Overview
This role is part of the Finance team focused on Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) supporting the Research & Development (R&D) organization. The position involves partnering closely with R&D leadership to provide financial analysis and insights that guide product investment decisions, cloud hosting infrastructure costs, and product line performance as the product portfolio scales.
Responsibilities
- Own the annual budget and rolling forecasts for the R&D organization, including engineering headcount, contractor spend, software/tooling, and allocated infrastructure costs.
- Act as the day-to-day finance partner for R&D, addressing budget questions, modeling one-off scenarios, and providing financial clarity for leadership decisions.
- Build business case models for R&D investments, new product development, platform initiatives, and major capability builds, including projected costs, revenue assumptions, and payback periods.
- Model investment tradeoffs for R&D leadership and track actual performance of approved investments against original business cases.
- Support growth and profitability target-setting by modeling how R&D investment levels translate into product capability timelines and downstream revenue potential.
- Own cloud hosting cost reporting and forecasting, tracking actuals by product line against budget and maintaining a forward-looking model reflecting planned usage growth.
- Identify optimization opportunities across the cloud portfolio, including idle resources, over-provisioned environments, and commitment vs. on-demand mix; collaborate with engineering on cost implications of architectural decisions.
- Build and maintain product-level profit and loss (P&L) statements for key product lines covering Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR), recognized revenue, gross margin, and associated R&D and Go-To-Market (GTM) investments.
- Contribute product line P&L, ARR, and pipeline performance data to executive and board-level reporting.
Requirements
- 5–8 years of experience in FP&A, corporate finance, or a closely related analytical role within a SaaS or technology company; experience supporting R&D and GTM finance is a strong plus.
- Demonstrated expertise in core FP&A disciplines including budgeting, forecasting, headcount modeling, and variance analysis, preferably with R&D cost structures.
- Familiarity with cloud infrastructure economics and ability to build cost models around cloud hosting portfolios.
- Deep understanding of SaaS revenue metrics such as ARR, Net Revenue Retention (NRR), pipeline velocity, close rates, gross margin, Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), and Lifetime Value (LTV), with the ability to build rigorous, defensible models and narratives.
- Experience building and owning product-level P&L models, including revenue, Cost of Goods Sold (COGS), gross margin, and investment allocation.
- Proficiency in using AI tools as part of daily workflow for financial modeling, research, data analysis, or drafting, with sound judgment to validate outputs.
- Ability to work effectively in environments with incomplete data, evolving definitions, or maturing infrastructure, producing credible and actionable analysis.
- Strong communication skills to translate complex financial analysis into clear narratives for non-finance audiences, providing insights and recommendations.
Preferred Qualifications
- Comfortable producing clear, structured analysis in environments with incomplete or evolving data.
- Skilled at applying cloud infrastructure cost frameworks to unit economics and product-level profitability analysis.
- Experienced in proactively engaging stakeholders early, anticipating questions, and delivering recommendations.
Measures of Success
Within the first month:
- Develop a working understanding of the R&D cost structure, cloud hosting landscape, and product portfolio.
- Meet key stakeholders across R&D, Product, Sales, and Finance; initiate dialogue on reporting gaps and priorities.
- Take ownership of at least one existing reporting segment and manage it independently.
Within three months:
- Own R&D financial reporting with actionable insights and analysis.
- Build a cloud hosting unit economics model tracking hosting costs across the portfolio, enabling real-time assessment of rate or volume spikes, product-level profitability visibility, and optimization discussions with engineering.
- Analyze product-level ARR and pipeline reports regularly to derive insights tied to product investments.
Within six months:
- Provide financial analysis that directly informs R&D investment or prioritization decisions.
- Proactively identify financial risks and opportunities from product investments to GTM product-line performance, offering recommendations to adjust or accelerate initiatives.
- Become a trusted stakeholder across R&D, Product, Sales, and Finance by understanding and driving the end-to-end process from product investment to GTM execution.
Compensation & Benefits
- Base salary range: $96,000 to $120,000 per year, determined by experience, skills, and location.
- This position is not eligible for commission-based compensation.
- Competitive total rewards package including bonus potential, equity for eligible roles, a monthly Flex Fund stipend, pension/401k plans, and additional benefits.
- Flexible benefits program designed to support diverse needs and life circumstances, including comprehensive health coverage and time off.
Location
Not specified.