Director, Margin and Profitability

Sysco

9d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Director, Margin & Profitability will serve as a key leader within the USFS Finance Forecasting Center of Excellence (COE). This role is responsible for advancing Sysco's margin forecasting capabilities, improving forecast accuracy, standardizing margin methodologies, and delivering actionable financial insights that enable profitable growth. The role combines financial forecasting, profitability analytics, business partnership, and strategic planning to improve decision-making across Finance, Sales, Revenue Management, Merchandising, and Executive Leadership. The successful candidate will help build scalable margin forecasting models, establish common performance drivers, improve forecast credibility, and help transform forecasting from a reporting exercise into a proactive decision-support capability.

Requirements

Bachelor’s Degree in Finance or Accounting required
Minimum of 7-10 years related experience, including U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and management experience.
Strong leadership skills, including the ability to mentor and develop individuals and teams. Able to engage and lead team discussions and meetings. Understands team dynamics and works well within a team structure. Collaborative management style and a strategic team player. Delegates responsibilities effectively. Recognizes and acknowledges the value others bring to the organization.
Exhibits a high level of infallible integrity, ethical standards, and accountability.
Must be a working manager, capable of operating in a fast-paced environment, able to handle pressure well, be self-motivated and detail-oriented.
Excellent communication (written and verbal), interpersonal and professional interactive skills, as well as strong presentation, negotiation, time management, and organizational skills. Able to communicate financial data to non-finance people.
Strong analytical skills, ability to think strategically and influence business decisions using appropriate, fact-based financial information.
Well-developed strategic planning, business, and financial management skills (i.e., pricing, forecasting, budget planning, financial analysis, etc.).
A mastery of organizational and project management skills, including the ability to plan, prioritize and execute multiple initiatives/deadlines autonomously and shift priorities as necessary. Able to manage large, complex projects. Uses time effectively.
Demonstrates excellent subject matter knowledge of and experience with the U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), Sarbanes Oxley Act and ability to learn Sysco technology software and programs and/or equivalent products.
Ability to work in a disciplined, consistent, timely and objective manner and capable of following established policies, procedures and practices. Complies with local, state and federal regulations.
Ability to travel and interact successfully with a geographically diverse team.
Proficient use of MS Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access and Outlook)
Applicants must be currently authorized to work in the United States.

Nice To Haves

MBA and CPA preferred
+10 yrs. experience, including GAAP and management experience, preferred.
SAP and PeopleSoft experience preferred.
Familiarity with PeopleSoft and other ERP systems preferred.

Responsibilities

Lead Enterprise Margin Forecasting: Own enterprise GP$, GP/case, and profitability forecasting methodologies. Assist in the creation and maintenance of driver-based margin forecasting across customer segments and channels. Establish standardized forecasting assumptions and governance processes. Improve forecast accuracy, bias measurement, and forecast stability. Create a repeatable forecasting framework that supports weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual planning processes.
Build Driver-Based Forecasting Models: Design and evolve models connecting volume, price, mix, cost, inflation, and customer economics to gross profit performance. Partner with Economic Strategy to integrate macroeconomic indicators, commodity trends, inflation, consumer spending, and industry signals into profitability forecasts. Develop scenario-planning capabilities that support executive decision-making under changing market conditions. Establish forecasting methodologies that are transparent, explainable, and scalable.
Own Margin Analytics and Business Insights: Develop standardized profitability bridges and variance explanations. Provide actionable insights on drivers of margin expansion and erosion. Identify opportunities and risks early enough for business leaders to act. Translate forecast outcomes into business recommendations rather than simply reporting results. Support business reviews and strategic planning processes with insight-driven narratives.
Drive One Forecasting Engine: Serve as a key architect of the Forecasting COE operating model. Eliminate competing or shadow forecasts across the organization. Standardize forecasting tools, processes, and common data views. Establish governance ensuring teams own business drivers while the COE owns forecasting models. Promote consistency in forecasting methodologies across all commercial and operating functions.
Strategic Business Partnership: Partner closely with Finance & Sales Leadership (Local & National), Revenue Management, Merchandising, Supply Chain & Operations, Data & Business Intelligence, FP&A, Executive Leadership, and Market Leadership. Provide decision-support analytics that improve pricing, mix, promotional effectiveness, contract performance, and profitability outcomes.
Critical Focus Areas During First 12 Months: Forecast Credibility: Establish baseline margin forecasting accuracy metrics; implement forecast bias and forecast stability tracking; improve forecast precision through enhanced driver transparency. Driver Transparency: Develop a common margin-driver framework across all customer types; standardize profitability variance categories and reporting. Forecasting COE Transformation: Establish the COE as the recognized forecasting authority; retire parallel forecasting efforts across teams. Margin Storytelling: Improve the quality of margin reviews, forecast narratives, and executive communication; elevate conversations from variance reporting to action-oriented recommendations. Automation & Simplification: Partner with Data & BI to automate recurring forecasting processes; reduce manual effort while increasing forecast frequency, consistency, and transparency.
Success Measures: Forecast Excellence: GP$ forecast accuracy, GP/case forecast accuracy, forecast bias improvement, forecast stability across cycles. Business Impact: Margin opportunity identification, margin erosion prevention, improvement in decision cycle times, adoption of forecasting recommendations. Operational Excellence: Reduction in manual forecasting effort, standardization of forecasting methodologies, elimination of shadow forecasts, increased automation of recurring processes. Leadership: Strong business partner engagement, capability development within Forecasting COE, cross-functional influence and adoption, succession planning and talent development.