Director of Finance - Corporate Planning

Applied Materials • Santa Clara, CA

1d

About The Position

Applied Materials is seeking a Director of Finance within Corporate FP&A to provide enterprise leadership across financial planning, forecasting, and reporting and help advance the future FP&A roadmap. The role partners with senior finance and business leaders to align on financial outlook, risks, opportunities, and executive decision support, while developing the processes, systems, data, and capabilities needed for a more efficient, scalable, and integrated planning and reporting environment.

The position leads the company’s financial planning and reporting cadence, including setting requirements, timelines, assumptions, and governance across forecasting and reporting cycles. It consolidates and analyzes company submissions, supports executive and external reporting needs, and works with Accounting, Tax, Treasury, and Business Unit Finance teams to resolve reporting issues and complete financial tie-outs.

The role also helps shape finance transformation by defining future planning and reporting capabilities, improving processes and data governance, and translating finance requirements into systems and operational solutions in partnership with Finance, IT, Data & Analytics teams, and external implementation partners. The position is based in Santa Clara, California, with travel of 20% and relocation eligibility.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, Business, or a related discipline.
• 10 or more 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 implementation of planning, reporting, consolidation, analytics, or ERP capabilities.

Responsibilities

• Drive the company's financial planning and reporting cadence by establishing requirements, timelines, assumptions, and governance across forecasting and reporting cycles.
• 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 financial submissions, identifying risks, opportunities, key 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 leadership 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 a more efficient, scalable, and integrated planning and reporting environment.
• Coordinate with Finance Data Governance and other stakeholders to standardize processes, data definitions, governance practices, and reporting structures.
• Assess reporting, forecasting, and close processes for 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.
• Develop an understanding of how financial information flows through businesses and is used for decision-making to define efficient planning and reporting capabilities.
• Lead business requirements definition 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 requirements into technical and operational solutions.

Benefits

• Comprehensive benefits package.
• Potential eligibility for participation in a bonus program.
• Potential eligibility for a stock award program.
• Supportive work culture that encourages learning, development, and career growth.
• Programs and support focused on employee health, wellbeing, and personal and professional growth.

What This Job Offers

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