Innovation Finance Lead: Strategic Portfolio & P&L

Mars; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 154,000 - 211,000; Full time

Job summary

Mars, Incorporated and its Affiliates seeks a Senior Manager, Innovation Finance to serve as the financial co-pilot across the category portfolio, driving proactive financial stewardship and strategic leadership for growth initiatives that optimize the P&L.

You will orchestrate innovation governance, develop robust business cases, and lead post-launch evaluations while collaborating with R&D, Industrial Engineering, Marketing, and Commercial teams to ensure financially viable investments aligned

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, Finance, Economics, or related quantitative discipline.
• 8–10 years of progressive finance experience with strong FP&A, financial modeling, or business planning.
• Strong corporate finance principles, P&L architecture knowledge.
• Proven ability to build multi-year DCF, project P&Ls, and capital justification models.
• Understanding of how manufacturing supply chain, BOM, and marketing drivers affect margins.
• Excellent stakeholder management and executive communication.
• Advanced Excel, financial modeling systems, and BI/reporting platforms (Power BI, SAP).

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end financial evaluation and modeling for Horizon 3 and 4 initiatives across the category.
• Build and stress-test dynamic P&Ls by consolidating inputs from R&D, Industrial Engineering, and Marketing.
• Conduct sensitivity, scenario, risk analyses to challenge financial assumptions.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to ensure financially sound initiatives.
• Lead integration of Mars/Kellanova innovation data into Mars systems.
• Govern innovation pipelines with cross-functional leadership and governance forums.
• Provide post-launch oversight and value realization analysis.

Skills

Financial modeling

Business planning

FP&A

P&L architecture

DCF modeling

Stakeholder management

Executive presentation

Excel

Power BI

SAP

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, Finance, Economics, or related quantitative discipline

Tools

Power BI

SAP

Job description

Mars, Incorporated and its Affiliates seeks a Senior Manager, Innovation Finance to serve as the financial co-pilot across the category portfolio, driving proactive financial stewardship and strategic leadership for growth initiatives that optimize the P&L.

You will orchestrate innovation governance, develop robust business cases, and lead post-launch evaluations while collaborating with R&D, Industrial Engineering, Marketing, and Commercial teams to ensure financially viable investments aligned