Job Description:
The Commercial Finance Director is the lead Finance representative on the Commercial Leadership Team and owns the Finance agenda for the Commercial organization. As the strategic finance partner to the VP of Commercial, this role provides independent financial leadership, constructive challenge, and an outside-in perspective to shape sourcing strategy and decisions.
The role provides financial leadership across a multi-billion-dollar direct material portfolio and is accountable for translating commodity markets, supplier economics, internal performance, and business plans into clear actions that create sustainable value. This leader guides the Commercial Finance team and establishes the Finance agenda across value creation, productivity governance, supplier economics, forecasting, planning, portfolio decision support, risk management, financial stewardship, and talent development.
The role connects Commercial with Portfolio Growth Teams (PGTs), partnering with PGT leaders and Finance to bring forward-looking perspectives on material cost drivers, supplier and commodity exposure, risks, opportunities, and sourcing trade-offs into portfolio decisions. The role helps ensure sourcing implications are understood early and reflected in growth plans, innovation choices, margin delivery, and portfolio priorities.
Reporting and insight foundations are well established. The next evolution is to use these capabilities more strategically by strengthening the productivity pipeline, improving decision quality, deepening supplier and cost insights, and delivering targeted digital enhancements that make analysis faster, more predictive, and easier to act on.
This role sits at the intersection of Commercial strategy, sourcing execution, portfolio growth, and financial performance. It offers the opportunity to influence some of the business’s most important sourcing and portfolio decisions, shape the value creation agenda across a multi-billion-dollar spend base, partner directly with senior leaders, and build the next generation of Finance talent. Success requires balancing external market dynamics, supplier economics, productivity delivery, supply resilience, and growth ambitions to enable profitable and sustainable growth.
What are we looking for?
Proven finance leadership experience in commercial, procurement, supply chain, manufacturing, or FP&A, with accountability for a significant business or spend portfolio.
Strong business partnering skills, with the ability to influence senior leaders, challenge constructively, and translate analysis into clear decisions and actions.
Strong financial grounding across analysis, modeling, forecasting, planning, performance management, and controls.
Commercial judgment and curiosity about external markets, supplier economics, and sourcing dynamics.
Experience leading and developing teams, setting priorities, building capability, and creating meaningful development opportunities.
Clear, concise executive communication skills, with judgment to focus leaders on the most material risks, opportunities, and decisions.
Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, Business, or a related field. MBA, CPA, CMA, or equivalent qualification is preferred.
What Will Be Your Key Responsibilities?
Commercial Finance Leadership and Business Partnership:Serve as the lead Finance representative on the Commercial Leadership Team, owning the Finance agenda for Commercial and bringing an enterprise perspective to sourcing and business decisions.
Partner with the VP of Commercial and senior Commercial leaders to shape strategy through insight, constructive challenge, and clear financial implications.
Connect Commercial decisions to enterprise, PGT, and financial priorities, including growth, margin, cost, cash, service, quality, resilience, and sustainable value creation.
Lead financial governance of the primes productivity agenda, including pipeline sufficiency, initiative valuation, phasing, risk assessment, validation, and performance tracking.
Translate commodity markets, supplier economics, industry dynamics, and macroeconomic trends into clear implications for Mars.
Partner with Commercial leaders to identify new sources of value across categories, suppliers, specifications, demand, terms, working capital, and sourcing models.
Partner with PGT leaders and PGT Finance to translate sourcing strategies, commodity outlooks, supplier economics, and material cost exposure into portfolio-level financial drivers, risks, and opportunities.
Connect PGT priorities back to Commercial category strategies and help align sourcing actions, productivity plans, and supplier decisions with portfolio needs.
Provide clear scenarios and trade-offs so PGTs can balance growth, profitability, supply resilience, quality, and longer-term value creation.
Lead the primes forecasting and planning agenda, ensuring assumptions are transparent, appropriately challenged, and translated into clear financial outcomes.
