Will Hays

Summary

Will Hays runs procurement and supply chain at enterprise scale, and he builds the software that makes it work.

At Kirby Corporation, the largest tank-barge operator in the US, he led a sourcing organization of 15, owned $1.1B in combined direct and indirect spend, and designed Kirby's entire procure-to-pay system on Oracle iProcurement and Oracle Financials. He went on to lead category strategy at Halliburton, HP Inc., and Wrist Ship Supply across IT hardware and software, telecom, facilities, professional services, and energy.

He also ships software. Through his company, KyrosWorks, he has designed, built, and released three apps on the App Store and Google Play, plus an AI quoting engine now in private beta. He builds with AI coding agents as a second engineer, which is how one person gets a tested product all the way to release.

The useful part for an employer is the overlap. He has run procurement from the customer side of the software at four large companies, and he knows what implementation looks like from the inside because he has done it, from the requisition screen down to the EDI feed. He holds a JD, and he negotiates contracts and software licenses himself.

What he is looking for

Roles, in rough order of fit:

1. Implementation, professional services, and customer-outcome roles at procurement, spend-management, and contract software companies: post-sale work that gets customers live and gets real value out of the product.
2. Senior procurement, strategic sourcing, and category management roles, especially IT hardware and software, telecom, facilities, professional services, energy, and logistics.
3. Operations and procurement roles at Houston companies that are starting to use AI and want someone who can bring it in and make it stick.
4. Fractional or contract procurement work, and bespoke AI automation projects through KyrosWorks.

Terms:

• Employment type: full-time W-2, 1099 contract, or fractional. Any of them.
• Location: remote anywhere in the US, or on-site or hybrid in Houston, Texas. Open to travel.
• Level: people-leadership or senior individual-contributor roles.

At a glance

Largest spend owned

$1.1B combined direct and indirect (Kirby)

Largest indirect program

$140M (HP)

Largest team

Organization of 15, with 4 direct reports (Kirby)

Categories

IT hardware and software, telecom (data, cell, landline), facilities and real property, professional services, energy, logistics and freight, direct materials

Signature build

End-to-end procure-to-pay on Oracle iProcurement and Oracle Financials, including punch-out catalogs, XML round-trip requisitioning, and EDI to vessels

Software shipped

Three apps live on the App Store and Google Play; one AI quoting engine in private beta

Education

Juris Doctor, University of Maine School of Law; BA cum laude, Sarah Lawrence College

Experience

KyrosWorks LLC

Founder and Principal Engineer · Houston, TX · 2024–present

KyrosWorks builds AI-native software. Will runs it as a working business: an LLC, live product sites, and every step from design to customer support.

• Designed, built, tested, and shipped three apps on both the App Store and Google Play:
  • Open Road Ace, a virtual pace car for open-road races and time-speed-distance rallies. At the Big Bend Open Road Race in April 2026, cars running it reached the podium in the 100, 110, and 130 mph classes, and the 100 mph winner finished 0.016 seconds off a perfect run over 117.86 miles.
  • ChoreKey, a parental-control app where finished chores unlock a child's apps, only at home.
  • Climb Test Prep, an adaptive AI tutor for the digital SAT that remembers each student across sessions.
• Built PROP, an AI quoting engine in private beta that matches free-text customer requests to the right catalog products. A deterministic matching core resolves most lines with no model call, a confidence-gated language model handles the ambiguous rest, and low-confidence lines go to a person. 880+ automated tests.
• Builds agentic AI tooling on the Claude API and the Model Context Protocol: custom tools, retrieval, and structured-extraction pipelines with quality gates before anything ships.
• Offers bespoke AI and workflow automation to mid-size companies.
• Negotiates all of the company's SaaS, cloud, and vendor agreements directly.

Wrist Ship Supply, North America

Senior Supply Chain Manager · Houston, TX · 2023–2026

• Senior supply chain role for the North American branch network of a global ship-supply company.
• Owned procurement for IT hardware and software, telecom, professional services, and facilities.
• Cut the cost of IT tooling, equipment, and materials by 15%.
• Built the supplier performance program: vendor KPIs and compliance monitoring across the supplier base.

HP Inc.

