Finance Manager; Cost & Operations Analytics

VAST Data is seeking a Finance Manager to join our Operations Finance team as a core contributor in our mission to move from a reactive state to a stable, automated, and scalable infrastructure. You will own the foundational FP&A for hardware service operations, with a primary strategic mandate to lead the transition from manual data processes to automated financial integration. This role requires a professional who thrives in an outcome-focused environment, is highly analytical and can operate independently while integrating seamlessly across cross‑functional teams.

• Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A)
• Budgeting & Tracking:
  Own the end‑to‑end FP&A for Operations, including OPEX and COGS management.
• Headcount Management:
  Manage hiring and headcount tracking for the Operations organization.
• CM Program Costs:
  Lead the budgeting and tracking of costs incurred at Contract Manufacturers (CMs).
• Validation:
  Own the actual Purchase Price Variance (PPV) analysis for vendor partners.
• Close Partnership:
  Partner closely with accounting to ensure timely and accurate reporting of actual results.
• Strategic Operational Modeling
• Depot Economics:
  Own the Depot Economics Model and lead financial analysis for all New Depot requests.
• Inventory Analysis:
  Manage Service Inventory financial modeling and provide insights into inventory‑related costs.
• Evaluate third‑party service providers:
  Compare outsourcing versus in‑house execution based on cost, efficiency, and operational impact.
• Unit economics of hardware support costs.
• Data Stewardship & Automation
• ETL Transformation:
  Act as the steward for manual Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) processes across Ops Finance, driving their integration into automated data environments.
• Scalability:
  Partner with the Team Lead to build stable infrastructure that eliminates manual reporting and improves the accuracy of Service Ops COGS models.
• Quarter End Sales Support
• Service Level Agreements:
  Ensure the team maintains a 24‑hour SLA for hardware pricing, discounts, and CM special terms.
• Special Pricing Requests:
  Support special pricing analysis and decision making

• Comfortable operating in high‑growth, fast‑paced environments with shifting priorities.
• Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Computer Science, Mathematics, or a related field.
• 5+ years of experience in COGS and inventory FP&A, ideally within a hardware supply chain environment.
• Strong analytical and quantitative skills with the ability to distill complex data into actionable insights.
• Proven ability to manage complex work streams with minimal oversight, focusing on results rather than task lists.
• Ability to build documentation that provides transparency and speeds up decision‑making for stakeholders.
• Advanced experience with transitioning from manual reporting into automated dashboards.
• Excellent Excel/Google Sheets skills including pivot tables, nested formulas, INDEX/Match, dynamic ranges, etc. Macros/VBA, scenario analysis & sensitivity modeling. Driver‑based forecast models (lead – pipeline – sales – revenue – cash). Ability to pull from databases (Net Suite).
• Familiarity with BI tools (e.g. Tableau).