Director, Finance of Product & Engineering

Avalara•UNAVAILABLE, UNAVAILABLE

1d•Remote

About The Position

Avalara is seeking a Director, Finance & Strategy – Product & Engineering to serve as the embedded finance leader for Product & Engineering, the largest single organization within TCO. This role partners directly with senior Product and Engineering leaders to connect product strategy, roadmap decisions, headcount planning, and operating spend into a clear financial view of what it costs to build and maintain Avalara’s products and what return those investments are generating. This is a high-visibility, high-ownership opportunity for a finance leader who wants to operate as a true business partner to technical executives, not simply as a reporting layer. The Director will help shape investment decisions, improve roadmap-to-P&L linkage, strengthen forecasting rigor, and ensure Product & Engineering’s cost structure is translated into credible, decision-ready financial narratives for Finance leadership.

Requirements

10+ years of progressive experience in FP&A, strategic finance, or business-unit finance, ideally including direct support for Product, Engineering, R&D, or other technical organizations in SaaS or enterprise technology environments.
Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, or a related field required; MBA, CFA, or CPA preferred.
Demonstrated success serving as a direct finance partner to senior business leaders, with the executive presence and judgment to build credibility quickly with SVP-level stakeholders.
Experience building and owning driver-based forecasting models, including headcount-to-cost, roadmap-to-cost, or related resource-planning models.
Strong financial modeling and analytical skills, with the ability to move from ambiguous inputs to structured assumptions, scenarios, and recommendations.
Comfortable pushing for clarity on assumptions and decisions while partnering from curiosity, influence, and business judgment.
Experience leading planning, forecast, and business-review rhythms in complex, matrixed organizations.
Strong systems and data fluency, including comfort working from shared data models and planning tools rather than building disconnected offline reporting.
Experience with planning platforms such as Anaplan, Adaptive, or Pigment and analytics tools such as Tableau, Power BI, or similar; SQL a plus.
Demonstrated ability to use AI tools to accelerate modeling, reporting, analysis, and synthesis while maintaining strong financial judgment.
AI is embedded in our workflows, decision-making, and products. Success here requires embracing AI as an essential capability.
You’ll bring experience using AI and AI-related technologies, ready to thrive here.
You’ll apply AI every day to business challenges - improving efficiency, contributing solutions, and driving results for your team, our company, and our customers.
You’ll grow with AI by staying curious about new trends and best practices, and by sharing what you learn so others can benefit too.

Nice To Haves

MBA, CFA, or CPA preferred.

Responsibilities

Serve as the primary finance partner to the senior leaders across Product & Engineering, owning the day-to-day finance relationship for each aligned leader across budget, forecast, roadmap, and investment decisions.
Build trusted relationships with technical executives and translate product and engineering priorities into financial implications, tradeoffs, and recommendation paths.
Own the financial plan, forecast, and long-range view for the covered organization, ensuring roadmap changes are reflected prospectively in headcount and cost expectations rather than identified after the fact.
Lead roadmap-to-P&L linkage by translating product roadmap decisions into forward-looking forecasts for headcount, cost, and resource allocation.
Partner with Product and Engineering leadership on investment prioritization, resource tradeoffs, and reallocation decisions across the portfolio.
Develop a clear view of product-development economics, including the cost to build and maintain products and the return profile of major investment areas.
Lead monthly and quarterly business reviews for the covered organization, delivering clear driver-based narratives on performance, risks, opportunities, and required actions.
Build and maintain KPI and assumption frameworks that connect roadmap execution, hiring plans, productivity, and spend performance into decision-useful financial insights.
Produce category forecasts for the organization to the team’s reporting standards and cadence, and participate fully in category-owner accountability mechanisms.
Model and stress-test forecast inputs using a clear assumption framework such as rate, volume, timing, and mix, rather than accepting unsupported topline figures.
Ensure variances are explained at the driver level, with timing variances tied to an expected landing period and structural changes reflected in run-rate expectations.
Surface emerging forecast risk early and proactively, and partner with business leaders to align on implications and mitigation actions before escalation.
Apply the same analytical scrutiny to favorable and unfavorable variances, reinforcing a culture of forecast accuracy and operational accountability.
Validate Cost of Revenue-tagged cost centers within the organization’s scope and provide the validated inputs required for consolidated gross-margin and cost-to-serve views.
Validate headcount data for shared headcount-governance and consolidation processes, ensuring consistency with Finance standards and organizational operating reality.
Partner with adjacent Finance teams on targeted cross-functional workstreams where Product & Engineering operational context is required, while maintaining clear ownership boundaries and a streamlined support model.
Represent Product & Engineering in Avalara’s broader FP&A, annual operating plan, and long-range planning processes, ensuring the organization’s financial story is well integrated into company-level narratives and decision-making.