Finance Business Partner

Digital Science is hiring a Finance Business Partner to support its Academic/GFN segment and Sales and Marketing teams. The role owns financial reporting, revenue and ARR validation, budgeting and forecasting, and provides analysis and decision support to business leaders.

Responsibilities:

• Review monthly financial accounts in detail, identify material corrections and explain key variances
• Provide commentary on results with business context, and highlight where the business needs to act
• Produce clear monthly reporting for each business area, review it with them, and hold them accountable for delivering agreed actions
• Understand monthly revenue in detail and make sure reported revenue aligns with sales activity
• Validate reported ARR each month by working closely with the business and understanding the segment’s sales activity
• Spot where the business needs to act to improve performance, for example delayed renewals
• Understand the status and lifecycle of non-recurring revenue on the books
• Lead cost, revenue and headcount forecasting and budgeting for your business areas, meeting all guidelines and timelines
• Explain changes in the business clearly using charts, tables and waterfalls with the right context
• Challenge assumptions such as cost growth and hiring timing to build a robust forecast that doesn’t need major rework
• Give the business a monthly view of expected landing positions so corrective action or early warnings can be raised
• Make sure allocations to segments are accurate and any changes are understood and explainable
• Support the business with robust analysis, flexible financial models and clear explanations across
• Pricing strategies
• Business cases, for example new products or restructuring
• Trends
• Accounting treatment
• Other business questions
• Review existing ways of working and drive changes that improve output or efficiency
• Share best practice with the wider team
• Take ownership of issues and drive them to a satisfactory resolution
• Identify where systems could be used more for control and automation

Requirements:

• Finance business partnering experience across both cost and revenue areas
• Experience delivering discrete budgets and forecasts for specific business areas, on time and to target
• Sound understanding of ARR, sales processes and revenue recognition principles
• Ability to work with imperfect data and still reach robust conclusions
• Strong modeling and analytical skills, with the ability to turn granular data into clear, decision-useful recommendations
• Ability to build credibility with senior stakeholders and challenge them
• Driven, inquisitive and collaborative, with initiative and a strong sense of ownership
• Professional finance qualification (CIMA, ACCA, ACA or CPA), or 5+ years of relevant experience
• candidates who reside in the USA, where we have an established legal entity
• Experience in a SaaS business
• Experience with NetSuite and Anaplan