Director, Process Innovation and AI Strategy; Finance

Location: Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America | Dublin, Ireland | Austin, Texas, United States of America

Director, Process Innovation and AI Strategy (Finance)

Zendesk is seeking an individual to lead a high-impact transformation agenda across the CFO org—optimizing end-to-end processes, scaling automation (including AI), and elevating service quality and control. You will own the strategy, roadmap, and delivery of transformation excellence for all CFO org functions—partnering closely with respective SME's, shared services teams, IT/Business Systems and cross-functional leaders. This role works directly with the Executive Steering Committee to align priorities, govern risk, and deliver measurable value.

This is a career defining opportunity where this role will foster ideation, AI exploration and drive real transformation across the CFO org.

• Design, execute, and deliver an enterprise finance optimization and automation strategy to drive significant time savings and improved output quality.
• Define multi-year roadmaps aligned to Executive Finance priorities, OKRs, and cost-to-serve targets; report progress to the Executive Steering Committee.
• Define and instrument KPIs/SLAs (e.g., DSO, close cycle time, CSAT, tNPS, first-pass yield, cost-to-serve); deliver executive-ready dashboards.
• Utilize Gartner and external consultants to set benchmarks and deliver best-in-class capabilities.

• Influence and partner with team SME's to simplify processes, reduce handoffs, consolidate systems, and standardize global policies, playbooks, and controls.

• Lead a portfolio spanning RPA, workflow/orchestration, iPaaS, and AI/LLM use cases (e.g., intelligent triage, classification, forecasting, anomaly detection).
• Create an AI culture for Finance via training, governance, and reusable patterns; incubate and scale high-ROI use cases.
• Collaborate with IT, Engineering, and Business Transformation on architecture, integrations, and scalable delivery.
• Develop "skills of the future" across Finance (analytics, automation, AI literacy, continuous improvement).
• Lean into SMEs and process owners to co-design solutions and deliver global results.

• Partner with key SMEs and teams:
  Procurement, Collections, Shared Services, Finance & Strategy, Strategic Finance, Controllership, Revenue Recognition, Accounting, Revenue Operations, Finance Operations.
• Influence tooling and vendor decisions to maximize delivery velocity, interoperability, and cost efficiency.

• 12+ years in Finance transformation/process excellence within SaaS or technology; 3+ years leading cross-functional initiatives at Director level or equivalent.
• Deep domain expertise across O2C, P2P, R2R, and FP&A; experience in a global, shared services environment and partnering with regional teams.

• Hands‑on with process mapping/redesign (e.g., BPMN), operating model design, and service management.
• Familiarity with ERP (e.g., Net Suite), Billing (e.g., Zuora), CRM (Salesforce), CX (Zendesk), HCM (Workday), Procurement (Coupa), iPaaS (e.g., Workato/Mule Soft), RPA (e.g., UiPath/Automation Anywhere), and analytics (Looker/Tableau/Power BI; Snowflake/SQL a plus).
• Robust understanding of AI/ML and LLM‑enabled tools; able to evaluate vendors, pilot use cases, and scale adoption responsibly.
• Lean/Six Sigma certification (Black Belt preferred) with a record of measurable improvements.
• Strong change management and Agile delivery experience; SOX and audit‑ready design expertise.

• Executive presence with exceptional communication; simplifies complexity, aligns stakeholders, and drives decisions.
• Demonstrated success fostering a culture of AI, automation, and continuous improvement.

• Build and lead a top‑level strategic plan for finance process optimization, transformation, and automation across the entire Finance organization.
• Bridge strategy through in‑process SMEs across functional areas to foster a…