Director of Special Projects - Finance

IFS; Itasca (IL); Hybrid; USD 175,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible paid time off

401K with company contribution

Flexible spending accounts

Life insurance and disability benefits

Tuition assistance

Community involvement and volunteering

Job summary

IFS is seeking a seasoned leader to drive cross-functional finance transformation initiatives from framing through implementation. You will lead large-scale projects, collaborate with Sales, Services, R&D and Operations, and shape governance and operating models that endure in practice.

You will report to the CFO, direct a small project team, and partner with external consultants when needed. This role offers hybrid work and real impact on how the company plans and allocates resources.

Qualifications

• Six or more years in management consulting, corporate strategy, finance transformation or business operations.
• Ownership of complex, multi-stakeholder projects from diagnosis through implementation.
• Executive communication and ability to run workshops that end in a decision.

Responsibilities

• Lead initiatives end to end: frame the problem, build the workplan, run analysis, drive decisions with senior stakeholders and manage implementation.
• Diagnose how the business actually runs through interviews, workshops and data.
• Design future state: process, structure, governance and transition plan with the teams.
• Connect finance, data and operations: translate financial logic to operational reality.
• Improve decision evidence: define metrics, models and reporting needs.

Skills

Executive communication

Cross-functional work

Financial literacy

Operating models

SQL knowledge

Python/R knowledge

Education

MBA or advanced degree

Tools

SQL

Python

R

Job description

IFS is a billion-dollar revenue company with 7000+ employees on all continents. Our leading AI technology is the backbone of our award-winning enterprise software solutions, enabling our customers to be their best when it really matters–at the Moment of Service™. Our commitment to internal AI adoption has allowed us to stay at the forefront of technological advancements, ensuring our colleagues can unlock their creativity and productivity, and our solutions are always cutting-edge.

At IFS, we’re flexible, we’re innovative, and we’re focused not only on how we can engage with our customers but on how we can make a real change and have a worldwide impact. We help solve some of society’s greatest challenges, fostering a better future through our agility, collaboration, and trust.

We celebrate diversity and understand our responsibility to reflect the diverse world we work in. We are committed to promoting an inclusive workforce that fully represents the many different cultures, backgrounds, and viewpoints of our customers, our partners, and our communities. As a truly international company serving people from around the globe, we realize that our success is tantamount to the respect we have for those different points of view.

By joining our team, you will have the opportunity to be part of a global, diverse environment; you will be joining a winning team with a commitment to sustainability; and a company where we get things done so that you can make a positive impact on the world.

We’re looking for innovative and original thinkers to work in an environment where you can #MakeYourMoment so that we can help others make theirs. With the power of our AI-driven solutions, we empower our team to change the status quo and make a real difference.

If you want to change the status quo, we’ll help you make your moment. Join Team Purple. Join IFS.

Job Description

About the role

This role sits in the Office of the CFO, and it is not a conventional finance role. Finance holds much of what IFS knows about itself: cost structure, unit economics, how the plan was built and where it has drifted. Most of the decisions that evidence should shape sit somewhere else, in Sales, Services, R&D and Operations. Connecting the two is the job.

You will lead a small number of substantial cross‑functional projects each year and advise on several more. The work moves between transformation and analysis: redesigning how we plan and allocate, building the models and reporting leadership needs to see the business clearly, designing operating models and governance that hold up in practice, and working out where AI genuinely changes how finance and its partner functions work.

The portfolio changes with what the company needs. What stays constant is the shape of the problem. It crosses functions, nobody owns it yet, and the people involved do not start out

agreeing. A meaningful part of the work runs through external consulting partners, so you will be directing teams you do not employ about as often as teams you do.

Why this role?

Many roles at this level are either functional ownership or advice. This is neither. You take a problem from framing through analysis, decision and implementation, and you stay with it long enough to find out whether it worked.

You get direct access to the CFO and the executive team, a small team on your projects, and responsibility for outcomes rather than documents. IFS has grown quickly, organically and through acquisition, so there is real work to do on how the company plans, allocates and decides. This is not a tidy system to maintain.

