Director, Finance of Product & Engineering

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Director, Finance of Product & Engineering based in United States.

This is a high-visibility finance leadership role embedded within a large Product & Engineering organization.
You will serve as a strategic partner to senior technical leaders, connecting product strategy, roadmaps, headcount, and operating spend to financial outcomes.
The role will shape investment decisions, resource allocation, forecasting, and the financial narrative behind product-development economics.
You will strengthen the connection between roadmap execution and P&L performance while improving planning and forecasting rigor.
Working across Finance and technical leadership, you will turn complex operational data into clear, decision-ready insights and recommendations.
This opportunity is ideal for an experienced finance leader who combines strong analytical judgment with executive presence, curiosity, and business partnership skills.
You will also help advance an AI-enabled finance environment by using modern tools to accelerate modeling, reporting, analysis, and decision-making.

Accountabilities

• Serve as the primary finance partner to senior Product & Engineering leaders, supporting budgets, forecasts, roadmaps, and investment decisions.
• Build trusted relationships with technical executives and translate business priorities into financial implications, tradeoffs, and recommendations.
• Own financial plans, forecasts, and long-range views for the organization, ensuring roadmap changes are reflected proactively in headcount and cost expectations.
• Establish and maintain strong roadmap-to-P&L linkage by translating product decisions into forward-looking headcount, cost, and resource-allocation forecasts.
• Partner with leadership on investment prioritization, resource tradeoffs, and portfolio reallocation decisions.
• Develop visibility into product-development economics, including the cost of building and maintaining products and the return generated by major investment areas.
• Lead monthly and quarterly business reviews with clear, driver-based narratives covering performance, risks, opportunities, and required actions.
• Build KPI and assumption frameworks connecting roadmap execution, hiring plans, productivity, and spending performance.
• Produce category forecasts according to established reporting standards and participate in accountability processes.
• Model and stress-test forecast assumptions across rate, volume, timing, and mix, ensuring forecasts are supported by clear underlying drivers.
• Explain variances at the driver level, distinguish timing differences from structural changes, and incorporate appropriate run-rate expectations.
• Identify emerging forecast risks early and work with business leaders on mitigation plans before escalation is required.
• Validate Cost of Revenue cost centers and headcount data for consolidated Finance processes and company-level reporting.
• Partner with adjacent Finance teams on cross-functional initiatives requiring Product & Engineering expertise while maintaining clear ownership boundaries.
• Represent Product & Engineering in FP&A, annual operating planning, and long-range planning processes.
• Ensure executive and business reviews clearly connect strategic decisions, operating performance, financial outcomes, risks, and investment opportunities.

Requirements:

• 10+ years of progressive experience in FP&A, strategic finance, or business-unit finance, ideally supporting Product, Engineering, R&D, or other technical organizations within SaaS or enterprise technology environments.
• Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, or a related field required; MBA, CFA, or CPA preferred.
• Proven experience acting as a direct finance partner to senior business leaders, with the executive presence and judgment to establish credibility with SVP-level stakeholders.
• Strong experience building and owning driver-based forecasting models, including headcount-to-cost, roadmap-to-cost, and resource-planning models.
• Advanced financial modeling, analytical, and problem-solving skills, with the ability to turn ambiguous inputs into structured assumptions, scenarios, and recommendations.
• Ability to challenge assumptions constructively while operating with curiosity, influence, sound judgment, and a strong business-partner mindset.
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