Director of FP&A

Czarnowski Collective • Austell, GA

17h

About The Position

The Director of FP&A is the senior finance leader embedded in the Public School studio and its primary financial partner to studio leadership. Reporting to the Head of FP&A, this role owns the studio’s forecast, annual operating plan, and long-range outlook, and provides the analytical rigor behind pricing, staffing, delivery, and profitability decisions.

The role spans agency economics and production finance. On the agency side, it manages utilization, billable rates, staffing plans, revenue recognition, and the economics of creative and strategy labor. On the production side, it oversees job costing, work-in-process, project margin, change-order discipline, and post-project profitability reviews. The Director is expected to participate directly in pitch pricing, resourcing discussions, and client profitability conversations, helping studio leaders make well-informed decisions about opportunities, resources, and margin.

Public School is a creative studio within Czarnowski Collective, a full-service brand experience agency. The Collective’s studios provide creative, digital and visualization, event and exhibit, and temporary-structure services. Its work includes brand strategy and planning, creative design and production, and talent and influencer management for branding, integrated campaigns, experiential engagements, and sponsorship activities.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, or a related field.
• 8+ years of progressive FP&A, corporate finance, or commercial finance experience, including 3+ years at a manager or director level.
• Demonstrated ownership of a divisional or business-unit P&L, including full budget, forecast, and long-range planning cycles.
• Hands-on project-based or job-cost accounting experience, including percentage-of-completion, WIP, estimate-to-actual analysis, and project margin management.
• Working knowledge of services-business economics, including utilization, billable rates, realization, and labor-driven margin.
• Advanced Excel and financial modeling capability.
• Fluency with ERP and planning systems and BI tools such as Power BI or Tableau.
• Proven ability to partner with and influence non-financial leaders, including creative, production, and client-facing teams.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to present a clear financial narrative to senior leadership.

Nice To Haves

• MBA, CPA, or CMA.
• Experience in experiential marketing, event production, advertising, brand or creative agencies, architecture and design, engineering services, or construction, particularly environments combining professional services with physical production.
• Experience in a multi-entity, multi-studio, or multi-brand organization with shared services and intercompany activity.
• Private-equity-backed or transaction-exposed experience, including lender reporting, EBITDA bridges, and integration or carve-out support.
• Experience implementing or materially upgrading an ERP, project accounting, or CPM/planning platform.
• Familiarity with time-capture and resource-management platforms used in agency environments.

Responsibilities

• Own Public School’s division P&L forecast and lead the annual operating plan, quarterly reforecasts, and rolling monthly outlook, consolidating agency services and production revenue.
• Model booked, contracted, pipeline-weighted, and at-risk revenue, translating the new-business pipeline into a resourced and deliverable forecast.
• Develop multi-year scenarios reflecting client concentration, category mix, headcount investment, and capability expansion.
• Own labor, contractor and freelance spend, overhead allocations, and capital-request planning.
• Run scenario and sensitivity analysis for events such as lost accounts, delayed activations, rate changes, and headcount increases.
• Track billable and non-billable hours, utilization by discipline and person, and realization against rate card.
• Partner with studio and account leadership on rate cards, blended-rate pricing, retainer sizing, and scope-to-fee alignment.
• Produce client-level profitability analyses covering fee revenue, pass-throughs, direct labor, and allocated overhead, and recommend remedies for structurally unprofitable accounts.
• Model the margin and resourcing implications of major pitches and RFPs and provide a financial go/no-go perspective.
• Connect staffing choices—including freelance versus full-time, seniority mix, and capacity—to financial outcomes and the forward pipeline.
• Ensure estimates, budgets, and actuals reconcile at the job level across creative, fabrication, logistics, and on-site execution.
• Partner with Accounting on percentage-of-completion, WIP schedules, accrual accuracy, and revenue timing for multi-period activations.
• Establish reporting and routines to identify unbilled scope and enforce change-order and scope-creep controls before job close.
• Lead estimate-versus-actual reviews for major projects, identify causes of margin erosion, and incorporate findings into future estimating.
• Track and report project margin at bid, award, in flight, and close, with accountability for variances.
• Advise studio leadership in operating reviews, resourcing decisions, and strategic planning.
• Translate financial analysis into recommendations, making trade-offs and assumptions explicit.
• Partner with finance peers across Czarnowski, Infusion, and Assembly on shared clients, intercompany work, cross-studio pricing, and consolidated reporting.
• Partner with Accounting and Treasury on billing milestones, collections risk, deposit terms, and project cash timing.
• Build credibility and influence with creative and account leaders who do not report to the role.
• Own monthly and quarterly management reporting, including variance commentary that explains causes.
• Define and maintain KPIs, including utilization, realization, gross margin by revenue type, revenue per FTE, pipeline conversion, and project margin variance.
• Improve ERP, project accounting, time-capture, and planning systems and data integrity, reducing manual effort and reconciliation risk.
• Replace one-off spreadsheet analysis with repeatable, auditable reporting that can scale with the studio.
• Maintain adherence to GAAP, internal controls, Collective-wide financial policies, and close calendars.
• Hire, coach, and develop FP&A analysts, establishing standards for analytical quality and business fluency.
• Educate non-finance leaders on job economics, utilization, and margin drivers.
• Work across studio lines in the Collective’s collaborative, “zero silos” operating environment.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision coverage.
• 401(k) with company match.
• Paid time off and company holidays.
• Life and disability insurance.
• Professional development support, including certification and continuing education assistance.

What This Job Offers

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