Budget & Commercial Operations Analyst (Financial Analyst III)

Spectraforce Technologies; Sunnyvale (CA); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Spectraforce Technologies is seeking a Budget & Commercial Operations Analyst (Financial Analyst III) for a 12-month hybrid role in Sunnyvale, CA. You will manage vendor budgets, POs, and invoicing while ensuring accurate accruals and timely payments.

The role emphasizes data-driven process improvements, cross‑functional collaboration with S2P/FP&A/Legal, and leveraging AI tools in routine finance tasks. A strong foundation in finance operations and detailed record‑keeping is essential.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of experience in a finance, accounting, procurement, or vendor operations role with a focus on transactional processing.
• Demonstrated working knowledge of accruals and month-end positions.
• Understanding of OpEx vs CapEx classifications and accounting treatment.
• Strong cashflow literacy and PO-to-Pay workflow understanding.
• Proficiency with financial management systems (SAP, Oracle, NetSuite) and MS Office/Google Suite.
• Ability to work with large datasets and communicate with internal/external stakeholders.
• Experience using GenAI or AI tooling in finance contexts.

Responsibilities

• Initiate, process, track, and maintain purchase orders in the ERP system per agreement terms.
• Monitor funding status and follow up on invoices to prevent payment delays.
• Maintain budget envelope view and flag when approaching limits.
• Validate pricing against rate cards and escalate off-taxonomy pricing.
• Serve as primary contact for vendors on delivery reporting and invoicing metadata.
• Own the delivery tracking log with scope, dates, and volumes.
• Oversee the acceptance workflow and chase pending items before payment submission.
• Reconcile invoices with contracts and approved parameters.
• Route invoices for internal approvals and payment processing.
• Resolve discrepancies between invoices and delivery records with vendors and internal teams.
• Manage monthly accruals for vendor spend and reconcile against invoiced/paid figures.
• Support quarterly forecast inputs for vendor spend and timing of payments.
• Assist with month-end close documentation and reports.

Skills

End-to-end PO management

Vendor operations

Accruals & AP/AR

Advanced Excel/Sheets

ERP systems (SAP/Oracle/NetSuite)

AI tooling in finance

Data analysis in large datasets

Vendor invoicing and payments

Tools

SAP

Oracle

NetSuite

Excel/Sheets

Job description

Job Title: Budget & Commercial Operations Analyst (Financial Analyst III)

Duration: 12 months - potential extension

Location: Hybrid in Sunnyvale, CA

We are seeking a highly organized and detail-oriented Contingent Worker to support vendor budget and commercial operations. This role is crucial in supporting the day‑to‑day financial management of vendor engagements – ensuring budget accuracy, timely purchase order setup, reliable tracking of vendor deliverables, and clean invoice and accrual treatment. The ideal candidate is a self‑starter with a strong understanding of foundational financial processes, sound judgment on accounting treatment, and a commitment to meticulous record‑keeping across a growing portfolio of vendor agreements. We expect this person to actively use AI tooling in their daily work and to treat the operational processes they inherit as candidates for improvement – identifying manual, repetitive, or error‑prone steps and partnering with the team to automate them rather than simply absorbing the volume.

Key Responsibilities

• End‑to‑end ownership of initiating, processing, tracking, and maintenance of purchase orders in the ERP system, structured to match each agreement’s payment shape (upfront, milestone, or per‑delivery)
• Monitoring PO funding status and proactively following up on outstanding invoices and related exceptions, initiating top‑ups before shortfalls block vendor payment
• Maintaining the running view of the approved budget envelope – approved, committed, executed, and remaining – and flagging when the pipeline approaches the ceiling
• Validating pricing on incoming vendor deals against the approved rate card taxonomy and escalating off‑taxonomy pricing for sign‑off
• Serving as day‑to‑day operational contact for vendors on delivery reporting, PO references, invoice format, service periods, and required reporting metadata
• Owning the delivery tracking log – capturing vendor, scope, delivery date, volume, and supporting detail for every reported delivery
• Driving deliveries through the review and acceptance workflow, chasing pending items and preventing backlog accumulation, and confirming acceptance before invoices are submitted for payment
• Validation of invoices against contract terms and approved parameters, ensuring accuracy of scope, volume delivered, rates charged, service period, and purchase order billed
• Route invoices for internal approvals and ensure timely processing for payment
• Reconciling and resolving discrepancies between invoices and delivery records by coordinating with vendors and internal teams, including handling credit memos and adjustment lines
• Owning the monthly accrual position for vendor spend – recognizing delivered‑but‑uninvoiced work, applying the correct accrual input type, and reconciling accrued vs. invoiced vs. paid
• Supporting quarterly forecast inputs for vendor spend, including timing of upfront versus delivery‑linked payments
• Support the preparation of documentation and reports required for month‑end close processes
• Tracking contract renewal and expiry dates and surfacing them ahead of decision deadlines
• Liaising with S2P, FP&A, Accounting, Sourcing, and Legal to ensure PO accuracy, alignment with approved budgets, and correct accounting treatment
• Maintain organized and accessible financial records and process documentation
• Assist with ad‑hoc reporting and analysis requests from the finance and program teams
• Use approved AI and automation tooling to accelerate routine work – reconciliation, data extraction from vendor submissions and invoices, summarization, and drafting vendor correspondence – while retaining human review and accountability for any number or commitment that leaves the team
• Proactively identify manual, repetitive, or error‑prone steps in the operational workflow and propose automation or process redesign opportunities, with a clear view of the time saved and the risk reduced
• Partner with the workforce planning and program teams to scope and test automations end to end, and support migration of manual trackers into supported systems as tooling matures
• Document processes clearly enough that they can be automated or handed over, and maintain that documentation as workflows change
• Ensure adherence to internal financial controls and company policies

