Sr. Financial Analyst / Manager - R&D Finance

📋 Description

• • Zapier is seeking a highly analytical and strategic finance professional to join our Strategic Finance team as a Sr. Financial Analyst / Manager, R&D Finance. This pivotal role involves embedding directly within our dynamic product and engineering organizations to champion financial accountability, optimize resource allocation, and empower data-driven decision-making across our entire R&D portfolio. You will be instrumental in shaping the financial strategy that underpins our innovation and product development, ensuring that every investment aligns with our long-term growth objectives and operational efficiency goals.
• • As a dedicated finance partner to R&D, you will translate complex technical roadmaps and engineering initiatives into robust financial frameworks. Your expertise will guide leadership in understanding the financial implications of strategic choices, enabling them to make informed decisions about where to invest time, talent, and capital. This is an opportunity to make a significant impact by ensuring our R&D investments are both impactful and sustainable, driving the future of Zapier's product offerings.
• • The core of this role focuses on R&D partnership, but your contributions will extend to broader corporate finance initiatives. You will play a key role in preparing executive and board-level reporting, contributing valuable insights to competitive intelligence efforts, and actively participating in strategic planning processes. This holistic involvement ensures you gain a comprehensive understanding of Zapier's financial landscape and contribute to its overall strategic direction.
• • A significant aspect of your responsibilities will involve owning R&D financial planning and analysis. This includes leading the forecasting, budgeting, and variance analysis for all R&D expenditures. You will meticulously track and manage costs related to headcount, cloud infrastructure (specifically AWS), essential tooling, and the rapidly evolving landscape of AI-related expenses. Your proactive approach will ensure that R&D spend is managed efficiently and effectively.
• • You will be tasked with modeling and managing cloud and infrastructure economics. This involves building and maintaining sophisticated models to clearly articulate cloud costs, identify key usage drivers, analyze unit economics, and understand scaling behaviors. A critical part of this will be partnering closely with our technical teams to enhance cost visibility, implement cost-saving measures, and drive overall efficiency in our cloud operations.
• • Furthermore, you will analyze and support strategic AI investments. This entails evaluating and tracking all AI-related expenditures, whether internal development or third-party vendor costs. You will be responsible for assessing the return on investment (ROI) and trade-offs associated with these investments, providing critical support for decision-making as AI adoption scales across our product suite and internal operations.
• • You will drive strategic insights for R&D leadership by identifying key trends, potential risks, and opportunities for optimization across the entire R&D spend spectrum. Your ability to translate complex cost drivers into clear, actionable recommendations will be crucial for leadership’s strategic planning and execution.
• • Developing scalable, decision-ready financial models is a key deliverable. You will build flexible and robust models designed to support scenario planning, capacity planning, and long-term investment decisions that are intrinsically linked to our product growth trajectory and technical architecture evolution.
• • Your role will also involve supporting executive and board-level reporting. This means preparing clear, concise, and insightful materials that effectively communicate R&D performance, the dynamics of cloud and AI costs, and the forward-looking implications for the company's overall strategy.
• • Continuous improvement of our tools, processes, and data quality is essential. You will actively seek ways to enhance forecasting accuracy, automate reporting tasks where feasible, and refine the flow of R&D, cloud, and AI cost data into our FP&A systems and decision-making frameworks. This focus on operational excellence will ensure our financial processes are as efficient and effective as our product.
• • This role is fully remote, and we are seeking candidates who are comfortable working within North American time zones (Pacific Time to Eastern Time). We are committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive work environment where all employees feel valued and empowered. Zapier believes that diverse perspectives lead to better products and a stronger company, and we encourage applications from individuals of all backgrounds and identities. We are an equal-opportunity employer and welcome all qualified applicants, including those with criminal histories, consistent with applicable laws. We also prioritize data privacy and are committed to providing reasonable accommodations for individuals with disabilities during the application and interview process.