Finance Automation Lead

Instawork • San Francisco, CA

2d • $110,000 - $140,000 • Onsite

About The Position

Instawork is seeking a builder to own the company's order-to-cash process and lead finance automation initiatives. This role involves approximately 50% focus on billing, collections, and cash conversion, and 50% on automating finance workflows beyond accounts receivable, including close, reconciliations, Accounts Payable, treasury, and reporting. The position requires overseeing offshore collections analysts, collaborating with Account Managers and Sales, and developing AI-powered workflows to reduce manual work. The role starts hands-on to understand current processes before redesigning them for efficiency. This position reports directly to the Controller and is based in the San Francisco office, following an onsite work model with a requirement for in-office presence five days a week.

Requirements

• Recent, demonstrable experience building AI/LLM-powered or agentic workflows that run in a real operation and that people still use.
• Working knowledge of core finance processes (order-to-cash, procure-to-pay, month-end close, reconciliations) and how they connect to the ERP.
• Strong quantitative and problem-solving skills with advanced Excel/Google Sheets.
• Experience with workflow automation or integration tools (e.g., Workato, Zapier, n8n, Make) or APIs.
• Experience leading or developing people, including remote or offshore teams.
• Confidence working directly with customers and Sales on billing and collection issues, and influencing teams you don't manage.
• Ownership, urgency, and comfort working on messy, ambiguous problems in a fast-paced environment.

Nice To Haves

• Experience in AR, billing, collections, or broader finance operations.
• Familiarity with systems such as NetSuite, Upflow, Salesforce, or VMS and procurement portals (e.g., Fieldglass, Beeline, Coupa, Ariba).
• Familiarity with internal controls, SOX, or supporting external audits.

Responsibilities

• Own the collections strategy and the AR balance, with DSO and the cash conversion cycle as the main measures, and run a weekly cash review with Finance leadership.
• Work directly with Sales, Account Management, and our business partners to resolve billing questions, disputes, and past-due balances. Serve as the escalation point for enterprise, MSA, and VMS accounts.
• Find the root causes of late cash, such as billing errors, account setup that doesn't match the contract, portal approval delays, and drive fixes with Sales, Ops, and Product.
• Own invoicing setup QA and cash application, and support month-end close with AR reconciliations and reserves.
• Oversee and coach our collections analysts in the Philippines, setting priorities and performance expectations and shifting their work toward exception handling as automation takes over the routine flow.
• Establish, maintain and own the credit approval process including running credit checks and working with Sales on creative credit options for potential new partners (customers).
• Build AI agents and workflows for collections prioritization and outreach, remittance matching, dispute triage, VMS portal tracking, and pre-send invoice checks.
• Partner with the Accounting & FP&A (Finance) team to map manual workflows, rank automation opportunities by time saved and risk reduced, and manage a prioritized backlog.
• Build and deploy AI/LLM-powered agents and workflows across Finance, such as bank and balance sheet reconciliations, journal entry preparation, accruals, close task tracking, and variance analysis.
• Automate procure-to-pay and spend workflows, including invoice intake and coding, approvals, vendor onboarding, and payment runs.
• Automate cash reporting, including daily cash positions, bank and payout reconciliations, cash forecast inputs, and lender compliance reporting.
• Build integrations and data flows between NetSuite, our billing and payment systems, banks, and BI tools, and replace manual spreadsheets with automated dashboards and reports.
• Design human-in-the-loop controls, audit trails, and documentation so automated outputs are accurate, auditable, and ready for external audit.
• Train the Finance team on new tools, write runbooks, and own what you ship in production.

Benefits

• Variety of medical, dental, and vision plans with coverage beginning on the date of hire
• Flexible paid time off
• At least 8 paid company holidays annually
• Phone stipend
• Commuter stipend
• Supplemental pay on qualified leaves
• Employee health savings accounts (HSA) contribution
• Flexible spending plans
• 401K plan
• Perkspot - discount program through Lumity
• Equity in the form of stock options

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed