FP&A Manager

Role Overview

Watchfire is seeking an experienced FP&A Manager to lead financial planning, forecasting, and performance analysis for a PE-backed manufacturing business. This role will serve as a key partner to the CFO and senior leadership, providing insight into financial performance, operational drivers, and forward-looking decision support.

In addition to core FP&A responsibilities, this role will manage the Project Estimation function, ensuring accurate costing, margin visibility, and alignment between estimating, operations, and finance.

Key Responsibilities

Financial Planning & Forecasting

• Own the annual budget, quarterly reforecast, and long-range planning processes
• Develop rolling forecasts for revenue, EBITDA, capital expenditures, and cash flow
• Partner with operations and sales to understand volume, backlog, pricing, and margin drivers

Management Reporting & Analysis

• Prepare monthly management reporting with clear variance analysis and insights
• Track and analyze KPIs across manufacturing, gross margin, SG&A, and working capital
• Identify risks and opportunities and provide actionable recommendations

Manufacturing & Costing Focus

• Analyze standard costing, labor efficiency, overhead absorption, and inventory trends
• Support margin improvement initiatives through detailed product, project, and customer analysis
• Ensure financial alignment between estimating assumptions and actual results

Project Estimation Management

• Manage the Project Estimation function, including oversight of estimating accuracy and processes
• Partner with Operations and Sales to ensure estimates reflect true cost structure and capacity realities
• Analyze estimate vs. actual performance and drive continuous improvement in bidding accuracy

PE & Executive Support

• Support CFO with board materials, lender reporting, and PE sponsor requests
• Provide ad hoc analysis related to capital investments, operational initiatives, or M&A activity

Systems & Process Improvement

• Improve FP&A and estimation models, tools, and reporting
• Leverage ERP and financial systems to enhance forecasting accuracy and visibility
• Standardize and automate reporting where possible

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Accounting
• CPA designation
• 5-8+ years of experience in FP&A within a manufacturing environment
• Strong financial modeling and Excel skills
• Experience working with standard costing, inventory, and operational metrics
• Ability to communicate financial insights to non-financial leaders

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in a PE-backed or leveraged environment
• Prior experience supporting project-based or engineered-to-order manufacturing

Benefits

• Medical
• Dental
• Vision
• Company Paid Life/ADD
• Voluntary Life/ADD
• Dependent Life/ADD
• 401k with Employer Match
• Vacation
• Personal Time

* Watchfire is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All aspects of employment including the decision to hire, promote, discipline, or discharge, will be based on merit, competence, performance, and business needs.

Equal Opportunity Employer/Protected Veterans/Individuals with Disabilities
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