FP&A Manager

Watchfire•Danville, IL

About The Position

Watchfire is seeking an experienced FP&A Manager to lead financial planning, forecasting, and performance analysis for a PE-backed manufacturing business. This role will serve as a key partner to the CFO and senior leadership, providing insight into financial performance, operational drivers, and forward-looking decision support. In addition to core FP&A responsibilities, this role will manage the Project Estimation function, ensuring accurate costing, margin visibility, and alignment between estimating, operations, and finance.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Accounting
CPA designation
5–8+ years of experience in FP&A within a manufacturing environment
Strong financial modeling and Excel skills
Experience working with standard costing, inventory, and operational metrics
Ability to communicate financial insights to non-financial leaders

Nice To Haves

Experience in a PE-backed or leveraged environment
Prior experience supporting project-based or engineered-to-order manufacturing

Responsibilities

Own the annual budget, quarterly reforecast, and long-range planning processes
Develop rolling forecasts for revenue, EBITDA, capital expenditures, and cash flow
Partner with operations and sales to understand volume, backlog, pricing, and margin drivers
Prepare monthly management reporting with clear variance analysis and insights
Track and analyze KPIs across manufacturing, gross margin, SG&A, and working capital
Identify risks and opportunities and provide actionable recommendations
Analyze standard costing, labor efficiency, overhead absorption, and inventory trends
Support margin improvement initiatives through detailed product, project, and customer analysis
Ensure financial alignment between estimating assumptions and actual results
Manage the Project Estimation function, including oversight of estimating accuracy and processes
Partner with Operations and Sales to ensure estimates reflect true cost structure and capacity realities
Analyze estimate vs. actual performance and drive continuous improvement in bidding accuracy
Support CFO with board materials, lender reporting, and PE sponsor requests
Provide ad hoc analysis related to capital investments, operational initiatives, or M&A activity
Improve FP&A and estimation models, tools, and reporting
Leverage ERP and financial systems to enhance forecasting accuracy and visibility
Standardize and automate reporting where possible