Senior Financial Analyst - Corporate Real Estate

Advance Stores Company • Raleigh, NC

8d • Onsite

About The Position

Advance Auto Parts is seeking a Senior Financial Analyst for its Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) team, specifically within Real Estate Finance. This role is based in Raleigh, NC. The FP&A team is a key partner in driving business decisions across various functions by providing financial discipline, analytical rigor, and sound business judgment. This position offers significant exposure to a large-scale operating environment, where financial expertise directly supports customer service, operational execution, and long-term business performance. The Real Estate Finance team, part of Corporate FP&A, focuses on planning, forecasting, underwriting, capital discipline, and performance analysis for the company’s store portfolio. They collaborate closely with departments such as Real Estate, Construction, Leasing, Lease Accounting, Treasury, and Operations to support decisions related to new stores, relocations, lease actions, capital projects, rent and occupancy expenses, and store-level economics. The team's work helps leadership understand the financial implications of real estate decisions, including investment costs, expected returns, risk management, and post-decision performance compared to plans. This is a role where individual contributions are highly visible and provide a strong foundation in real estate finance, FP&A, capital planning, and decision support.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, Business, Real Estate, or a related analytical field.
• Three to five years of experience in FP&A, corporate finance, real estate finance, investment analysis, valuation, consulting, transaction advisory, or a similar analytical finance role.
• Strong Excel and financial modeling skills, including experience building driver-based forecasts, pro formas, scenario analyses, or investment return analyses.
• Strong understanding of FP&A fundamentals, including budgeting, forecasting, variance analysis, and performance reporting.
• Ability to analyze complex financial data, identify key drivers, and translate findings into clear recommendations.
• Strong attention to detail, with the discipline to validate data, pressure-test assumptions, and produce accurate work.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to prepare clear materials for finance and business partners.
• Ability to partner effectively with finance and non-finance stakeholders across functions.
• Strong ownership, organization, and ability to manage multiple priorities across recurring cycles, projects, and ad hoc requests.
• High level of professionalism, discretion, and judgment when handling sensitive financial and strategic information.

Nice To Haves

• Exposure to real estate underwriting, lease economics, occupancy costs, store-level P&Ls, capex, or portfolio analysis.
• Familiarity with ROI, IRR, NPV, payback, DCF, sensitivity analysis, or other returns-based decision frameworks.
• Exposure to ASC 842 lease accounting concepts, including ROU assets, lease liabilities, modifications, or remeasurements.
• Experience translating model output into clear business narratives for finance, real estate, or operating leaders.
• Experience preparing materials for senior leadership, executive reviews, investment committees, or capital approval forums.
• Experience with Oracle, PBCS, Anaplan, or similar planning and reporting systems.
• Experience with CoStar, Lucernex, Power BI, Tableau, SQL, Python, Alteryx, or other real estate, data, or automation tools.
• Experience in retail, multi-unit operations, REIT, real estate private equity, brokerage, transaction advisory, investment banking, corporate development, or consulting.
• MBA, CFA, CPA, or real estate-related coursework or certification.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain financial models, real estate proformas, and scenario analyses to support decisions on new stores, relocations, expansions, lease actions, and capital projects.
• Evaluate opportunities using metrics such as ROI, IRR, NPV, payback, cash flow, capex, occupancy costs, and operating income, summarizing key drivers and implications.
• Validate inputs, assess assumptions from brokers, landlords, and developers, and identify sensitivities, tradeoffs, and recommended actions.
• Maintain model discipline through clean structure, clear assumptions, traceable data sources, formula integrity, and tie-out checks for accuracy and supportability.
• Support the annual operating plan (AOP), periodic forecasts, and long-range plan for base rent, real estate taxes, and other Real Estate Finance components, owning assigned areas of the rent and occupancy forecast.
• Support the forecast for ROU assets and lease liabilities, partnering with Lease Accounting to understand ASC 842 impacts and reconcile model outputs to the general ledger.
• Track new store opening (NSO) performance against pro forma expectations, including sales, four-wall margin, and ramp, and support updates to store-level targets for AOP and operating reviews.
• Analyze actuals versus plan, forecast, and prior year, differentiating timing variances from structural performance changes and quantifying impacts.
• Support period-end close, recurring business reviews, and leadership updates with clear, accurate, and actionable analysis.
• Partner with Real Estate, Construction, Leasing, Lease Accounting, FP&A, Treasury, and Operations on real estate decisions and financial governance.
• Analyze lease economics, rent and occupancy costs, CAM, taxes, capital spend, project timing, and store-level financial performance.
• Support analytics for site selection and portfolio decisions, including market-level performance, cannibalization, and standard store vs. hub economics.
• Support post-investment reviews and performance tracking to enhance future underwriting assumptions and decision quality.
• Translate underwriting, forecast, and variance analysis into clear narratives, memos, and presentations for finance and real estate leaders.
• Build timely, well-structured analysis to answer leadership questions and support recommendations.
• Improve financial models, reporting tools, templates, processes, and documentation for accuracy, scalability, and consistency.
• Pull and structure data from real estate and finance systems, building durable models in Excel and supporting planning tools like Anaplan or PBCS.
• Handle sensitive financial, real estate, and strategic information with discretion and professional judgment.

Benefits

• Advance Auto Parts is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, color, sex, age national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, status as a veteran and basis of disability or any other federal, state or local protected class.
• We comply with all applicable federal, state, and local laws.

What This Job Offers

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