Guide analysis of commodity inflation or deflation, productivity, mix, timing, and other drivers, with clear visibility of risks and opportunities.
Lead performance reviews with Commercial and Finance leaders and convert insights into decisions, actions, owners, and follow-through.
Maintain effective oversight of retained period-close activities within the Commercial Finance team while keeping the role primarily focused on forward-looking leadership and value creation.
Ensure accurate financial results, strong governance over assumptions and savings recognition, and timely escalation of material financial risks.
Strengthen reporting, analytics, automation, and AI-enabled enhancements where they improve decision quality, forecasting agility, or efficiency.
Lead, coach, and develop the Commercial Finance team, setting clear priorities, standards, and accountability.
Build capability in financial analysis, commercial acumen, storytelling, business partnering, digital tools, and value creation.
Organize team capacity and ways of working to focus resources on the highest-value priorities while delivering core financial responsibilities.
What can you expect from Mars?
Work with over 130,000 diverse and talented Associates, all guided by The Five Principles.
Join a purpose driven company, where we’re striving to build the world we want tomorrow, today.
Best-in-class learning and development support from day one, including access to our in-house Mars University.
An industry competitive salary and benefits package, including company bonus.
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Skills Required
- Proven finance leadership experience in commercial, procurement, supply chain, manufacturing, or FP&A, with accountability for a significant business or spend portfolio.
- Strong business partnering skills, including influencing senior leaders, constructive challenge, and translating analysis into decisions and actions.
- Strong financial grounding across analysis, modeling, forecasting, planning, performance management, and controls.
- Commercial judgment and curiosity about external markets, supplier economics, and sourcing dynamics.
- Experience leading and developing teams, setting priorities, building capability, and creating development opportunities.
- Clear, concise executive communication skills and judgment to focus leaders on material risks, opportunities, and decisions.
- Bachelor's degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, Business, or a related field.
- MBA, CPA, CMA, or equivalent qualification.
Mars Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Mars and has not been reviewed or approved by Mars.
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Healthcare Strength — The benefits package is positioned as comprehensive, with broad medical coverage and additional protections like life insurance and short- and long-term disability. Mental health support is emphasized, including free mental health services and wellbeing programming under initiatives such as Mars Be Well.
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Parental & Family Support — Paid parental leave is highlighted as market-leading in the U.S., with an example of 18 weeks fully paid for both parents. Additional family-related leave types such as sick time for caregiving and bereavement leave are also described as part of the overall package.
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Retirement Support — Retirement offerings are described as strong, including 401(k) matching (with a 6% match cited) and pension plans in some cases. The broader package also references retirement savings options and contributions aligned to local market practice, supporting long-term financial security.
Mars Insights
What We Do
For more than a century, Mars, Incorporated has been driven by the belief that the world we want tomorrow starts with how we do business today. This idea is at the center of who we have always been as a global, family-owned business. Today, Mars is transforming, innovating and evolving in ways that affirm our commitment to making a positive impact on the world around us. Across our diverse and expanding portfolio of confectionery, food, and petcare products and services, we employ 133,000 dedicated Associates who are all moving in the same direction: forward. With $40 billion in annual sales, we produce some of the world’s best-loved brands including DOVE®, EXTRA®, M&M’s®, MILKY WAY®, SNICKERS®, TWIX®, ORBIT®, PEDIGREE®, ROYAL CANIN®, SKITTLES®, WHISKAS®, COCOAVIA®, and 5™; and take care of half of the world’s pets through our pet health services AniCura, Banfield Pet Hospitals™, BluePearl®, Linnaeus, Pet Partners™, and VCA™. We know we can only be truly successful if our partners and the communities in which we operate prosper as well. The Mars Five Principles – Quality, Responsibility, Mutuality, Efficiency and Freedom – inspire our Associates to take action every day to help create a world tomorrow in which the planet, its people and pets can thrive.
