Plant Controller

Job Description:

The Plant Controller (Hybrid Plant Finance Leader) is an embedded, on-site FP&A leader who serves as the primary finance partner to plant leadership - supporting the Plant Director and functional leaders with decision-ready financial insight, forecasting, and operational performance management. This role owns the plant-level planning rhythm (budget, forecast, and driver-based outlooks), translates operational drivers into financial outcomes, and drives visibility to risks and opportunities across cost, margin, inventory performance, and capital.

The role is both a people leader for a small plant finance team and an individual contributor, and serves as the primary escalation point for plant finance questions, analytics, and performance management. The role is finance-only in scope and does not perform traditional accounting execution tasks (e.g., booking journal entries). Instead, the role partners closely with Accounting/Cost Accounting to ensure alignment between management views and statutory close outputs, and to support SOX-compliant processes and controls.

The role delivers standard KPI dashboards and digital reporting tools that create transparency to margin performance and plant cost drivers and is expected to be on-site 5 days per week initially. Hybrid flexibility may be considered after the role is fully ramped and the operating rhythm is stable. SAP proficiency is a major plus for this role.

Primary Duties

* Serve as the primary embedded finance partner to the Plant Director and plant leadership team; provide clear, actionable insights that improve decision-making, accountability, and plant performance.

* Own the plant forecasting and budgeting cadence: build and maintain driver-based forecasts, lead annual budget development at the plant level, and surface forward-looking implications (what is changing, why, and what happens next).

* Deliver performance management: produce timely variance analysis (actual vs. budget/forecast/prior), identify root causes, quantify financial impact, and recommend actions; ensure commentary is understandable to non-finance leaders.

* Own and deliver plant KPI dashboards and digital reporting tools (standard packages plus self-service views) that improve visibility to labor efficiency, overhead absorption, scrap/rework, inventory health, and margin performance; continuously enhance these tools to reduce manual effort and improve decision speed.

* Strengthen plant costing mechanics and margin visibility: explicitly monitor and explain overhead allocation/absorption behavior, labor efficiency, scrap/rework impacts, yield/throughput drivers, and resulting margin performance; translate variances into actions.

* Partner with Cost Accounting (process owner) to support the standard cost-setting cycle: provide operational/driver inputs, challenge and validate assumptions, identify when standards/routings no longer reflect reality, and ensure the management view of variances is explainable and decision-useful (no journal entry booking)

* Support plant inventory performance and working-capital drivers: monitor inventory accuracy/health KPIs, track drivers impacting inventory and COGS, and coordinate with Accounting/Cost Accounting on reconciliations and close alignment (without booking entries).

* Support annual physical inventory execution in partnership with Supply Chain (process owner) and Accounting/Internal Audit: provide readiness analytics, variance/root-cause analysis, reconciliation support, and follow-through tracking on corrective actions.

* Provide finance support for plant capex planning and reporting (in partnership with Engineering as project owner): ROI models, spend tracking vs. budget, and post-investment benefit tracking.

* Support budget justification packages for plant leadership: quantify resource requests, productivity initiatives, and capex/opex tradeoffs using clear driver logic and scenario analysis.

* Lead or drive cost reduction programs through direct engagement with production and support teams: identify savings opportunities, size the financial impact, track initiative performance versus targets, and report progress through dashboards and operating rhythms.

* Partner cross-functionally with Operations, Supply Chain, Engineering, and Production to understand cost drivers and evaluate improvement opportunities; participate in operating rhythms (daily/weekly huddles, production reviews) as needed to support decision-making.

* Ensure finance processes and plant performance reporting are SOX-aware and compliant with company policies: support control design/operation by partnering with Accounting and Internal Audit; identify and escalate control gaps and support timely remediation.

* Serve as the primary escalation point for plant finance questions, performance risks/opportunities, and analytical requests; ensure timely responses with clear recommendations and tradeoffs.

* Lead and develop a small plant finance team focused on FP&A / operational…