cost avoidance, financial exposure, and other SAM value outcomes using approved methodologies.
• Support demand, renewal, and capacity decisions with clear licensing and consumption intelligence.

Discovery, Inventory & Data

• Evaluate whether software inventory, usage, entitlement, identity, and other data used for SAM decisions is sufficiently complete, accurate, current, and reconciled.
• Investigate discrepancies between Flexera, publisher portals, ServiceNow, endpoint sources, workforce information, and other relevant systems.
• Identify material data-quality issues before they affect ELPs, audits, renewals, compliance assessments, optimization, or financial decisions.
• Coordinate remediation with accountable source-system or technical owners rather than silently correcting or accepting unreliable data.
• Clearly communicate data limitations and their impact on SAM conclusions or decisions.
• Support validation of automated data feeds, connectors, and ELP processes before they are relied upon for production SAM decisions.

Software Governance & Lifecycle

• Support software intake and lifecycle governance in accordance with established enterprise policies and decision rights.
• Help ensure software requests follow the appropriate governance pathway based on risk, complexity, business need, existing standards, and licensing requirements.
• Provide SAM licensing and compliance expertise without assuming Product Owner, Procurement, Security, Architecture, or business-demand responsibilities.
• Support appropriate onboarding, ongoing governance, optimization, and retirement of software products.
• Identify recurring request patterns, lifecycle issues, or governance gaps requiring process or leadership attention.

Technology & Automation Enablement

• Work closely with the SAM tooling and automation capability to define business requirements for workflows, integrations, reporting, automated ELPs, reclamation, data-health monitoring, and other SAM automation.
• Support Flexera One, Flexera One SaaS Management, ServiceNow, Nexthink, publisher portals, and other SAM-related technologies from a functional SAM perspective.
• Validate that technology and automation support established SAM business rules and decision requirements.
• Identify repeatable activities that may be simplified or automated while preserving appropriate professional judgment and human review.
• Support adoption of exception-based SAM operations as technology and automation capabilities mature.

Risk, Audit & Compliance

• Support internal and external software audits and compliance reviews.
• Maintain appropriate evidence, documentation, assumptions, and decision traceability supporting material SAM positions.
• Identify and escalate material licensing, contractual, compliance, financial, or data-integrity risks.
• Support remediation activities and verify that identified SAM issues are appropriately resolved.
• Ensure audit and compliance activities remain aligned with established SAM governance and decision rights.

Cross-Functional Partnership

• Work closely with Product Owners, Procurement, Contract Management, Finance, FinOps, Infrastructure, Endpoint, Cloud, Security, GRC, Enterprise Architecture, ServiceNow teams, publishers, and other stakeholders.
• Provide clear, decision-ready SAM intelligence without assuming accountability belonging to another function.
• Support effective handoffs between SAM and adjacent capabilities.
• Identify cross-functional dependencies or ownership gaps that require leadership resolution.
• Communicate SAM positions using clear business language, including position, driver, trend, mitigation, and decision required where appropriate.

Transition, Knowledge Transfer & Team Development

• Participate actively in service transition, knowledge transfer, shadowing, reverse-shadowing, and hyper care activities.
• Validate transferred processes rather than relying solely on walkthrough completion.
• Identify undocumented processes, publisher knowledge, business rules, technical dependencies, and single points of failure.
• Convert transferred knowledge into sustainable documentation, operating procedures, playbooks, and repeatable practices.
• Coach and mentor less-experienced SAM team members and help develop broader publisher and operational capability across the team.
• Promote knowledge sharing so critical SAM expertise does not remain concentrated with individual resources.
• Help establish a resilient team capable of maintaining service continuity across holidays, absences, workload spikes, and transition events.

Functional Authority

The SAM Lead operates with delegated functional authority within the Global SAM operating model.

The role may:

• Provide day-to-day functional direction to SAM analysts.
• Coordinate queue and operational workload.
• Provide guidance on established SAM processes, licensing practices, and business rules.
• Review and challenge SAM analysis and supporting evidence.
• Represent the SAM function in routine cross-functional discussions.
• Make operational SAM decisions within established policies, business rules, and delegated thresholds.
• Escalate material licensing, financial, compliance, data-integrity, contractual, or organizational issues to the Global SAM Manager.
• Act as the senior SAM point of contact when the Global SAM Manager is unavailable.

The role does not independently redefine global SAM policy, accept material enterprise risk, commit Mattel to commercial terms, originate business demand, assume Product Owner responsibilities, or make decisions reserved for the Global SAM Manager or other accountable functions.

 

Qualifications

What We’re Looking For: 

Preferred Qualifications & Experience

Mattel will consider candidates with demonstrated experience and capability across the following areas. Candidates are not expected to have worked with every listed publisher, technology, or scenario; however, the successful candidate must demonstrate sufficient breadth and depth to operate independently as a senior SAM practitioner.

