Strategic Finance Lead

KX software powers the time-aware data-driven decisions that enable fast-moving companies to outpace competitors, realising the full potential of their AI investments. The KX platform delivers transformational value by addressing data challenges related to completeness, timeliness and efficiency, ensuring companies understand change over time and can achieve faster, more accurate insights at any scale, cost-effectively.

KX is essential to the operations of the world's top investment banks, aerospace and defence, high-tech manufacturing, healthcare and life sciences, automotive and fleet telematics organisations. The company has established offices and a robust customer base across North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific.

KX is hiring a Strategic Finance Lead to join our existing Strategic Finance team and sit at the centre of our R&D organisation, partnering directly with engineering and product leadership. You will lead financial planning and strategic decision support for our global R&D organisation within a company of approximately 700 employees, supporting one of KX’s most significant areas of investment.

We are open to hiring this role at different levels. For a high-potential candidate earlier in their career, this is an opportunity to step into significant ownership, work closely with senior leaders, and grow rapidly within Strategic Finance. A more experienced hire will be expected to operate with greater independence from the outset, acting as a senior finance partner to R&D leadership and helping shape the strategic agenda.

Title and level will be calibrated to the successful candidate’s experience, demonstrated capabilities, and readiness to lead the mandate.

You will own the budget and headcount process for R&D, and just as importantly, you will be trusted to independently build the business cases, market analyses, and investment recommendations that shape our capital allocation decisions. You will also build the financial connective tissue between go-to-market and product investment, helping ensure R&D spend is directed to the areas of the roadmap most likely to drive growth.

You will work closely with the SVP of Strategic Finance and our CFO, and partner directly with the Chief Product & Engineering Officer and his leadership team, with regular exposure to the broader executive team, including our CEO. You will need to understand our products well enough to have a real point of view on where the opportunity is. Given our organic growth trajectory and M&A strategy, the environment is fast-moving and priorities can evolve quickly.

We value people who take ownership, exercise sound judgment, and drive their work from an ambiguous starting point through to a clear decision.

• Independently lead ad hoc strategic finance projects with minimal oversight. Examples include building a full business case for a product line (total addressable market, serviceable addressable market, product-market fit, ideal customer profile, pricing and packaging) and the associated R&D investment required.
• Support evaluation of acquisition and partnership opportunities that advance our product strategy, working alongside corporate development as needed.
• Partner with product and engineering leaders to evaluate the ROI of major R&D investments and prioritise the roadmap accordingly.
• Assess the economics and ROI of LLM token consumption across engineering use cases and establish appropriate cost and investment guardrails.

• Build the financial connective tissue between go-to-market and product investment: ensure R&D spend is directed to the areas of the roadmap most likely to drive revenue growth, in partnership with sales and marketing leadership.
• Act as the trusted financial advisor to engineering and product leadership: translate technical roadmaps and product strategy into financial plans, and translate financial constraints back into product and engineering terms.
• Bring a strong point of view grounded in software and SaaS fundamentals (ARR, net revenue retention, CAC, LTV, gross margin, R&D efficiency) to influence decisions, not just report on them.
• Operate effectively across US and UK time zones, given leadership is based on both sides of the Atlantic.

• Review and approve headcount and non-headcount requisitions for the R&D organisation.
• Support the Chief Product & Engineering Officer in headcount planning, org design…