Introduction

The Senior Director of FP&A is a critical finance leadership role at Optimizely, responsible for shaping the company's financial narrative and driving the planning infrastructure that connects strategy to execution. This role owns the full-cycle financial planning process — budgeting, forecasting, and reporting — and partners directly with the executive team to inform decision-making at the highest level.

You'll lead a team of four Finance Business Partners (each embedded across key business units) and three Senior Financial Analysts, building a high-performing, data-led function. You'll also play a key role in Optimizely's exit readiness program and the AI transformation of the FP&A function.

Job Responsibilities

Financial planning and forecasting

• Own the annual budgeting and forecasting process across all functions, ensuring alignment with company strategy and executive direction.

• Manage and continuously optimize the financial forecasting structure within Adaptive, including model architecture, driver logic, and planning workflows.

• Enforce the monthly close calendar, partnering with Accounting to ensure timely and accurate reporting.

• Lead monthly financial updates to the CFO, delivering clear, concise performance narratives with actionable insights.

Financial statement ownership

• Own consolidated financial statement reporting across the Income Statement, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow Statement.

• Ensure all reporting is accurate, audit-ready, and aligned to management accounts standards.

• Prepare quarterly financial reviews for the Board of Directors, translating complex financial data into clear executive-level storytelling.

Business partnering and cross-functional leadership

• Lead four Finance Business Partners, each aligned to a distinct business unit, providing coaching, workload management, and strategic direction.

• Collaborate closely with the executive team on financial planning decisions, investment trade-offs, and performance course-corrections.

• Manage the company's investment request process — evaluating, prioritizing, and tracking all significant capital and expense proposals.

• Support all operational efficiency initiatives, providing financial modeling and scenario analysis to guide decisions.

Exit readiness and strategic support

• Support the company's exit readiness program, ensuring financial processes, controls, and documentation meet the standards required for a future transaction.

• Provide ad hoc financial analysis and modeling to support strategic initiatives, M&A diligence, and board-level requests.

AI transformation and innovation

• Lead the AI transformation of the FP&A function, identifying, piloting, and scaling AI-powered tools and workflows across planning, reporting, and analysis.

• Drive the team toward data-led decision support — building repeatable, scalable analytical frameworks that reduce reliance on manual processes.

• Act as an internal champion for modern finance tooling, including Adaptive, and continuously raise the bar on how the team uses technology.

Team development and leadership

• Mentor and develop the Finance Business Partners, building their strategic capabilities, executive presence, and analytical skill sets.

• Foster a high-performance culture grounded in accountability, intellectual curiosity, and continuous improvement.

• Act as a connector across the finance team, ensuring the Sr. Financial Analysts supporting each FBP are well-directed and growing in their roles.

Knowledge and Experience

Experience

• 10+ years in FP&A or corporate finance, with at least 3 years in a senior leadership role managing finance teams.

• Proven track record owning full P&L, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow reporting in a complex, multi-entity environment.

• Experience presenting financial results and outlook to board-level or C-suite audiences.

• Background supporting or leading a company through an exit, IPO, or M&A process is strongly preferred.

• Hands-on experience with Adaptive (Workday Adaptive Planning) — including model design and planning structure — is a strong advantage.

Skills and capabilities

• Exceptional financial modeling and analytical skills, with the ability to synthesize large datasets into concise, decision-ready insights.

• Strong executive communication skills — you can tell a financial story clearly in a board meeting or a Slack message.

• Deep experience with budgeting processes, business partnering, and cross-functional stakeholder management.

• Demonstrated ability to lead AI adoption and drive automation within a finance team.

• High proficiency with Excel and financial planning systems; working knowledge of Power BI or similar data visualization tools is a plus.

• Ability to manage competing priorities across a broad remit without losing focus on the details that matter.

How success is measured

In this role, strong performance looks like:

• Monthly close calendar is consistently met with zero surprises in the CFO pack.

• Budget and forecast variance is well-understood, well-documented, and communicated proactively.

• Board quarterly reviews are delivered on time, accurate, and praised for clarity.

• Finance Business Partners are growing, engaged, and widely valued by their business unit stakeholders.

• AI and automation initiatives meaningfully reduce manual FP&A effort and improve insight quality.

• The investment request process is structured, transparent, and influences resource allocation decisions.

• Exit readiness workstreams are on track and the finance function is audit-ready at any point.

Education

Bachelor's in Finance / Accounting. MBA ideal but not required.