• Significant professional experience in Software Asset Management, IT Asset Management, software licensing, or license compliance within a complex enterprise environment.
• Demonstrated experience serving in a senior, lead, supervisory, or functional-lead capacity.
• Broad experience across multiple enterprise software publishers and licensing models rather than experience limited primarily to a single publisher.
• Demonstrated experience developing or reviewing Effective License Positions, entitlement reconciliations, compliance positions, true-ups, renewals, or software audit responses.
• Strong understanding of software entitlements, deployment, usage, reconciliation, licensing metrics, product-use rights, and subscription or consumption models.
• Experience identifying and delivering software optimization, reclamation, rightsizing, cost avoidance, or financial-value opportunities.
• Experience working with enterprise SAM/ITAM platforms such as Flexera One, ServiceNow SAM/ITAM, Snow, or comparable technologies.
• Experience working with SaaS-management, publisher-portal, inventory, endpoint, or usage-data sources.
• Ability to investigate incomplete, conflicting, or unreliable data rather than relying solely on system-generated results.
• Experience supporting complex enterprise publishers such as Microsoft, Adobe, Oracle, IBM, VMware/Broadcom, Autodesk, Citrix, Red Hat, or comparable publishers.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, documentation, and decision-making capability.
• Ability to coach and mentor analysts and communicate SAM reasoning rather than simply provide answers.
• Ability to communicate complex licensing, financial, compliance, and data issues clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Experience working across global teams, distributed service models, or managed-service environments.
• Demonstrated ability to operate independently while recognizing when material issues require escalation.
• Experience with reporting, analytics, workflow automation, or continuous-improvement initiatives is beneficial.
• Familiarity with Flexera One SaaS Management, Nexthink, ServiceNow, Power BI, or comparable technologies is beneficial.
• Certifications such as CSAM, CHAMP, ITAM Foundation, ITIL, Flexera certifications, or comparable industry credentials are beneficial.
• Bachelor’s degree in information technology, Business, Computer Science, or a related discipline, or equivalent relevant professional experience.

Core Competencies

SAM Judgment
Applies broad SAM knowledge and professional judgment to complex or unfamiliar licensing situations and knows how to establish a defensible position when the answer is not immediately known.

Functional Leadership
Provides direction, coaching, quality oversight, and operational continuity without requiring formal direct-report authority.

Publisher Breadth
Works effectively across multiple publishers and licensing models and can apply SAM methodology to unfamiliar products or scenarios.

Analytical Communication
Communicates position, driver, trend, mitigation, risk, and required decisions clearly to stakeholders and leadership.

Decision Discipline
Understands the boundaries between SAM intelligence, business demand, Product Owner accountability, commercial authority, and enterprise risk acceptance.

Data Judgment
Recognizes that system-generated information must be validated and can distinguish trusted evidence from information requiring further investigation.

Operational Ownership
Takes responsibility for service outcomes, follows issues through resolution, and identifies risks or dependencies before they materially affect delivery.

Coaching & Knowledge Transfer
Develops other practitioners by teaching reasoning and methodology rather than creating dependency on individual expertise.

Cross-Functional Partnership
Works effectively across technical, commercial, financial, security, architectural, and business functions while respecting functional ownership boundaries.

Continuous Improvement
Identifies opportunities to simplify, standardize, automate, and strengthen SAM processes without sacrificing appropriate controls or professional judgment.

What Success Looks Like

Success in this role means:

• The MTIC SAM service operates effectively without requiring the Global SAM Manager to direct every routine activity.
• Analysts have accessible senior functional guidance and coaching.
• Complex or unfamiliar SAM issues can be worked independently and escalated appropriately.
• SAM maintains service continuity when the Global SAM Manager is unavailable.
• ELPs, compliance positions, optimization recommendations, and other material SAM outputs are supported by defensible evidence.
• Queue and operational workload are actively managed and material service risks are surfaced early.
• Knowledge is distributed across the team rather than concentrated with individual resources.
• Junior and developing analysts increase their ability to independently resolve SAM work.
• Cross-functional stakeholders receive consistent and accurate SAM guidance.
• The Global SAM Manager is increasingly able to focus on governance, strategy, Software Intelligence, capability development, and material escalations rather than serving as the default escalation point for routine SAM work.
• The MTIC SAM team becomes a resilient internal capability capable of sustaining the service following transition from the managed service provider.

Additional Information

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

Client-provided location(s): Hyderabad, India

Job ID: d13cd28d-4fe7-4a14-b2b3-7cda9ce81981

Employment Type: OTHER

Posted: 2026-10-29T09:40:40