Strategic FP&A Manager

Substack•San Francisco, CA

4d•$120,000 - $200,000

About The Position

Substack is seeking a motivated self-starter to partner with its Head of Strategic FP&A to build a lean, AI-native strategic finance and FP&A function. The role works directly with leaders across the company to analyze business challenges and help shape the future of independent publishing and media. It plays a leading role in company-wide forecasting and budgeting, cross-functional resource allocation, financial analysis, and long-range planning.

Requirements

4–8 years of total experience, typically starting at an investment bank, investment firm, or consulting firm, followed by strategic finance or FP&A roles at fast-paced technology-enabled companies.
Eagerness to adopt AI tools to automate repetitive work and focus on strategic problem-solving.
Strong conceptual understanding of how data is extracted, analyzed, and visualized.
Foundational understanding of SQL and Python or R.
Familiarity with visualization tools such as Looker or Power BI.
Rigorous training in spreadsheet analysis.
High ownership, self-confidence, low ego, and drive to improve things.
Identification with Substack’s mission is important to fulfillment and impact in the role.

Nice To Haves

Experience with modern FP&A tools such as Adaptive, Aleph, Fintastic, Causal, or Cube.
Appreciation for established best practices, with judgment about when to adopt existing approaches and when to reinvent them.

Responsibilities

Provide cross-functional colleagues with analytical frameworks for evaluating departmental resource-allocation decisions, including marketing-channel return-on-ad-spend benchmarks and international creator-partnership hiring plans.
Help drive the annual budget cycle and rolling quarterly re-forecasts; work with department heads to build driver-based operating budgets and headcount plans aligned with company goals.
Establish spending discipline and monthly budget-versus-actuals cadences; analyze variance drivers, help teams meet budget targets, and surface risk-mitigation options when expenses or revenues deviate from plan.
Investigate core business drivers and help build, maintain, and continually improve Substack’s multi-year corporate financial model.
Translate high-level strategic goals into granular financial roadmaps.
Help architect an AI-native FP&A organization, using automation and modern data workflows to accelerate financial modeling, variance reporting, and scenario planning.