Senior Financial Planning & Analysis Manager - Compensation and Workforce Planning

Western Alliance Bank•Phoenix, AZ

About The Position

The Senior Financial Planning & Analysis Manager, Compensation and Workforce Planning, serves as the finance lead for the bank’s sales incentive program and oversees consolidated workforce planning across the organization. The role is responsible for tracking, reporting, budgeting, and forecasting incentive compensation, and for ensuring incentive-related financial results and workforce expense assumptions are accurate, transparent, controlled, and aligned with business performance. The Manager partners with business leaders, Human Resources, Accounting, Business Data Governance, and Finance leadership to connect incentive plan outcomes and workforce trends to budget expectations, forecast assumptions, business-line performance, and management reporting. The role requires strong financial judgment, ownership, cross-functional leadership, and the ability to translate complex incentive compensation and workforce data into clear insights and recommendations for senior management.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, Business Analytics, or a related field.
At least 7 years of progressive experience in FP&A, financial analysis, incentive compensation, sales finance, corporate finance, or management reporting.
Demonstrated experience owning budgeting, forecasting, variance analysis, accruals, and management reporting processes.
Strong financial modeling skills, including connecting business drivers, plan assumptions, production trends, and expense outcomes.
Strong analytical and data validation skills, with attention to accuracy, consistency, controls, documentation, and governance.
Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional processes and partner effectively across Finance, Human Resources, Compensation, Accounting, data governance, and business-line leadership.
Advanced proficiency in Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint.
Excellent communication and presentation skills, including the ability to explain complex financial and incentive compensation concepts clearly to finance and non-finance stakeholders, including senior management.

Nice To Haves

MBA, CPA, or CFA.
Experience supporting incentive compensation, sales performance reporting, workforce expense planning, or revenue-based compensation programs.
Experience with planning, reporting, or incentive systems such as Oracle EPBCS, Adaptive Insights, Anaplan, Power BI, Workday, Varicent, or similar platforms.
Experience in banking or financial services.

Responsibilities

Lead recurring FP&A reporting for incentive compensation, including actual results, budget comparisons, forecast updates, accrual trends, variance explanations, and management commentary.
Own annual budgeting and monthly forecasting for incentive compensation expense, documenting and supporting assumptions and aligning them with business performance expectations.
Oversee enterprise FTE tracking and forecasting, providing executive leadership with insights on hiring trends, turnover, and workforce capacity.
Ensure continuity and consistency in FTE planning for budgeting and strategic planning across the organization.
Coordinate consolidated workforce planning across business lines and support functions, including headcount, salary and benefits assumptions, hiring plans, vacancies, productivity trends, and related expense impacts.
Serve as the primary Finance partner to business-line leaders, understanding sales performance, production trends, plan attainment, and key drivers of incentive compensation expense.
Oversee models that connect incentive plan metrics, sales activity, eligible revenue or production, payout assumptions, accruals, and forecasted expense.
Prepare and present management reporting and analysis on incentive compensation performance, consolidated workforce trends, forecast risks and opportunities, and potential business-line and enterprise financial impacts.
Lead data validation for incentive-eligible financial metrics to ensure accurate data is ingested into the HR system, including fee revenue, production activity, business-line results, and other financial inputs used in incentive calculations.
Establish repeatable processes, controls, documentation, and governance routines for incentive compensation planning, workforce planning, reporting, accruals, and forecast management.
Partner with the Incentives team to improve reporting automation, reduce manual tracking, strengthen auditability, and increase transparency into incentive compensation outcomes.
Provide financial leadership and decision support for incentive plan changes, business performance reviews, management questions, and strategic initiatives.