Director, FP&A

XNRGY Climate Systems•Mesa, AZ

21h

About The Position

XNRGY Climate Systems is a rapidly growing North American manufacturer of custom air handling and liquid cooling systems for the data center and AI infrastructure markets. With advanced manufacturing facilities in Mesa, Arizona, and Saint-Hubert, Québec, XNRGY is experiencing significant scaling to meet the high demand for critical thermal management solutions. The company operates in a dynamic sector of critical infrastructure, blending engineering-driven product development with a disciplined, capital-efficient operational approach. Financial discipline concerning cash, capital allocation, margins, and working capital is crucial for sustaining profitable growth and meeting stakeholder expectations. This Director role is pivotal in analyzing income statements and margins across the commercial pipeline, from cost calculations in the quotation tool to the final margin of delivered projects. Reporting to the Senior Vice President, FP&A, this position interfaces with Application Engineering, Strategic Sourcing, and Sales, focusing on areas where margin is determined. The role has the authority to prevent bid submission if pricing is not yet finalized. In addition to deal-specific analysis, the role is responsible for the commercial aspects of the annual operating budget, including gross margin, pricing, and standard cost assumptions. This is a build mandate focused on establishing governance frameworks, review cadences, and analytical standards from the ground up, with a direct impact on the profitability of a fast-growing business.

Requirements

Five to eight or more years in commercial finance, product costing, manufacturing finance, or FP&A within an engineered-products, capital equipment, or industrial manufacturing environment.
Demonstrated ownership of cost estimating or quotation cost validation — building, challenging, and defending the cost assumptions behind customer pricing.
Strong command of manufacturing cost structure, including BOM-based costing, standard cost, purchase price variance, cost rollups, scrap and contingency factors, and absorption.
Experience analysing project or program margin across a lifecycle, including cost bridges that explain variance by driver.
Advanced Excel modelling and working ERP proficiency, including product master data and cost rollup logic. EPICOR experience preferred.
Experience owning the cost and margin assumptions within an annual operating budget, and running or supporting an annual standard cost roll.
Comfort querying source data directly is an advantage — SQL or an equivalent toolset — enabling independent interrogation of cost, purchasing, and quotation data. Cost judgment comes first; this distinguishes strong candidates rather than replacing costing depth.
Practical use of AI tooling to speed recurring cost analysis and documentation, together with the judgment to verify output before it informs a customer price.
Bachelor's degree in Finance, Accounting, Engineering, Supply Chain, or a related field required.

Nice To Haves

Engineered-to-order or configured-product experience
NPI and design-to-cost exposure
Cross-border freight and tariff analysis
CPA, CMA, or CSCP a plus.

Responsibilities

Own and administer formal finance review and sign-off of the pricing and quotation tool, establishing a scheduled, owned process in place of ad hoc review.
Define review thresholds, calendar, and turnaround standards in partnership with Sales and Operations, so that governance improves bid quality without becoming a constraint on bid timing.
Build and maintain the bid review standard covering direct material, labour, scrap factor, contingency, freight, tariff, subcontract, and overhead assumptions, validated against current supplier quotations.
Serve as the principal finance partner to Application Engineering on cost assumptions, unit economics, and sign-off, including normalised metrics that allow comparison across opportunities.
Challenge cost assumptions constructively and identify margin improvement opportunities before a quotation is submitted.
Reconcile awarded purchase orders and executed contracts back to the quotation tool to confirm that quoted and committed costs agree.
Own project-based margin analysis for major customer programs, tracking margin from quotation through production to delivery.
Develop cost bridges explaining margin movement by driver — supplier pricing, commodities, tariffs, freight, engineering change, volume, and manufacturing assumptions.
Quantify the cost and margin impact of customer- and engineering-driven scope changes, ensuring the increment is captured through change management and communicated to Sales so that customer pricing can be adjusted.
Identify emerging margin risk on live programs early enough for corrective action, with defined ownership and timing.
Conduct post-project reviews comparing estimated to actual cost and drive the findings into the next quotation cycle.
Own the gross margin, pricing, and product cost assumptions within the annual operating budget working to the budget calendar, templates, and submission standards set by FP&A.
Lead the annual standard cost exercise — material, labour, overhead, freight, and tariff assumptions — and quantify the P&L effect of the change before the plan is locked.
Build the budgeted margin view by product line, program, and site, including expected bid pipeline conversion and mix, and defend those assumptions through budget review.
Explain in-year gross margin variance against budget by driver, and feed the findings into the reforecast and the next quoting cycle.
Query ERP and quotation-tool data directly — SQL or an equivalent BI toolset — to build those libraries and to reconcile quoted cost against committed and actual cost, rather than depending on manual extracts for routine analysis.
Use AI tooling to accelerate recurring cost work such as supplier quotation comparison, benchmark refresh, and first-draft variance commentary, verifying every output before it informs a customer price.
Improve the automation and self-service capability of cost and margin reporting, so that routine commercial questions can be answered without a manual build each time.
Act as a trusted business partner to Sales, Sourcing, Engineering, and Operations, engaged early in the opportunity rather than late in escalation.
Support make-versus-buy, value engineering, and total cost of ownership analysis alongside Strategic Sourcing.
Develop and report KPIs monitoring quotation accuracy and margin performance.
Improve quotation tools, costing methodology, and estimating standards, promoting consistency across the organisation.