Analyst - Finance Ops

McCain Foods; Harnes; On-site; EUR 60,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

McCain Alimentaire SAS in France is seeking an Analyst - Finance Operations for the EMENA region. You will partner with manufacturing plants, drive cost performance analysis, identify savings and support the month-end close with actionable insights.

Your work focuses on conversion cost and COGS variance decomposition, cross-plant benchmarking and building AI-assisted dashboards to translate financial data into operational decisions.

Qualifications

• Three to six years in operations, manufacturing or FP&A.
• Strong costing, overhead absorption and variance analysis skills.
• Experience with plant managers and cross-functional teams.
• Advanced Excel and financial modelling, including scenario analysis.
• ERP experience, SAP preferred.

Responsibilities

• Act as finance partner to EMENA plants and lead monthly cost reviews.
• Translate performance into actionable financial insights.
• Develop understanding of manufacturing processes and line metrics.
• Benchmark costs across plants and build AI-enabled dashboards.
• Quantify financial impact of performance gaps for prioritization.

Skills

Cost analysis

Variance analysis

Financial modelling

Excel advanced

Power BI

SAP

Education

Bachelor's in Finance

Tools

SAP

Job description

Position Title: Analyst - Finance Ops

Position Type: Regular - Full-Time

Requisition ID: 42580

The Analyst, Finance Operations, EMENA is the finance partner to the region's French manufacturing plants, accountable for cost performance analysis, insight and savings identification alongside the operational month-end close.

Core scope includes conversion cost and COGS variance decomposition, cross-plant benchmarking, identification and validation of cost savings opportunities, and support to the long-term cost competitiveness agenda for EMENA manufacturing, including total production cost evolution and cost curve positioning.

The role is weighted toward insight and business partnering rather than transactional reporting. Performance is assessed on decisions influenced and savings delivered.

Responsibilities

Plant business partnering

• Act as finance partner to plant management teams across EMENA, operating within their performance routines and planning cycles.
• Lead monthly cost performance reviews with plant managers covering variance drivers, full-year implications and required corrective action.
• Translate financial performance into operational terms and operational decisions into financial consequence.
• Develop detailed understanding of the manufacturing process, including line performance, yield, downtime, labour deployment, utilities, maintenance and changeovers.

Performance analysis and insight

• Decompose conversion cost and COGS variances into underlying drivers, including usage, yield, rate, mix, volume, absorption, downtime, off-grade and downtime, and attribute each to a specific action and owner.
• Benchmark cost and operational performance across plants and lines, using AI and analytics tooling to interrogate large production datasets, identify outliers and investigate the gap between best-in-network and typical performance.
• Own operations KPI reporting, including cost per tonne, Plant PUVR, labour productivity, downtime, schedule adherence, off-grade and waste. Build and automate the supporting dashboards and provide the accompanying narrative.
• Quantify the financial impact of operational performance gaps to allow operational priorities to be ranked financially.

Cost savings identification and delivery

• Proactively identify cost savings opportunities across the EMENA plant network, including yield, labour, energy, maintenance, packaging, waste, line efficiency, shift patterns and consumables, using AI-assisted data interrogation to surface opportunities that recurring reporting does not show.
• Size, validate and build the business case for opportunities, and track initiatives from pipeline through to realised P&L impact.
• Test savings baselines, distinguish committed from aspirational initiatives, and ensure delivery is visible in the reported result.
• Work across operations, engineering, procurement and planning to pursue cross-functional opportunities that would otherwise go unowned.

Long-term cost competitiveness

• Support the multi-year cost competitiveness agenda for EMENA manufacturing, including total production cost evolution, cost curve positioning and the supporting initiative roadmap.
• Model the financial impact of structural options, including line investment, automation, shift pattern change, capacity and footprint decisions, and make versus buy.
• Maintain the analytical base underpinning longer-term plans: standard cost build-ups, capacity and utilisation assumptions, fixed and variable cost structure and absorption logic.

Month-end close, budget and standards

• Own month-end close for operations costs in scope, including journal entries and accruals for labour, overtime, temporary labour, maintenance, energy, overheads and indirect spend.
• Own overhead absorption and spend phasing in plant P&Ls, and explain absorption variances substantively.
• Lead the plant input process for budget, forecast and rolling forecast cycles covering operating expenses and operational KPIs.
• Support annual standard cost setting, including crop-year standards and the impact of old-crop and new-crop transition on reported performance.
• Provide variance commentary against budget, forecast and prior year, distinguishing temporary from structural movements.
• Apply AI and automation to standardise the EMENA plant reporting suite and shift effort from report production to interpretation, validating all AI-assisted output against source data before it informs a decision or is issued to a plant.

Requirements

• Degree in finance, accounting, controlling, business administration, or related field.
• Three to six years in operations, manufacturing or plant finance, FP&A or financial control, ideally in a multi-site industrial or FMCG environment.
• Strong grounding in standard costing, overhead absorption, variance analysis and cost build-ups, with the ability to explain absorption, volume and mix effects to a non-finance audience.
• Demonstrated track record of identifying and quantifying cost savings opportunities, not solely reporting on performance.
• Experience working directly with plant managers or production leadership.
• Advanced Excel and financial modelling, including scenario and sensitivity analysis.
• ERP experience, SAP preferred.
• Proficiency applying AI and analytics tools to finance work - dashboard automation, process improvement and interrogation of plant and production data to identify cost drivers, outliers and savings opportunities - with a disciplined approach to validating output against source.
• Required to spend time on sites.
• Fluent English and French, written and spoken.

Preferred

• Professional accounting or other relevant qualification (CPA, CA or similar), or active study toward one.
• Strong Power BI or equivalent business intelligence capability.
• Exposure to plant or MES production data.
• Food manufacturing, agriculture-linked or seasonal-input experience.
• Experience designing analysis or methodology and deploying it across multiple sites.

McCain Foods is an equal opportunity employer. As a global family-owned company, we strive to be the employer of choice in the diverse communities around the world in which we live and work. We recognize that inclusion drives our creativity, resilience, and success and makes our business stronger. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, sex, age, veteran status, disability, or any other protected characteristic under applicable law.

McCain is an accessible employer. If you require an accommodation throughout the recruitment process (including alternate formats of materials or accessible meeting rooms), please let us know and we will work with you to find appropriate solutions.

Your privacy is important to us. By submitting personal data or information to us, you agree this will be handled in accordance with McCain’s Global Privacy Policy and Global Employee Privacy Policy, as applicable. McCain leverages AI in the hiring process, though all final decisions are made by humans. You can understand our approach to AI and how your personal information is being handled here.

Job Family: Finance

Division: Global Operations and Growth

Department: Capital Excellence

Location(s): FR - France : Pas-de-Calais : Harnes

Company: McCain Alimentaire SAS