About You:
You are a finance leader with 12+ years of progressive senior FP&A or strategic finance experience, ideally with real exposure to program-based finance (Estimate At Completion, cost-type contracts, and rate structures). You've spent your career as a builder, not just a maintainer: you've personally designed cost-tracking frameworks, financial models, and process workflows.
You are equally comfortable in a spreadsheet and in a room full of engineers or program managers and are able to translate an ambiguous technical roadmap into a hiring plan, a budget, and a forecast leadership can act on and track against. You don't need a fully-formed process handed to you; you build it, test it, and iterate.
What should excite you about this role: it is a rare two-phase opportunity. Near-term, you build the financial infrastructure for Merlin's Programs and Engineering organizations from the ground up. Long-term, that build converts into full P&L ownership of a product line: a genuine path from builder to business owner.
Responsibilities:
Design and implement FP&A processes for engineering headcount, program costs, R&D spend, and capital allocation
Build financial models that translate engineering roadmaps into resource plans, hiring forecasts, budget commitments, and strategic scenarios
Partner with Engineering and Program Management to enhance our program cost accounting framework: cost tracking and reporting, cost-to-complete reporting, etc.
Define chart-of-accounts conventions, cost center structures, and reporting hierarchies that support program-level visibility
Create the monthly/quarterly operating cadence: actuals reviews, variance analysis, and re-forecast processes for the Programs and Engineering organizations
Deliver reporting and analytics that give leadership real-time insight into burn, capacity, and program financial health
Support the implementation of financial planning tools and systems in partnership with Finance and IT
Support the build and delivery of the annual operating plan and budget
Assume full P&L ownership for an assigned product line, including revenue, gross margin, and operating expense (long-term)
Drive pricing strategy, make-vs.-buy decisions, and resource allocation in partnership with the product line GM (long-term)
Qualifications:
12+ years of progressive finance experience in FP&A, Strategic Finance, or finance business partner roles
Fluent in program finance concepts: EAC, cost-type contracts, and rate structures
Track record of influencing technical leaders through clear financial storytelling
Hands-on builder: has designed and implemented processes and models from scratch
BA/BS in Accounting, Finance, or related field required
Nice to Haves:
Background at a defense, aerospace, SaaS, or hardware-intensive technology company
Costpoint experience
MBA or CPA
Skills Required
- 12+ years progressive finance experience in FP&A, Strategic Finance, or finance business partner roles
- Fluent in program finance concepts: Estimate At Completion (EAC), cost-type contracts, and rate structures
- Track record of influencing technical leaders through clear financial storytelling
- Hands-on experience designing and implementing financial processes, models, and workflows from scratch
- BA/BS in Accounting, Finance, or related field
- Based on-site at Merlin HQ in Boston, MA
- Authorized to work in the United States without visa sponsorship
- Background at a defense, aerospace, SaaS, or hardware-intensive technology company
- Costpoint experience
- MBA or CPA
What We Do
All of the sky, none of the limits. Merlin Labs is building the autonomous infrastructure for the sky above us, enabling goods, and eventually people, to fly without pilots. The Merlin Labs team is building the definitive autonomy system for all things that fly. We’re creating sophisticated software and hardware that fulfill the functions of a human pilot.
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