VP FP&A

Overview

The organization is seeking a VP of Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) to build and lead the FP&A function. Following a significant funding round, the role will translate strategy into agreed company targets, realistic budgets, clear spending priorities, and reliable reporting for executive leadership.

This position reports to the CFO. Over the first six months, you will establish the function; over the following year, you will scale it by building a small team and adding people as workload and data quality justify it. The environment is demanding and not yet fully structured, requiring comfort creating processes from scratch, working with incomplete data, and defending assumptions to the board and investors.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain an integrated financial model, including assumptions, scenarios, documentation, and ongoing updates.
  • Connect pipeline, sales capacity, hiring, production, revenue timing, margins, investment, and cash.
  • Keep the model clean and traceable, with clear units, periods, and reconciliation checks.
  • Be able to explain and update the model live.
• Partner with the CFO and CEO to translate company strategy into financial targets, then convert those targets into:
  • Annual budgets
  • Monthly forecasts
  • Quarterly reviews
  • Ensure targets are agreed before departmental budgets are built so each budget has a clear basis.
• Run the planning process end to end, including:
  • Templates
  • Submission deadlines
  • Challenge sessions
  • Consolidation
  • Version control
  • A repeatable forecasting calendar with named budget owners.
• Deliver monthly management and board reporting reconciled to actuals.
  • Explain results versus budget and forecast.
  • Include cash implications, risks, and recommendations.
  • Clearly label figures as final, provisional, or missing.
  • Maintain a record of open data issues.
• Agree and manage a clear handover of actuals with Accounting and Controlling, including:
  • Required inputs
  • Reconciliation checks
  • Delivery dates
  • Escalation routes.
• Analyse product, contract, and customer economics with Manufacturing, Product, and Accounting.
  • Unit production costs, gross margin, cohort performance, and margin difference drivers.
  • Separate proven costs from estimates and align owners for missing data.
• Link sales forecasts to signed contracts, delivery milestones, recognised revenue, and customer receipts.
  • Keep committed forecasts distinct from closed contracts.
  • Explain changes in amount, stage, timing, and probability.
  • Make government procurement timing and hardware/software delivery risks explicit.
• Track approved budgets versus actuals and committed spending.
  • Monitor remaining funds and projected overruns.
  • Review hiring and investment cases to ensure full cost capture, including first-year cash and ongoing annual cost, with no omissions or double counting.
• Partner with Treasury to maintain a rolling short-term cash forecast and runway view, including:
  • Customer receipts
  • Payroll
  • Suppliers
  • Taxes
  • Restricted cash
  • Entity funding needs.
• Convert plan variances into actionable recommendations (what to fund, defer, reduce, or stop).
  • Maintain a decision log and consolidated approval papers containing: decision needed, options, recommendation, approver, deadline, and work blocked.
• Review spending ratios and cost trends each quarter.
  • Investigate unusual movements with budget owners.
  • Recommend actions with owners and dates while keeping budget owners accountable for their own spend.
• Prepare board and investor financial content within authority agreed with the CFO.
  • Keep the model and supporting evidence ready for future financing or due diligence when requested.
• Hire, onboard, and develop a small FP&A team across locations.
  • Set priorities, review output quality, run regular 1:1s.
  • Build managers who resolve routine FP&A questions without escalating to the CFO.

Requirements

Must-have

• Hands-on financial modelling:
  • You have personally built a model from scratch that stood up to investor scrutiny.
  • You can explain and test every assumption without preparation.
  • You delegate components while maintaining ownership of the model logic and final quality.
• Budgeting and funding experience:
  • You have led, or worked directly under the accountable lead on, the financial work for a major funding round.
  • You have turned strategy into targets, budgets, and corrective action.
  • You can defend assumptions with boards and investors and maintain due-diligence evidence.
• Strong judgment on prioritization and decisions:
  • Focus on the decisions, deadlines, and cash risks that matter most.
  • Drive decisions through concise options, recommendations, owners, and dates.
  • Reduce CFO workload rather than adding review layers.
• Business and spending judgment:
  • Challenge budgets constructively.
  • Expose omitted or duplicated costs.
  • Distinguish healthy growth investment from structural margin or cash problems.
• Reporting discipline:
  • Use reconciled figures, documented definitions, and controlled assumptions.
  • Make data quality and cross-team dependencies visible.
  • Set owners and deadlines with follow-through without unnecessary bureaucracy.
• Commercial understanding of manufacturing, government or defence procurement, deployment costs, and multi-currency operations.
• People leadership:
  • Manage analysts, review their work, set priorities, and develop independent owners.
  • Address weak output through coaching and accountability.
• Hands-on, low ego, and direct:
  • Comfortable under scrutiny and with incomplete data.
  • Work closely with operators and handle sensitive information responsibly.
• Willingness to check any AI-assisted output yourself and to change and explain the model live.

Nice-to-have

• Experience in defence, aerospace, hardware, or another complex manufacturing business.
• Experience building an FP&A function in a fast-growing, post-funding company.
• Experience working across multiple entities, countries, or distributed finance teams.

Compensation & Benefits

Not specified in the provided job description.

Location

Not specified in the provided job description.