Director Of Finance Jobs

About The Position

Requirements

• Defense or government contracting finance fluency. Knows what a contract modification does to the books, and how award, invoice, and payment are three separate events with three different effects. This is the one thing the company will not teach.
• A strategy and planning background rather than a controllership one. Accounts payable and receivable, close, and day-to-day accounting are handled elsewhere.
• Experience in a hardware business, where inventory, lead times, and working capital drive the cash picture.
• A point of view on the business, and the willingness to state it in the room.
• Comfort operating as the finance function in a fast-growing company rather than inside an established department.
• No minimum years of experience and no degree requirement. In practice, defense and finance experience tend to come together around eight years. Most candidates in this market carry an MBA or a graduate finance degree, and the two are treated as equivalent.

Nice To Haves

• Director of Finance, Head of Finance, VP Finance, or a senior financial planning and analysis lead at a growth-stage defense or national-security company, especially one with a hardware component.
• Government contracting finance at a prime or mid-tier defense manufacturer.
• Investment banking or private equity with aerospace, defense, or industrials coverage, plus real operating experience afterward.

Responsibilities

• Build and own the financial model against the contract backlog, and turn it into decisions leadership can act on.
• Drive long-range planning and budgeting for a business scaling quickly on hardware.
• Own pricing so that margins hold up, and find the margin that is currently leaking.
• Manage working capital through long hardware lead times and government payment timing.
• Anticipate cash peaks and valleys and get ahead of them.
• Act as a genuine thought partner to the founders on business strategy, not only on the numbers.
• Direct the outsourced accounting function and the CPA relationship rather than doing that work.

Benefits

• Bonus
• Equity