Director of Finance - Corporate Planning

Applied Materials•Santa Clara, CA

2d•$172,000 - $237,000

About The Position

Applied Materials is seeking a Director of Finance within Corporate FP&A to provide enterprise leadership for financial planning, forecasting, and reporting, and help execute the future roadmap for FP&A. The role partners with senior finance and business leaders to align on the financial outlook, risks and opportunities, and executive decision support. It also advances the processes, systems, data, and capabilities needed for an efficient, scalable, and integrated planning and reporting environment. The position leads the company’s financial planning and reporting cadence, including defining requirements, timelines, assumptions, and governance across key cycles. It consolidates and analyzes financial submissions, provides actionable insights to senior leaders, supports executive and external reporting deliverables, and partners with Accounting, Tax, Treasury, and Business Unit Finance to resolve reporting issues and support close activities. The role also shapes planning and reporting transformation in partnership with Finance and IT. It improves processes, data governance, systems, and capabilities; defines business requirements for planning, consolidation, reporting, analytics, and workflow tools; and serves as a bridge among Corporate Finance, Financial Systems, IT, Data & Analytics teams, and external implementation partners. Experience supporting finance transformation and implementing planning, reporting, consolidation, analytics, or ERP capabilities is valuable.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, Business, or a related discipline.
At least 10 years of progressive finance experience.
Demonstrated experience in planning, reporting, and performance management processes for a large, complex, global organization.
Experience supporting senior executives and high-level strategic and operational decisions.
Exceptional analytical and problem-solving skills, including the ability to synthesize complex information into clear recommendations for executive audiences.
Strong leadership, communication, and interpersonal skills, with the ability to manage relationships across functions and organizational levels.
Experience supporting large-scale finance transformation, process improvement, systems implementation, or analytics initiatives.
Strong familiarity with enterprise ERP environments, particularly SAP ECC and/or S/4HANA, including financial data structures, reporting hierarchies, and data extraction.
Experience with one or more enterprise planning and performance management platforms such as Anaplan, OneStream, SAP Analytics Cloud, Oracle EPM, or equivalent, including model design, implementation, and adoption at scale.
Working understanding of enterprise data warehouse and data governance concepts.

Nice To Haves

MBA, CPA, or CMA.
Experience supporting finance transformation initiatives and implementing planning, reporting, consolidation, analytics, or ERP capabilities.

Responsibilities

Set and govern the Corporate FP&A calendar, coordinating planning and reporting milestones, dependencies, and deliverables across organizations.
Communicate planning requirements, reporting guidelines, business assumptions, and milestone expectations to Segment, Business Unit, Tax, Treasury, and other finance teams.
Consolidate and analyze company-wide financial submissions, identifying risks, opportunities, business drivers, and forecast changes while ensuring consistency across income statement, balance sheet, cash flow, and operational metrics.
Provide actionable financial insights and recommendations to senior finance leaders and executive stakeholders.
Support executive, Audit Committee, Board of Directors, governmental reporting, and other strategic finance deliverables.
Partner with Accounting, Tax, Treasury, and Business Unit Finance to resolve reporting issues, complete financial tie-outs, and minimize surprises during close cycles.
Define and advance capabilities, processes, and systems for an efficient, scalable, integrated planning and reporting environment.
Partner with Finance Data Governance and other finance stakeholders to standardize processes, data definitions, governance practices, and reporting structures.
Assess reporting, forecasting, and close processes to identify bottlenecks, manual workarounds, data quality challenges, and opportunities for simplification and automation.
Establish metrics and feedback mechanisms to improve forecasting effectiveness, reporting quality, operational efficiency, and user experience.
Define business requirements for future planning, consolidation, reporting, analytics, and workflow capabilities.
Bridge Corporate Finance, Financial Systems, IT, Data & Analytics teams, and external implementation partners to translate finance needs into technical and operational solutions.