Sr. Financial Analyst / Manager - R&D Finance

Zapier • San Francisco, CA

15d • Remote

About The Position

We're looking for a dedicated finance partner to our R&D organization to join our Strategic Finance team. This person will embed directly with our product and engineering teams to drive financial accountability, inform resource allocation, and enable data-driven decision-making across our R&D portfolio. The ideal candidate has done this before, you've served as a finance partner to R&D or product teams and know how to translate technical roadmaps into financial frameworks. While R&D partnership is the core of this role, you'll also contribute to broader corporate finance efforts including board materials, competitive intelligence, and strategic planning. For the right candidate, we're open to leveling this role at the Senior Financial Analyst or Manager level.

Requirements

• This isn’t your first rodeo. You have 4-6+ years of accounting/finance-specific experience, with 2+ years of working with R&D orgs. A background in Big 4 Accounting, Investment Banking, or Management Consulting with meaningful ownership of operating expense areas - ideally R&D or technical cost structures, is a plus.
• You understand financial modeling well. You have experience building bottoms up and high level financial models.
• You understand how modern R&D organizations operate. You can translate engineering, product, and infrastructure inputs into clear financial implications and trade-offs.
• You’re energized by owning a process from A-Z. You take initiative, thrive in ambiguity, and enjoy seeing things through from scoping and modeling to execution and follow-through.
• You’re resourceful. You love a challenge and always question the status quo. You are highly adaptive and enjoy getting creative to solve new problems.
• You love data. You are innately curious, analyze everything, look for trends, and always forever truth-seeking. Experience writing SQL is a plus.
• You care about the nitty gritty. You are detail-oriented, highly organized, understand priorities, and thrive in a fast paced environment.
• You love to collaborate and coordinate. You’re comfortable driving cross-functional alignment and take pride in delivering high-quality work with minimal oversight.
• You actively experiment with AI. You think critically about where automation and AI can meaningfully improve financial analysis, forecasting, and decision support.
• You use AI in your work today — not occasionally, but as part of how you operate at a high level. You can point to workflows you’ve built, how your approach has evolved through iteration, and the impact on quality, efficiency, and experience — while intentionally applying AI for the right outcomes, setting a high bar for outputs, and taking ownership of what ships.

Nice To Haves

• A background in Big 4 Accounting, Investment Banking, or Management Consulting with meaningful ownership of operating expense areas - ideally R&D or technical cost structures, is a plus.
• Experience writing SQL is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Own R&D financial planning and analysis. Lead forecasting, budgeting, and variance analysis for R&D spend, including headcount, cloud infrastructure (AWS), tooling, and AI-related costs.
• Model and manage cloud & infrastructure economics. Build and maintain models that explain cloud costs, key usage drivers, unit economics, and scaling behavior; partner with technical teams to improve cost visibility and efficiency.
• Analyze and support AI investments. Evaluate and track AI-related spend (internal and vendor-based), assess ROI and trade-offs, and support decision-making as AI usage scales across the product and internal operations.
• Drive strategic insights for R&D leadership. Identify trends, risks, and optimization opportunities across R&D spend, translating complex cost drivers into clear recommendations for leadership.
• Develop scalable, decision-ready models. Build flexible models to support scenario planning, capacity planning, and long-term investment decisions tied to product growth and technical architecture.
• Support executive and board-level reporting. Prepare clear, concise materials that explain R&D performance, cloud and AI cost dynamics, and forward-looking implications for company strategy.
• Improve tools, processes, and data quality. Enhance forecasting accuracy, automate reporting where possible, and improve how R&D, cloud, and AI cost data flows into FP&A systems and decision-making.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed
• Number of Employees: 501-1,000 employees