Finance Manager, R&D

Function Health•Austin, TX

13d

About The Position

Function Health is seeking a highly analytical and execution-oriented Finance Manager, R&D to join its Finance team. This role will serve as a dedicated finance partner to the R&D organization, operating at the intersection of Finance, technology, and R&D. The position involves partnering closely with technical and operational leaders to translate business needs into accurate forecasts, financial models, budgets, and actionable financial insights. This is an operational and execution-focused role requiring a deep understanding of financial drivers behind complex technical initiatives, building necessary models and processes, and ensuring accurate forecasting in a fast-moving business area. The ideal candidate is an individual contributor who enjoys building, executing, and improving Finance operations, is comfortable with high volumes of information, creating structure, leveraging AI, and partnering with stakeholders. Key attributes include deep curiosity, high organization, comfort with speed and ambiguity, and the ability to engage credibly with technical stakeholders. The role involves translating inputs such as AI/API usage, infrastructure, vendors, headcount, and lab operations into clear financial models and forecasts.

Requirements

6+ years of experience in FP&A, Financial Operations, Business Finance, or a related finance role, ideally within a startup or high-growth technology environment.
Experience partnering with technical or operational teams such as R&D, Engineering, Product, Data, AI/ML, or other technology-focused organizations, with the ability to understand their priorities and translate them into financial requirements.
Strong financial modeling and analytical skills, with advanced proficiency in Excel/Google Sheets and demonstrated experience building models from the ground up.
Experience owning detailed budgets and forecasts, analyzing actuals against plan, investigating variances, and maintaining forecast accuracy in a rapidly changing environment.
Highly execution-oriented and comfortable working through volume and detail.
Able to move quickly, manage competing priorities, and create structure in ambiguous or evolving environments.
Demonstrated ability to support and influence cross-functional teams through data-driven insights, while building strong, collaborative relationships with both Finance and non-Finance stakeholders.
Naturally curious and comfortable asking the right questions to understand unfamiliar technical concepts, operational drivers, and cost structures and translate them into financial models and forecasts.
Demonstrated experience applying AI to improve finance processes, automate workflows, increase efficiency, and generate actionable financial insights.
Experience creating or significantly improving financial models, processes, reporting, systems, or operating workflows rather than solely maintaining established processes.
Clear and effective communicator with strong attention to detail and the ability to translate complex financial information for a variety of stakeholders.

Nice To Haves

Hands-on experience using Pigment for budgeting, forecasting, and reporting; implementation or optimization experience is especially valuable.
Experience within consumer health, diagnostics, digital health, laboratory, or healthcare technology environments.
Experience implementing or improving modern planning tools such as Pigment, Anaplan, Adaptive Planning, or similar platforms.
Experience creating new financial models, forecasting processes, reporting structures, or operating workflows from scratch in a rapidly scaling organization.

Responsibilities

Partner closely with technical department leads across R&D and related teams to support budgeting, forecasting, financial planning, and performance reporting.
Develop a deep understanding of R&D priorities, operations, and key financial drivers.
Own detailed forecasts and budgets for the R&D organization, translating evolving business needs.
Partner directly with stakeholders to understand business changes and continuously improve forecast accuracy.
Build and maintain detailed financial models that translate complex operational and technical inputs into clear financial outputs.
Create new models and frameworks as Function introduces new products, technologies, vendors, and R&D initiatives.
Collaborate closely with the People team and R&D leadership to manage hiring plans, model headcount investments, and track hiring and personnel spend against budget and forecast.
Prepare and deliver financial reporting for executive leadership and support financial analyses and materials for Board and investor presentations.
Maintain close visibility into actual performance versus forecast, investigate variances, update assumptions, and ensure financial plans accurately reflect organizational activities.
Identify and implement improvements across budgeting, forecasting, planning, and reporting workflows.
Build scalable processes in areas where financial infrastructure is still developing and create structure within a fast-moving, ambiguous environment.
Support the rollout, implementation, and ongoing optimization of budgeting and planning systems to improve financial operations, forecast accuracy, reporting efficiency, and scalability.
Partner across Finance, Accounting, People, R&D, Product, Medical Intelligence Lab, and other teams to ensure financial information and business inputs flow accurately and efficiently.
Leverage AI and modern tools to increase the speed, accuracy, and scalability of financial modeling, forecasting, reporting, and operational workflows.