Director of Financial Planning and Analysis (New York)
The Director, Financial Planning & Analysis (“Director, FP&A”) is a senior leader within the FP&A function, partnering directly with the VP, FP&A to own the company’s planning, analysis, and reporting agenda. The role spans reporting, forecasting and budgeting, strategic FP&A, and cash management. This individual owns all of these, from the long-range financial model, the annual budget, the rolling forecast, and the headcount plan to monthly management reporting and quarterly Board and investor materials, driving automation throughout and developing a team of two Financial Analysts. This is a senior, high-autonomy role. Work product is expected to be complete, accurate, and executive-ready without review. Models, analyses, and decks produced by this individual will be circulated directly to the CEO, the executive team, the Board, and external capital partners. The Director is expected to take ambiguous problems, define the approach, build the answer, and defend the conclusion. It is also a high-exposure role with direct access to the C-suite and to Archwest’s investors. The Director will have regular conversations with the CEO, CFO, and COO, as well as with our investors, and will work directly on deliverables and analyses for each of these stakeholders. Success requires the presence, judgment, and communication skills to engage credibly with that audience on a routine basis. Essential Duties, Responsibilities & Qualifications Reporting: • Lead quarterly Board and investor reporting, partnering with the CFO and executive team on the narrative and producing final, presentation-quality materials. • Own the monthly management reporting package end to end: results, budget-to-actual and forecast variance, KPI reporting, and written commentary on what happened, why, and what it means going forward. • Deliver monthly reporting to department heads and business unit leaders, translating results into operating decisions and holding leaders accountable to their plans. • Define, calculate, and govern the company’s KPI set so definitions are consistent, sourced from systems of record, and trusted across the organization. • Partner with Accounting to ensure reporting reconciles to the general ledger and the close and reporting calendar is met. Forecasting & Budgeting: • Drive the annual budget from the bottom up: set the calendar and templates, run departmental input sessions, challenge assumptions, consolidate the plan, and present the recommendation to executive leadership and the Board. • Own and continually update the long-range financial model, including architecture, loan-level and portfolio drivers, capital structure, revenue and expense builds, the linked three-statement output, version control, and documentation. • Build and maintain the rolling forecast and reforecast cycle, translating actual results and pipeline into a credible forward view of earnings, liquidity, and capital needs. • Own headcount and compensation modeling: position-level plans, hiring timing, fully loaded cost, and the link between headcount decisions and the operating plan. • Create and defend scenario and sensitivity analyses across origination volume, pricing, credit performance, cost of capital, and expense levels. Strategic FP&A: • Lead ad hoc analyses for the CEO, CFO, and COO, including new product and channel economics, strategic partnerships, capital markets execution alternatives, buy-versus-build decisions, and vendor and cost initiatives. Frame the question, source the data, and deliver the recommendation. • Own the loan sizing and pricing tools, including underwriting economics, return thresholds, and the logic connecting deal-level pricing to enterprise profitability. • Own the origination commission and incentive compensation models, running plan design scenarios, quantifying cost, and partnering with Sales leadership and Accounting on calculation and payout. • Serve as the firm’s modeling authority, building and stress-testing models that withstand executive, Board, and third-party diligence. • Support diligence requests from lenders, rating agencies, investors, and prospective capital partners with accurate, well-supported analysis. Cash Management: • Spearhead cash management for the firm: know where our money is at all times, forecast it, and drive the decisions that protect and deploy it. • Build and maintain the liquidity forecast across facilities, loan fundings, payoffs, debt service, and operating needs. • Partner with Capital Markets to secure the best available financing for our assets, evaluating facility economics, advance rates, and cost of capital. • Quantify the earnings and liquidity impact of financing alternatives and recommend a course of action. Automation: • Continually automate reporting, forecasting, and analysis, eliminating manual work through better data flows, tooling, and process design. • Own the ongoing build-out, configuration, and administration of the FP&A planning platform: integrations, dimensional structure, driver logic, security, and adoption. • Migrate planning, forecasting, reporting, and headcount processes out of spreadsheets and into the platform. • Partner with Accounting, Technology, and data owners to maintain a single source of truth across the loan system of record, the general ledger, and the planning platform. Lead and Develop the Team: • Manage, coach, and develop two Financial Analysts: set priorities, allocate work, establish quality standards, and review output before it leaves the function. • Teach. Raise the technical modeling, analytical, and communication capability of the team through direct instruction and hands-on review. • Set and enforce modeling, formatting, and presentation standards. Every schedule, output, and slide leaving the function should be polished, consistent, and ready to circulate to executives, the Board, and investors as produced. • Build the operating rhythm of the function: process documentation, calendars, checklists, and controls that make output repeatable and reliable. • Operate with independence and judgment, identifying what needs to be done and driving it to completion without direction. • Other duties as assigned. Qualifications To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. • Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, or a related quantitative field. • Minimum of 10 years of progressive experience in FP&A, corporate finance, investment banking, private equity, or management consulting, including experience in a high-growth or startup environment. • Top-tier financial modeling skills, with demonstrated ability to independently architect and build complex, driver-based, three-statement and operating models from a blank page. • Demonstrated ownership of a bottom-up annual budget and long-range plan for a company or a significant business unit. • Experience producing monthly management reporting and Board-level materials, including written commentary and executive presentation. • Strong command of financial statements, GAAP, unit-level economics, and liquidity and cash flow management. • Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to present to and hold credibility with executives, Board members, and investors. • Proven ability to operate autonomously on ambiguous problems, structuring the question, sourcing the data, and delivering a defensible answer without direction or rework. • Demonstrated ability to manage competing priorities and deliver under tight deadlines without sacrificing accuracy. • Expert-level proficiency in Excel and PowerPoint, with a high standard for the presentation and formatting of finished work. Preferred Qualifications • Prior people management experience, including developing analysts and reviewing their work. • Hands-on experience implementing, administering, or working within an FP&A planning platform (e.g., Aleph, Pigment, Planful, Anaplan, Adaptive Insights, Vena, or similar). • Experience in specialty finance, private credit, real estate lending, mortgage, banking, or another balance-sheet-intensive business. • MBA or CFA. • Experience with incentive compensation and sales commission plan design and modeling. • Working knowledge of SQL, Power BI, Tableau, or comparable data and business intelligence tools. • Entrepreneurial mindset. A builder who improves the process while running it, and who is comfortable being both the strategist and the hands-on operator. Salary range for this position will be $180,000 to $210,000
