Senior Director of Finance - Consumption Business Partner

Lumen Technologies • Denver, CO

6d • $174,876 - $256,486 • Remote

About The Position

Lumen is the trusted network for the AI‑powered world, connecting people, data, and applications through our expansive fiber network and connected ecosystem. We enable secure, high‑performance connectivity across cloud, edge, and AI workloads for enterprises, governments, and communities. At Lumen, you’ll work on infrastructure customers rely on today and build for what’s next, where performance, security, and resilience matter. This is a high accountability environment where bold ideas drive real innovation for our customers, partners, and industry. The work is challenging, expectations are clear, and trust is built into how we operate. If you’re ready to take ownership, deliver meaningful impact, and help shape the future of AI‑ready connectivity, join us today.

The Role
In a consumption-based business, revenue isn't won at contract signature—it's earned every day. That makes Finance a critical strategic partner, sitting at the center of the decisions that drive growth, profitability, and customer success. In this role, you'll work directly with executive leaders to influence pricing, structure complex deals, guide capital allocation, and shape the metrics that define business performance. If you're looking for a role where your insights directly impact company strategy—not just reporting results after the fact—this is it.
The Senior Director of Finance – Consumption Business Partner is a senior finance leadership role within Lumen, serving as the primary finance partner to the Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) for consumption-based revenue and reporting into Business Finance. This is one of the most analytically demanding and commercially influential finance roles in the business: revenue is inherently variable, forecasting is a competitive advantage, and — unlike seat-based SaaS — there is no clean ARR number to anchor the plan. Revenue is a function of what customers actually use.
This position partners closely with the CRO leadership team, Revenue Operations, Sales Operations, Customer Success, Product Finance, COGS finance and the enterprise consumption-modeling (Data Finance) team to ensure commercial decisions are grounded in sound financial analysis. The role focuses on forecast narrative, pipeline-to-consumption conversion, customer and segment risk & opportunity, deal economics, and go-to-market efficiency — translating enterprise model outputs and usage economics into clear commercial implications, trade-offs, and recommendations.
The overriding objective is to enable better CRO decisions and forecast explainability — on deals, pricing guardrails, and go-to-market investment — by turning complex consumption dynamics into a clear financial narrative and actionable recommendations.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, or a related field.
• 12+ years of progressive experience in financial planning and analysis, business finance, or commercial finance, including senior-level business partnering.
• Direct experience with consumption-, usage-based, or hybrid pricing models, and building or leveraging usage-based revenue forecast models.
• Prior experience supporting a revenue, sales, or commercial organization (e.g., CRO), including exposure to deal-desk or commercial-finance structures.
• Strong analytical and financial modeling skills, including dynamic, scenario-based forecasting.
• Excellent communication and executive presence, with the confidence to challenge senior stakeholders with data-driven insights and translate financial concepts for non-finance audiences.
• Strong data fluency and experience working with large usage datasets.
• Solid understanding of ASC 606 revenue recognition, including variable consideration, usage-based contracts, and pre-purchase arrangements.
• Proficiency with financial systems and tools such as Excel, Power BI, and CRM platforms (e.g., Salesforce).
• Ability to operate effectively in a fast-paced, matrixed environment with strong adaptability, collaboration, and results orientation.

Nice To Haves

• Experience in cloud infrastructure, data platforms, API-first, or other consumption-based businesses.
• SQL skills and familiarity with usage-data platforms and data warehouses, including Snowflake, Databricks, and BigQuery.
• Experience with complex contract structures, including committed spend, overages, and draw-down mechanics.
• Familiarity with consumption-based sales compensation and quota-attainment models.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the primary finance partner to the CRO and CRO leadership team for consumption-based revenue, and act as the finance voice in major commercial decisions.
• Translate enterprise consumption forecasts and usage economics into commercial insights, forecast narratives, and action plans across segments, customers, pipeline, and go-to-market motions.
• Provide finance support on pricing guardrails and deal structures without owning enterprise models, product assumptions, or cost foundations.
• Translate enterprise consumption forecasts into CRO forecast narratives and rolling outlooks spanning committed ARR, consumption run rates, draw-down schedules, and overage projections.
• Lead monthly business reviews (MBRs) with CRO leadership, providing insight into consumption trends, forecast risks, and plan variances.
• Apply committed-to-consumed revenue bridges to quantify gaps between contractual commitments and expected revenue consumption, and explain key drivers.
• Analyze the pipeline-to-commitment-to-consumption conversion path, identifying where bookings are strong but consumption is lagging.
• Partner with Revenue Operations to ensure CRM, usage, and financial data align and support a consistent commercial narrative.
• Own customer- and segment-level revenue risk and opportunity analysis, translating usage-health signals into quantified financial impacts.
• Maintain portfolio health KPIs, including consumption rates, draw-down velocity, overage revenue, usage NRR, consumption churn, and usage-based LTV.
• Identify early warning signs of consumption risk and quantify revenue impact before churn events occur.
• Deliver cohort-level analysis on consumption growth, usage contraction, and overage-driven expansion while differentiating structural and seasonal trends.
• Partner with Customer Success on usage-health scoring and post-sale consumption strategies.
• Serve as the CRO's finance partner on consumption-based deal structures, including committed-spend floors, overage rates, discount tiers, and draw-down terms.
• Model the economics of large deals to assess whether commitments align with expected usage.
• Support pricing-model evaluations, including pure consumption, hybrid, and tiered usage models, along with ASC 606 revenue-recognition considerations.
• Maintain discount guardrails and approval thresholds in partnership with Sales Operations and Legal.
• Provide financial insights on GTM efficiency, including CAC payback, usage-driven expansion, seller productivity, and demand-generation ROI.
• Collaborate with Revenue Finance, Product Finance, Data Finance, and COGS teams to maintain a single, integrated financial perspective.
• Partner with the CRO and HR to design compensation plans and SPIFs that align seller behavior with consumed revenue.
• Contribute revenue organization insights to executive, senior leadership, and Board materials through enterprise FP&A processes.
• Serve as a trusted advisor, influencing commercial decisions through data-driven analysis and storytelling.
• Drive continuous improvement of consumption-finance processes, tools, and analytical capabilities.

Benefits

• Health, Life, Voluntary Lifestyle benefits and other perks that enhance your physical, mental, emotional and financial wellbeing.
• Bonus structure (short-term incentives, long-term incentives and/or sales compensation)

What This Job Offers

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