Strategic Finance Operator

Mechanism Ventures

1d•Remote

About The Position

The Strategic Finance Operator is the financial thought partner that Mechanism’s portfolio CEOs, Heads of Growth, and executive leadership rely on. You are not a reporting function, a back-office hire, or confined to one company or one domain. You are embedded across a number of high-growth companies and Mechanism Ventures itself, advising operators on the decisions that matter, owning the financial narrative that everyone trusts. This is a high, but intentional bar. Mechanism Finance is being rebuilt. We made real progress: commodity accounting is outsourced, reporting infrastructure is being automated, and the systems that used to consume a finance team’s time are increasingly handled systematically, but we are not done. What lands on this role today will be unglamorous: edge cases that don’t fit any workflow yet, requests with no clear owner, financial questions that technically belong somewhere else but practically land here because you’re the person with context. The right person for this role is not deterred by that. They are motivated to close the gap, because building the systems that eliminate that work is part of the job, not a distraction from it. This role requires generalist financial acumen, driver-based instincts, multi-company fluency, and the breadth to operate independently at the highest level of the finance function.

Requirements

6-10 years of FP&A, startup finance, or multi-company work
Advised founders or operators directly
Driver-based modelling is your default
Comfortable holding financial context across multiple companies simultaneously
Learns fast, builds systems rather than just doing the work
Worked across a portfolio, PE-backed roll-up, or multi-entity environment
Built financial reporting infrastructure from scratch, not just inherited it
Enough accounting literacy to QA a close without running it yourself
Experience with modern FP&A platforms

Responsibilities

Advise operators on their most consequential financial decisions, including unit economics, cash flow, runway, and growth investment, by asking critical questions and pressure-testing assumptions.
Own the financial narrative by understanding and communicating actuals against plan at a driver level, providing forward-looking commentary, and delivering actionable insights.
Validate the analytical layer by working alongside the Finance Operator, Data to define what gets built and confirm it is financially correct before it reaches anyone.
Handle the full financial surface area for any given company, including valuations, tax considerations, SPV distributions, inter-company billing, and funding proposals.
Demonstrate strong financial acumen by being able to read a P&L, understand unit economics, and identify when a number is wrong based on business understanding.
Maintain financial context across multiple businesses simultaneously without confusing them.
Continuously improve processes by building systems rather than just doing the work, getting better fast, and proactively identifying and fixing issues.