Director, FP&A

XNRGY Climate Systems; Mesa (AZ); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

XNRGY Climate Systems, a fast-growing North American manufacturer of thermal management systems, seeks a Director of FP&A to own margin analysis across commercial programs from quotation through production. This role sits with the Senior VP, FP&A and interfaces with Application Engineering, Strategic Sourcing, and Sales.

The successful candidate will design governance, budgeting, and cost standards from a clean slate, with a measurable impact on profitability as the company scales rapidly.

Qualifications

• Five to eight+ years in commercial finance or FP&A within engineered-products manufacturing.
• Cost estimating ownership and defending pricing assumptions.
• Strong command of BOM costing, standard cost, and variance analysis.
• Experience with EPICOR ERP; advanced Excel modelling.
• SQL or similar data query ability preferred.

Responsibilities

• Own bid governance from quotation to margin sign-off.
• Develop cost bridges and margin drivers for programs.
• Manage annual budget and standard cost inputs.
• Query ERP/quotation data to support margin analyses.
• Partner with Sales, Sourcing, Engineering, and Operations.

Skills

Cost analysis

Budgeting

Forecasting

ERP systems

SQL

Excel modelling

AI tooling

Cross-functional

Education

Bachelor's degree in Finance or Engineering

CPA / CMA / CSCP a plus

Tools

EPICOR

SQL

Excel

Job description

Who are we?

XNRGY Climate Systems is a private-equity–backed, hyper-growth North American manufacturer of custom air handling and liquid cooling systems engineered for the data center and AI infrastructure markets. With advanced manufacturing operations in Mesa, Arizona and Saint-Hubert, Québec, XNRGY is scaling rapidly to meet unprecedented demand for mission-critical thermal management at the heart of the digital economy.

The Company competes in one of the most dynamic segments of the critical infrastructure landscape, combining engineering-led product development with a disciplined, capital-efficient operating model. As XNRGY scales, financial rigor around cash, capital allocation, margin, and working capital is central to sustaining profitable growth and delivering on commitments to the Board and investors.

The Opportunity

The Director holds the pen on income statement and margin analysis across the commercial pipeline, from the cost build inside the quotation tool through to delivered project margin. Reporting to the Senior Vice President, FP&A, the role sits between Application Engineering, Strategic Sourcing, and Sales at the precise point where margin is won or lost, and carries the standing to determine that a bid is not yet ready to be submitted.

Alongside the deal-by-deal work, the role owns the commercial half of the annual operating budget — the gross margin, pricing, and standard cost assumptions on which the plan rests.

This is a build mandate rather than a reporting seat. The successful candidate will design the governance framework, the review cadence, and the analytical standards from a blank sheet, with visible impact on the profitability of a rapidly scaling business.

Key Responsibilities

Bid & Quotation Governance

• Own and administer formal finance review and sign-off of the pricing and quotation tool, establishing a scheduled, owned process in place of ad hoc review.
• Define review thresholds, calendar, and turnaround standards in partnership with Sales and Operations, so that governance improves bid quality without becoming a constraint on bid timing.
• Build and maintain the bid review standard covering direct material, labour, scrap factor, contingency, freight, tariff, subcontract, and overhead assumptions, validated against current supplier quotations.
• Serve as the principal finance partner to Application Engineering on cost assumptions, unit economics, and sign-off, including normalised metrics that allow comparison across opportunities.
• Challenge cost assumptions constructively and identify margin improvement opportunities before a quotation is submitted.
• Reconcile awarded purchase orders and executed contracts back to the quotation tool to confirm that quoted and committed costs agree.

Project & Program Margin Analysis

• Own project-based margin analysis for major customer programs, tracking margin from quotation through production to delivery.
• Develop cost bridges explaining margin movement by driver — supplier pricing, commodities, tariffs, freight, engineering change, volume, and manufacturing assumptions.
• Quantify the cost and margin impact of customer- and engineering-driven scope changes, ensuring the increment is captured through change management and communicated to Sales so that customer pricing can be adjusted.
• Identify emerging margin risk on live programs early enough for corrective action, with defined ownership and timing.
• Conduct post-project reviews comparing estimated to actual cost and drive the findings into the next quotation cycle.

