Director of FP&A

Czarnowski Collective • Mableton, GA

2h

About The Position

The Director of FP&A – Public School 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 analytical rigor for decisions about pricing, staffing, delivery, and profitability.

The position covers both agency economics and production finance. On the agency side, it manages financial accountability for utilization, billable rates, staffing plans, retainer and project 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 role participates directly in pitch pricing, resourcing discussions, and client profitability conversations, helping studio leaders make informed decisions about opportunities, resources, and margin.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, or a related field.
• At least 8 years of progressive FP&A, corporate finance, or commercial finance experience, including at least 3 years at 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 agency time-capture and resource-management platforms.

Responsibilities

• Own the division P&L forecast; 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.
• Manage labor, contractor and freelance spend, overhead allocations, and capital requests.
• Run scenario and sensitivity analyses for events such as lost accounts, delayed activations, rate changes, and increased headcount.
• 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; identify structurally unprofitable accounts and recommend remedies.
• Model margin and resourcing implications for major pitches and RFPs and provide a financial go/no-go perspective.
• Connect staffing decisions—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.
• Build reporting and processes to identify unbilled scope and enforce change-order and scope-creep controls before project close.
• Lead estimate-versus-actual reviews of major projects, identify causes of margin erosion, and apply findings to future estimating.
• Track project margin at bid, award, during execution, and at close, clarifying 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 supporting 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 the division management reporting package, including monthly and quarterly reporting with explanations of variance causes.
• Establish and maintain KPIs for the hybrid model, 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; reduce manual effort and reconciliation risk.
• Standardize and automate reporting to replace one-off spreadsheet analysis with repeatable, auditable processes that scale.
• 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.
• Improve financial literacy across the studio by educating non-finance leaders on job economics, utilization, and margin drivers.
• Collaborate across studio lines in the Collective’s zero-silos operating environment.

Benefits

• Medical coverage
• Dental coverage
• Vision coverage
• 401(k) with company match
• Paid time off
• Company holidays
• Life insurance
• Disability insurance
• Professional development support, including certification and continuing education assistance

What This Job Offers

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