Senior Manager, FP&A

United States Career•Bridgewater, NJ

About The Position

The Senior Manager, FP&A is a senior leadership role within Messer Americas Finance, responsible for U.S. financial planning and analysis, business partnering, performance management, reporting, and decision support. The role strengthens the commercial and operational finance capabilities that support business decisions and helps develop a scalable, automated, and data-driven finance operating model. The successful candidate is expected to combine strong finance fundamentals with commercial judgment, knowledge of asset-intensive industrial economics, systems and technical fluency, and the ability to influence senior stakeholders and develop a high-performing team. The position leads planning, forecasting, budgeting, strategic planning, and analysis of financial and operational results. It partners with commercial, operations, supply-chain, accounting, IT, and data teams to explain performance, assess business economics, support pricing and capital decisions, and translate strategic priorities into measurable financial outcomes. It also owns continuous improvement of FP&A processes and contributes to finance modernization, systems changes, automation, and practical AI and advanced-analytics applications.

Requirements

At least 8 years of progressive finance experience, including substantial FP&A, business-partnering, people-management, and senior-stakeholder experience.
Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Business, Economics, or a related field, or equivalent relevant experience.
Strong accounting and operational-finance foundation, including the ability to connect accounting treatment, standard costing, cost behavior, absorption, allocations, transaction flows, management reporting, and business economics.
Advanced financial modeling, analytical, and numerical-reasoning skills, including revenue and margin bridges, operational variance analysis, forecasting, budgeting, performance management, and decision support in a complex organization.
Demonstrated process-improvement, finance-transformation, and project-leadership experience, including requirements definition, stakeholder alignment, prioritization, testing, implementation, change management, and benefits realization.
Strong SAP finance and systems knowledge and high data and technical literacy across databases, data flows, reporting architectures, automation concepts, and solution design.
Excellent written, verbal, and presentation skills, with the ability to influence stakeholders at all levels, constructively challenge the status quo, lead change, and develop a high-performing team.

Nice To Haves

Experience in industrial gases, chemicals, energy, process manufacturing, or another asset-intensive industrial environment, with familiarity with complex manufacturing, supply-chain, and distribution economics.
Experience participating in SAP modernization, S/4HANA transformation, finance-system implementation, or significant process redesign.
Experience with SAP Analytics Cloud, Power BI, Tableau, Workday Adaptive Planning, Databricks, or comparable planning, data, and analytics platforms.
Hands-on experience with SQL, Power Query, Python, Power Automate, or similar analytical, data, or automation tools.
Practical experience applying AI or advanced automation to finance processes, analytics, or productivity.
MBA, CPA, CMA, ACA, CIMA, or comparable finance or accounting qualification.

Responsibilities

Lead, coach, and develop the U.S. FP&A team, setting priorities, accountability, succession plans, and standards for analytical quality and business partnership.
Partner with commercial and operational executives, including Sales & Marketing and Operations leadership, and support the Executive Committee with analysis, constructive challenge, and recommendations.
Translate strategic priorities into financial actions and support growth, margin-improvement, productivity, and cost-saving initiatives.
Lead cross-functional finance initiatives from problem definition and business-case development through implementation, adoption, and benefits realization.
Promote ownership, collaboration, simplification, continuous improvement, fact-based decision-making, and talent development.
Ensure the accuracy and completeness of the U.S. month-end management view in partnership with Accounting, delivering timely and decision-useful reporting.
Analyze financial and operational performance, interpret KPIs, identify root causes, and communicate drivers, risks, opportunities, and recommended actions.
Lead periodic forecasting, annual budgeting, and strategic planning; challenge assumptions and strengthen driver-based planning, scenario modeling, and sensitivity analysis.
Develop forward-looking and exception-based analytics, incorporating cash flow, working capital, and balance-sheet implications where relevant.
Analyze revenue, gross margin, and operating performance, including price/volume/mix, pricing realization, customer and product mix, cost inflation and recovery, productivity, and other key drivers.
Partner with Operations and Supply Chain to assess plant and network performance, including volumes, utilization, efficiency, energy and other input costs, fixed-cost absorption, logistics, and operational variances.
Assess standard costing, cost-center structures, cost behavior, absorption, allocation methodologies, and production and distribution cost flows.
Analyze customer, product, plant, and channel profitability, including cost-to-serve and production and distribution economics.
Support pricing strategy, customer tenders, and contract decisions with analysis of profitability, incremental margins, cost-to-serve, pricing realization, volume commitments, and escalation or pass-through mechanisms.
Evaluate capital-intensive opportunities and major business decisions, including returns, risks, sensitivities, value creation, and post-investment performance where appropriate.
Lead deep-dive analyses of material business issues and present conclusions and recommendations to the Executive Committee and other senior stakeholders.
Assess macroeconomic trends, customer developments, regulation, market structure, and competitor activity and translate relevant changes into financial implications and actions.
Improve FP&A processes end-to-end across people, process, data, and technology by simplifying, standardizing, documenting, and automating workflows while maintaining controls and service expectations.
Determine whether finance needs are best addressed through process changes, source-system configuration, master data, data engineering, analytical tools, automation, or organizational change.
Partner with Accounting, Finance Systems, IT, Data & Analytics, and external vendors to translate business requirements into improvements and assess system architecture, data flows, integrations, reporting logic, and technical solutions.
Use SAP finance and accounting knowledge to support modernization of transaction flows, master data, costing and allocation structures, reporting, and interfaces while preserving accounting integrity and auditability.
Participate in requirements definition, solution design, testing, reconciliation, implementation, data-quality improvement, and post-implementation review for material finance-system and process changes.
Identify and implement practical AI, automation, and advanced-analytics use cases with appropriate validation, human oversight, data security, and accountability.

Benefits

Medical insurance
Dental insurance
Vision insurance
Short-term disability insurance
Life insurance
Paid time off
Long-term disability as a voluntary benefit, in accordance with plan terms and conditions
401(k) plan
Possible eligibility to participate in the company bonus program
Other voluntary benefits
Ongoing training and career progression opportunities