Annual Budget & Standard Cost Inputs

• Own the gross margin, pricing, and product cost assumptions within the annual operating budget working to the budget calendar, templates, and submission standards set by FP&A.
• Lead the annual standard cost exercise — material, labour, overhead, freight, and tariff assumptions — and quantify the P&L effect of the change before the plan is locked.
• Build the budgeted margin view by product line, program, and site, including expected bid pipeline conversion and mix, and defend those assumptions through budget review.
• Explain in-year gross margin variance against budget by driver, and feed the findings into the reforecast and the next quoting cycle.

Analytics

• Query ERP and quotation-tool data directly — SQL or an equivalent BI toolset — to build those libraries and to reconcile quoted cost against committed and actual cost, rather than depending on manual extracts for routine analysis.
• Use AI tooling to accelerate recurring cost work such as supplier quotation comparison, benchmark refresh, and first-draft variance commentary, verifying every output before it informs a customer price.
• Improve the automation and self-service capability of cost and margin reporting, so that routine commercial questions can be answered without a manual build each time.

Commercial Partnership & Continuous Improvement

• Act as a trusted business partner to Sales, Sourcing, Engineering, and Operations, engaged early in the opportunity rather than late in escalation.
• Support make-versus-buy, value engineering, and total cost of ownership analysis alongside Strategic Sourcing.
• Develop and report KPIs monitoring quotation accuracy and margin performance.
• Improve quotation tools, costing methodology, and estimating standards, promoting consistency across the organisation.

What Success Looks Like

Within the first year, the Company expects the successful candidate to have established bid review as routine business practice rather than an imposition; narrowed the variance between quoted and delivered margin on major programs; built a working cost library and benchmark set that measurably improved estimating accuracy against a defined baseline; owned the margin and standard cost assumptions through a full annual budget cycle; and become sufficiently trusted by Sales and Engineering to be engaged early in the opportunity cycle.

Candidate Profile

The ideal candidate is a commercially minded manufacturing finance professional who combines detailed command of product cost with the credibility and composure to hold a position under commercial pressure. They are equally comfortable interrogating a bill of materials and presenting a margin recommendation to senior leadership.

Experience & Qualifications

• Experience: Five to eight or more years in commercial finance, product costing, manufacturing finance, or FP&A within an engineered-products, capital equipment, or industrial manufacturing environment.
• Costing ownership: Demonstrated ownership of cost estimating or quotation cost validation — building, challenging, and defending the cost assumptions behind customer pricing.
• Cost structure: Strong command of manufacturing cost structure, including BOM-based costing, standard cost, purchase price variance, cost rollups, scrap and contingency factors, and absorption.
• Margin analysis: Experience analysing project or program margin across a lifecycle, including cost bridges that explain variance by driver.
• Modelling & systems: Advanced Excel modelling and working ERP proficiency, including product master data and cost rollup logic. EPICOR experience preferred.
• Budgeting: Experience owning the cost and margin assumptions within an annual operating budget, and running or supporting an annual standard cost roll.
• Data & query skills: Comfort querying source data directly is an advantage — SQL or an equivalent toolset — enabling independent interrogation of cost, purchasing, and quotation data. Cost judgment comes first; this distinguishes strong candidates rather than replacing costing depth.
• AI fluency: Practical use of AI tooling to speed recurring cost analysis and documentation, together with the judgment to verify output before it reaches a customer quotation.
• Preferred: Engineered-to-order or configured-product experience, NPI and design-to-cost exposure, and cross-border freight and tariff analysis are each strongly advantageous.
• Education: Bachelor's degree in Finance, Accounting, Engineering, Supply Chain, or a related field required; CPA, CMA, or CSCP a plus.

Personal Characteristics

• Analytically rigorous, with the instinct to interrogate a cost build to component level rather than accept the total.
• Willing to challenge constructively and hold a position on a deadline without damaging the relationship.
• A process owner by disposition, who understands that a governance gate nobody respects is worse than no gate at all.
• Technically credible with engineers, and able to speak their language.
• Inclined to automate recurring analysis rather than absorb it, while treating any automated or AI-generated output as a draft to be verified — not a result to be forwarded.

Are you ready to join our driven team?

Join a company that values Courage, Community, Climate, Customer, and Coherence. Be part of carving our footprint and joining a winning team!