Commercial Finance Director

Mars • Franklin, TN

4d • Onsite

About The Position

The Commercial Finance Director is the lead Finance representative on the Commercial Leadership Team and owns the Finance agenda for the Commercial organization. As strategic finance partner to the VP of Commercial, the role provides independent financial leadership, constructive challenge, and an outside-in perspective to shape sourcing strategy and decisions.

The role provides financial leadership across a multi-billion-dollar direct material portfolio, translating commodity markets, supplier economics, internal performance, and business plans into actions that create sustainable value. It guides the Commercial Finance team and establishes the Finance agenda across value creation, productivity governance, supplier economics, forecasting, planning, portfolio decision support, risk management, financial stewardship, and talent development.

The Director connects Commercial with Portfolio Growth Teams (PGTs), partnering with PGT leaders and Finance to bring perspectives on material cost drivers, supplier and commodity exposure, risks, opportunities, and sourcing trade-offs into portfolio decisions. The role helps ensure sourcing implications are understood early and reflected in growth plans, innovation choices, margin delivery, and portfolio priorities.

The role builds on established reporting and insight foundations by strengthening the productivity pipeline, improving decision quality, deepening supplier and cost insights, and delivering targeted digital enhancements that make analysis faster, more predictive, and easier to act on. It sits at the intersection of Commercial strategy, sourcing execution, portfolio growth, and financial performance, influencing sourcing and portfolio decisions and developing Finance talent to support profitable and sustainable growth.

Requirements

• Proven finance leadership experience in commercial, procurement, supply chain, manufacturing, or FP&A, with accountability for a significant business or spend portfolio.
• Strong business partnering skills and ability to influence senior leaders, challenge constructively, and translate analysis into clear decisions and actions.
• Strong financial grounding across analysis, modeling, forecasting, planning, performance management, and controls.
• Commercial judgment and curiosity about external markets, supplier economics, and sourcing dynamics.
• Experience leading and developing teams, setting priorities, building capability, and creating meaningful development opportunities.
• Clear, concise executive communication skills and judgment to focus leaders on the most material risks, opportunities, and decisions.
• Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, Business, or a related field.

Nice To Haves

• MBA, CPA, CMA, or equivalent qualification.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the lead Finance representative on the Commercial Leadership Team, own the Finance agenda for Commercial, and bring an enterprise perspective to sourcing and business decisions.
• Partner with the VP of Commercial and senior Commercial leaders to shape strategy through insight, constructive challenge, and clear financial implications.
• Connect Commercial decisions to enterprise, PGT, and financial priorities, including growth, margin, cost, cash, service, quality, resilience, and sustainable value creation.
• Lead financial governance of the primes productivity agenda, including pipeline sufficiency, initiative valuation, phasing, risk assessment, validation, and performance tracking.
• Translate commodity markets, supplier economics, industry dynamics, and macroeconomic trends into clear implications for Mars.
• Partner with Commercial leaders to identify sources of value across categories, suppliers, specifications, demand, terms, working capital, and sourcing models.
• Partner with PGT leaders and PGT Finance to translate sourcing strategies, commodity outlooks, supplier economics, and material cost exposure into portfolio-level financial drivers, risks, and opportunities.
• Connect PGT priorities to Commercial category strategies and align sourcing actions, productivity plans, and supplier decisions with portfolio needs.
• Provide scenarios and trade-offs that help PGTs balance growth, profitability, supply resilience, quality, and longer-term value creation.
• Lead the primes forecasting and planning agenda, ensuring assumptions are transparent, appropriately challenged, and translated into clear financial outcomes.
• Guide analysis of commodity inflation or deflation, productivity, mix, timing, and other drivers, with visibility of risks and opportunities.
• Lead performance reviews with Commercial and Finance leaders and convert insights into decisions, actions, owners, and follow-through.
• Maintain effective oversight of retained period-close activities within the Commercial Finance team while keeping the role primarily focused on forward-looking leadership and value creation.
• Ensure accurate financial results, strong governance over assumptions and savings recognition, and timely escalation of material financial risks.
• Strengthen reporting, analytics, automation, and AI-enabled enhancements where they improve decision quality, forecasting agility, or efficiency.
• Lead, coach, and develop the Commercial Finance team, setting clear priorities, standards, and accountability.
• Build team capability in financial analysis, commercial acumen, storytelling, business partnering, digital tools, and value creation.
• Organize team capacity and ways of working to focus resources on the highest-value priorities while delivering core financial responsibilities.

Benefits

• Industry-competitive salary and benefits package, including company bonus.
• Learning and development support from day one, including access to Mars University.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director