Finance Systems & Process Lead

ITHAKA’s mission is to expand access to knowledge and education around the world. Our services — JSTOR, Portico, and Ithaka S+R — enable people everywhere to learn, to grow, and to overcome barriers to education. In carrying out our mission, as employees we feel a deep responsibility to members of our community and to each other, and we are committed to building and sustaining a culture where everyone can thrive.

ITHAKA is looking for a Finance Systems & Process Lead to drive the integrity, improvement, and strategic evolution of ITHAKA’s core financial platforms, including Acumatica (ERP), Ramp (accounts payable management), Adaptive Insights (planning & forecasting), and Vertex (tax compliance).

This role is for someone who enjoys solving complex business problems by combining technology, process improvement, and strong business partnership. You will own the evolution of Finance systems and processes, ensuring they not only operate reliably but continuously become more efficient, scalable, and valuable to the organization.

You are a proactive leader who identifies opportunities for improvement, develops compelling business cases that clearly articulate benefits, trade-offs, resource requirements, and expected outcomes, and partners across the organization to turn those ideas into reality. Success in this role comes from combining analytical thinking, practical execution, and the ability to influence stakeholders through evidence and collaboration.

This is not a support function. It is an opportunity to shape how Finance operates by modernizing systems, simplifying processes, and helping the organization make better, faster decisions enabled by technology and thoughtful process design.

Systems Ownership

• Own configuration, user access, master data, integrations, and operational health across Acumatica, Ramp, Adaptive Insights, Vertex and other Finance-owned technologies, including future finance systems.
• Proactively monitor and resolve sync errors, data mismatches, and workflow failures.
• Maintain system documentation, change logs, and productive vendor relationships; coordinate upgrades and new feature rollouts.
• Provide expert-level support to Finance and Operations staff; triage issues quickly and correct their root causes.

Process Leadership & Improvement

• Continuously evaluate Finance and cross-functional processes for improvement opportunities to reduce manual effort and error risk—take action to initiate improvements.
• Partner with Finance and business stakeholders to evaluate current approaches, using evidence to develop alternatives and clear recommendations to improve outcomes.
• Ensure improvement recommendations are supported with business justification to build alignment and appropriate prioritization of all opportunities.
• Drive continuous improvement by navigating competing priorities, gaining support for recommended priorities and maintaining focus on delivering meaningful business outcomes.
• Design and implement automation to eliminate manual effort; create high-level workflow solutions and engage the right technical or functional partners to finalize and build them.

Governance & Controls

• Ensure financial systems support audit readiness, internal controls, and data governance standards.
• Maintain documentation for integrations, configurations, and key workflows; support annual audits and ad-hoc reviews.
• Partner with Finance leadership on system-level controls for expense management, AP/AR, and tax compliance.

Project Execution

• Develop business cases that articulate expected value, resource requirements, implementation approach, and success measures to support prioritization and investment decisions.
• Drive finance systems projects from problem definition through implementation and adoption—with clear owners, execution needs, and expected timelines at every stage.
• Identify and engage the right stakeholders at the right time; neither building in isolation nor over-socializing every decision.
• Exercise sound judgment about when to work through an issue independently and when to escal.
• Communicate project status, risks, and trade-offs clearly to Finance leadership, engaging leadership…