Global Supply Chain Strategist (Category Strategist, Global Indirect Procurement) · Houston, TX · 2021–2023

• Category owner for facilities, professional services, energy, and telecom (data, cell, and landline) in HP's global indirect procurement organization.
• Managed $140M in indirect spend.
• Built the property and facilities category strategy for HP's post-COVID real-estate consolidation and divestment: 4.5 million square feet across 24 states and 3 countries, with $3.4M in first-year savings.
• Worked across a global, matrixed set of stakeholders in Finance, Real Estate, and regional business units.

Halliburton

Senior Supply Chain Manager · Houston, TX · 2020–2021

• Led a sourcing organization supporting large global oil and gas projects.
• Owned facilities, professional services, and telecom (data, cell, and landline).
• Cut energy costs 6% through sustainability and solar sourcing.
• Sold $55M in real property and added $2M to the sale price through the marketing strategy.
• Negotiated vendor contracts across the categories.

Kirby Corporation

Senior Supply Chain Sourcing Manager · Houston, TX · 2012–2020

The senior-most supply chain role at the largest tank-barge operator in the US.

• Led an organization of 15 with 4 direct reports, and owned hiring, coaching, and performance development.
• Global category lead for IT hardware and software, telecom, professional services, and facilities.
• Owned $1.1B in combined direct and indirect spend, including $150M a year in supplies and 100,000 purchase orders a year.
• Designed and implemented Kirby's full procure-to-pay system: Oracle iProcurement integrated with Oracle Financials, with punch-out catalogs, non-catalog XML round-trip requisitioning, and EDI direct to the vessels.
• Cut non-catalog (unmanaged) buying from 15% of spend to under 5%.
• Saved upwards of $20M in supplies cost over five years.
• Cut Oracle buying licenses from 90 to 5, and the PO buyer staff from 15 to 2, at the same transaction volume.
• Negotiated the Oracle software licenses for iProcurement, and negotiated an HRIS system upgrade.
• Built Kirby's vendor-management and supplier-performance framework.
• Cut logistics cost 7% through route optimization and shipment consolidation.

Earlier career

Sales and business development in the marine industry.

Categories by employer

Capabilities and evidence

• Global category strategy: Kirby, Halliburton, HP, Wrist
• People leadership: Kirby (organization of 15, 4 direct reports); Halliburton (sourcing organization)
• Procure-to-pay and source-to-pay system design: Kirby, end to end on Oracle iProcurement and Oracle Financials
• Spend under management: Kirby, unmanaged spend from 15% to under 5%
• Cost reduction: $20M+ over five years (Kirby), $3.4M first year (HP), 15% (Wrist), 6% energy (Halliburton), 7% logistics (Kirby)
• Supplier performance and KPIs: Kirby (vendor-management framework), Wrist (KPI and compliance program)
• Contract and software-license negotiation: every employer; Oracle iProcurement licensing and an HRIS upgrade at Kirby; JD
• Real estate and facilities: HP consolidation and divestment across 24 states and 3 countries; $55M property sale at Halliburton
• Process and organization efficiency: 90 Oracle licenses to 5 and 15 PO buyers to 2 at constant volume (Kirby)
• AI and automation: PROP quoting engine, agentic tooling on the Claude API and Model Context Protocol (KyrosWorks)
• Software delivery: three apps shipped on iOS and Android (KyrosWorks)

Systems and tools

• Procurement and finance: Oracle iProcurement and Oracle Financials (designed and ran the procure-to-pay system), SAP, NetSuite, Tipalti
• Analytics: Power BI, Tableau, advanced Excel
• Software and AI: Python, Swift, Claude API, Model Context Protocol, AI coding agents

Education

Juris Doctor, University of Maine School of Law

Worked for Maine nonprofits throughout law school, including as research manager at True North Health Center, a nonprofit practice and research organization integrating medical care with complementary therapies, and with the school's Center for Law and Innovation (information privacy, cybersecurity, and technology law) and Center for Oceans and Coastal Law.

BA cum laude, Sarah Lawrence College

Vice-chair of the Student Senate; member of the Student Conduct Review Board and the Admissions Committee; volunteer tutor.