Qualifications

Required

• 4+ years of experience in a finance, accounting, procurement, or vendor operations role with a focus on transactional processing
• Demonstrated working knowledge of accruals – able to explain and apply the difference between accrued, invoiced, and paid, and build a defensible month‑end position where delivery and invoicing are out of sync
• Solid understanding of OpEx versus CapEx treatment – able to reason about how a given engagement should be classified, what drives capitalization versus expensing, and when to escalate to Accounting rather than deciding alone
• Strong cashflow literacy – understands the timing gap between contract execution, upfront payment, delivery, acceptance, invoice, and cash out, and how PO structure and payment terms drive it
• Proficiency with financial management systems (e.g., SAP, Oracle, NetSuite) and MS Office Suite / Google Suite (particularly advanced Excel/Sheets skills)
• Strong understanding of fundamental accounting principles (AP/AR, general ledger) and financial workflows (PO-to-Pay)
• Comfortable working with large datasets and operating in ambiguous environments
• Excellent organizational skills and a high degree of attention to detail
• Demonstrated ability to communicate effectively, both verbally and in writing, with internal and external stakeholders, including holding a firm line on data quality and approval gates
• Works with a sense of urgency for critical business requests
• Customer service oriented person, focused on quality communication with a bias for action
• Demonstrated use of AI tooling in a finance or operations context, with sound judgment about where AI output can be trusted and where it must be verified – particularly for financial figures, vendor‑facing communication, and anything entering a system of record
• Track record of identifying inefficiencies in an existing process and driving a concrete improvement, with evidence of the impact
• Comfortable working in spreadsheets and workflow tools at a level beyond basic data entry – building repeatable reconciliations, validations, and checks rather than re‑performing them manually each cycle

Preferred

• Experience working in a fast‑paced corporate or technology environment
• Experience using Anaplan, AppSheet, Oracle, Airtable
• Past experience in managing procurement and finance operations for a specific line of business
• Comfort working alongside technical or research stakeholders who act as delivery reviewers
• Hands‑on experience building lightweight automations – scripting, low‑code or workflow automation platforms, or AI‑assisted workflows – to replace manual operational steps
• Experience contributing to an automation or process‑transformation initiative in a finance, procurement, or vendor operations function

Minimum Years of Experience

4+

Must‑Have Skills

• Transactional finance operations / PO-to-Pay end‑to‑end ownership
• Advanced Excel with large data sets (pivots, lookups, modeling, reconciliation)
• Strong accounting judgment with high attention to detail

Nice‑to‑Have Skills

• GenAI program exposure – data annotations or data licensing
• Experience at an AI lab or AI data/services vendor
• Prior Client or comparable large‑tech contingent experience in a data/sourcing operations org

Key Projects/Day‑to‑Day Responsibilities

PO creation, tracking and management through the pay cycle; invoice and vendor issue resolution; spend tracking and reconciliation against budget; large‑data‑set analysis and reporting in Excel; applying accounting judgment to transactional exceptions; partnering with vendors and internal stakeholders on finance operations support for GenAI data programs.

Purpose/Size of this team & where does this position fit within the team?

A finance operations function supporting AI data programs. This role sits as an individual‑contributor analyst executing the transactional finance and PO-to-pay workload, reporting to the hiring manager and partnering closely with program and vendor stakeholders.

Why is this position open?

New HC- ongoing transactional finance operations workload requires dedicated day‑to‑day coverage.

Certain project that team is working on / what products are they supporting

GenAI data programs – data annotation and data licensing operations, and the vendor/spend activity that supports them.

Any companies they would like to see on resumes

Leading AI labs and AI research organizations; AI data‑services and annotation vendors; fast‑paced technology companies generally.

About the Team

Fast‑paced, high‑volume finance operations team supporting AI data initiatives. Collaborative, execution‑focused, with direct exposure to emerging AI programs.