What you'll do

• Lead initiatives end to end. Frame the problem, build the workplan, run the analysis, drive to a decision with senior stakeholders and stay through implementation. You will not hand over a deck and move on.
• Diagnose how the business actually runs. Through interviews, workshops and time in the data, establish how a process really works rather than how it is documented, where cost and effort sit, and which decisions are being made on weak evidence or not being made at all.
• Design the future state. Process, structure, roles, governance and a transition plan someone can follow, built with the teams who have to live with it rather than presented to them.
• Connect finance, data and operations. Translate across financial logic, the data that describes the business and operational reality: cost structure to process design, forecast variance to capacity decisions, margin pressure to where the work actually happens. Work with Data and Technology teams so the numbers behind those links can be trusted.
• Improve the evidence behind decisions. Define the metrics, models and reporting leadership needs, retire what it does not, and make sure assumptions can be inspected and argued with.
• Scope and manage external consulting partners. Write the brief and scope of work, evaluate proposals, direct day‑to‑day delivery, hold external teams to a standard, integrate their output with internal work, control spend against the value delivered, and bring the knowledge back in house when the engagement ends.
• Lead blended teams. Run internal, cross‑functional and third‑party teams without formal authority over most of them. The role may carry direct reports over time.
• Shape where AI belongs in this work. Finance and its partner functions have no shortage of candidate use cases across planning, forecasting, close, procurement and workforce processes. The useful contribution is judgment: what is worth building, in what order, who owns it afterward, and where a human check has to stay. IFS holds its internal AI adoption to the same standard as the software it sells.

In your first six months: take one significant cross‑functional problem from framing to a decision the executive team has signed off, with an implementation plan and a named owner. Alongside it, produce a clear read on how one core planning or allocation process works today and what should change.

Qualifications

What you'll bring

You are comfortable being handed a broad question and a group of stakeholders who do not agree, and turning that into a recommendation people act on. You care as much about whether the change held as about whether the analysis was right.

• Six or more years in management consulting, corporate strategy, finance transformation or business operations, with substantial cross‑functional exposure. A consulting background fits well, and so does someone who has already left consulting for industry and wants a broader remit than a single function.
• Ownership of complex, multi‑stakeholder work from diagnosis through implementation. Not analysis on its own, and not project administration.
• Strong quantitative skills and financial literacy. You can build a model or take one apart, work with messy enterprise data, connect operational drivers to financial results, and say plainly what the numbers do and do not support.
• Experience designing operating models, processes or organizational structures, and seeing them through to implementation.
• Experience working with or inside professional services. You know how an engagement is scoped, priced and staffed, what good delivery looks like, how to get value out of a partner firm and when bringing one in is the wrong answer.
• Executive communication. You can write a one‑page recommendation and defend it in front of people who disagree with each other, and run a workshop that ends in a decision rather than another meeting.

Nice to have

• An MBA or comparable advanced degree, or an equivalent record of progression.
• Experience with planning, forecasting or resource allocation processes: how they work, where they break and what it takes to redesign one. Deep FP&A ownership is welcome but not expected.
• Hands‑on work on AI strategy or delivery, such as use case prioritization, build, buy or partner decisions, or getting an AI‑enabled product into real use. Technical depth is welcome; judgment about what is realistic matters more.
• Working knowledge of SQL, Python or R, and of modern business intelligence and planning tools. You do not need to build the pipeline, but pulling your own data and pressure‑testing someone else’s analysis will make you faster.
• Enterprise software, or another business with recurring revenue and a substantial services component. Post‑acquisition integration or carve‑out experience.
• Shared services or center of excellence design, or work in regulated and high‑consequence environments where a decision also has to be defensible.

If you have led cross‑functional work that ended in a decision someone had to make, and you want a broader problem set than any one function can offer, we would like to hear from you.

What We’re Offering

• Salary Range: $175,000 - $190,000plus bonus
• Flexible paid time off, including sick and holiday
• 401K with Company contribution
• Flexible spending accounts
• Life insurance and disability benefits
• Tuition assistance
• Community involvement and volunteering events

Additional Information

We embrace flexibility and hybrid work opportunities to support diverse needs and lifestyles, while also valuing inclusive workplace experiences. By fostering a sense of community, we drive innovation, strengthen connections, and nurture belonging. Our commitment ensures you can work in a way that suits you best, while also engaging with colleagues to share ideas and build meaningful relationships.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or status as a protected veteran. VEVRAA Federal Contractor, Equal Opportunity Employer