Vice President of Finance

Chosen Foods•San Diego, CA

2d•Onsite

About The Position

The Vice President of Finance is a key strategic partner to the CFO/COO, CEO, and executive leadership team, responsible for building and leading a Finance organization that drives cash generation, deleveraging, forecast credibility, commercial optimization, and enterprise value creation. The role brings a commercial enterprise mindset, connecting financial strategy and performance with customer, operational, and capital decisions to improve business outcomes. Chosen Foods operates with a lean and entrepreneurial model. Accordingly, this is a hands-on leadership role. The VP of Finance must be equally comfortable developing enterprise-level recommendations, leading a high-performing Finance organization, and personally executing the company's most important and complex financial initiatives. The role is designed for a high-potential, future-CFO-caliber leader with the capability to assume broader Finance leadership responsibilities over time.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, Business, or related field required
12+ years of progressive Finance experience, including significant leadership responsibility across FP&A, strategic finance, corporate finance, or related disciplines.
Demonstrated experience partnering with CEOs, CFOs, executive leadership teams, Boards, ownership groups, and lenders on complex business and financial decisions.
Strong command of P&L, balance sheet, cash flow, working capital, capital structure, leverage, capital allocation, and enterprise value creation.
Strong commercial and enterprise business acumen, with demonstrated ability to connect financial analysis to customer, operational, and strategic decisions.
Proven track record of building and developing high-performing Finance teams while operating both strategically and hands-on.

Nice To Haves

MBA, CPA, or equivalent advanced financial qualification strongly preferred
Experience in CPG, consumer products, food and beverage, or a similarly complex operating environment strongly preferred
Experience with M&A, financing, strategic transactions, and Finance transformation is a plus.

Responsibilities

Partner with the CFO/COO to maximize free cash flow, liquidity, working capital, and disciplined capital deployment.
Drive disciplined management of debt service and paydown, total net debt, leverage, covenant headroom, and the company's path toward an optimal capital structure.
Lead financial evaluation of significant investments, strategic opportunities, and resource allocation decisions using disciplined ROI, ROIC, cash generation, and value-creation frameworks.
Support financing strategy, lender relationships, refinancing alternatives, and capital structure analysis.
Lead the company’s enterprise planning and performance framework, including the Long Range Plan, Annual Operating Plan, forecasting, and executive performance management.
Build and maintain forecast credibility through rigorous assumptions, clear ownership, and early identification of risks and opportunities.
Ensure Finance identifies material performance gaps early enough for management action and brings recommendations, not simply explanations after the fact.
Provide leadership and oversight to FP&A while empowering the Director of FP&A to own the planning, forecasting, reporting, and business-partnering operating cadence.
Build a measurable pipeline of opportunities to improve revenue quality, gross margin, EBITDA, working capital, and cash flow.
Bring a commercial enterprise mindset to partnerships with Sales, Marketing, Operations, and Supply Chain, connecting customer, channel, pricing, trade, product, procurement, logistics, inventory, and supply chain economics to value creation.
Lead financial analysis and recommendations for significant commercial, operational, and supply chain decisions.
Establish clear financial ownership and benefit tracking for margin expansion, productivity, and optimization initiatives.
Set the strategic direction for Finance technology, analytics, automation, dashboarding, and AI in partnership with Finance and IT leadership.
Drive measurable productivity improvements through simplification, standardization, automation, self-service reporting, and AI-enabled workflows.
Challenge recurring manual processes and low-value activities before adding incremental resources.
Ensure Finance systems, dashboards, and reporting tools provide timely, trusted, and actionable information and scale with company growth.
Serve as a trusted strategic and financial advisor to the CFO/COO, CEO, and executive leadership team.
Take ownership of complex and ambiguous business problems, develop a clear point of view, and bring recommendations and potential solutions rather than simply escalating problems.
Lead or support strategic projects including financing, M&A, major commercial or supply chain opportunities, strategic partnerships, transformation initiatives, and other CFO/CEO priorities.
Communicate complex issues clearly, frame decisions and tradeoffs, and encourage thoughtful challenge and ideation before converging on a recommendation.
Lead, develop, and retain a high-performing Finance organization capable of supporting continued growth toward and beyond $1 billion in revenue.
Coach and develop Finance leaders, creating clear accountability, succession depth, and internal career pathways.
Build organizational capability through talent, technology, automation, and process improvement before adding unnecessary layers or headcount.
Partner closely with Accounting, Tax, Treasury, controls, audit, and enterprise risk, with the potential to assume broader Finance leadership responsibilities over time based on performance and organizational needs.
Direct leadership of the Finance organization, including the Director of FP&A and other Finance leaders as assigned.
Responsible for organizational design, succession planning, talent development, performance management, and ensuring clear ownership and accountability across the function.
Partner closely with Accounting and Tax.