Marketing Financial Operations Manager

Instacart is transforming the grocery industry by helping people access groceries and household goods while creating flexible earning opportunities for personal shoppers. The Marketing Financial Operations Manager will own the full Marketing spend operating model, coordinate with Finance, Accounting, and Procurement, improve spend governance, and build AI-assisted workflows for financial operations.

Responsibilities:

• Own the full Marketing spend operating model across the total portfolio — including templates, spend cadences, actuals integration, and leadership reporting
• Serve as the primary liaison between Marketing and Finance, Accounting, and Procurement — managing the monthly close process, accrual accuracy, and spend-to-plan reconciliation with rigor and speed
• Maintain a unified, real-time view of spend health across all Marketing leads — surfacing risks, flagging execution gaps, and identifying reallocation opportunities before they become leadership problems
• Engage directly with budget owners to validate assumptions, pressure-test spend commitments, and ensure line items reflect what teams are actually going to do — not just what they've planned
• Build and maintain AI-assisted workflows that reduce manual effort in recurring spend processes — actuals tagging, variance reporting, spend updates — and continuously identify new automation opportunities
• Produce decision-ready outputs for Marketing leadership and cross-functional partners — not just accurate data, but synthesized narratives that make tradeoffs clear
• Partner with Finance and Procurement to streamline purchasing and approval processes, improve spend governance, and ensure portfolio integrity across all categories

Requirements:

• 5+ years of experience in FP&A, marketing operations, or a related strategic operations function
• Demonstrated experience owning a full spend portfolio end-to-end — not just contributing to one
• Strong command of financial modeling, variance analysis, and spend accuracy improvement
• Track record of building or automating recurring financial workflows — with specific examples of manual work eliminated
• Hands-on experience applying AI tools to financial or operational workflows — not just awareness, but actual implementation
• Proven ability to manage relationships with Finance, Accounting, Procurement, and marketing stakeholders — including holding partners accountable for inputs and timelines
• Operates proactively — surfaces risks and blockers before being asked, and drives resolution without requiring escalation
• High attention to detail with the judgment to know when a number needs a conversation, not just a correction
• Specific marketing exposure — familiarity with how marketing spend decisions translate across different spend categories and what drives portfolio-level tradeoffs
• Proficiency with AI tools and automation platforms applied to financial workflows, namely leveraging Claude to build key agentic workflows and dashboards
• Experience with financial planning systems, including Pigment
• Background working in marketing within high-growth technology companies