Manager, Strategic Finance
Serve Robotics Inc
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Job summary
Serve Robotics Inc is seeking a Manager of Strategic Finance to partner with the CEO/COO, shaping investments, pricing, and market entry decisions. The role requires deep financial modeling, scenario planning, and close collaboration with operations to understand fleet deployment and unit economics.
The ideal candidate brings extensive FP&A experience in tech/robotics, strong communication skills, and a track record of influencing executive decisions.
Qualifications
- 6–8+ years in strategic finance, corporate finance, or FP&A with strategic scope.
- Ownership of capital budgeting, market sizing, or valuation analyses.
- Experience presenting to executives, boards, or investors.
- Proven ability to partner with C‑level executives and influence decisions.
- Experience building multi‑year financial models and investment cases.
- Strong proficiency in Google Sheets/Excel and automation.
Responsibilities
- Lead strategic prioritization and resource allocation decisions.
- Own capital budgeting, NPV/IRR analysis, and scenario planning.
- Size targets and market opportunities to inform long‑range planning.
- Maintain sum‑of‑the‑parts analyses to guide portfolio decisions.
- Model M&A activities and partnership opportunities; track post‑deal performance.
- Own the long‑range plan and budgeting process; ensure alignment with strategy.
- Develop KPI and unit‑economic frameworks; communicate with leadership.
Skills
Education
Tools
Job description
EY Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2025 Bay Area Award Winner 2025
Fast Company 15 Tech Startups to Watch 2022
Fast Company Innovation by Design Awards Honorable Mention 2022
TED Conference Featured Talk 2020
Fast Company Innovation by Design Awards Honorable Mention (Mobility) 2019
Serve is delivering a sustainable future, designed to center peopleand our communities. Our team is founded by serial entrepreneurs and veteran leaders in robotics and artificial intelligence.
We serve our neighborhoods and support local businesses. We go beyond self interest, always taking our community into account. We empower each other with trust and autonomy, because we think that’s the best way to solve the big problems and to build a sustainable future.
We are mission driven. We value each other and our community. We celebrate milestones and moments, both at Serve and in our personal life.
Both to our customers or to each other! We exceed customer expectations. We bring joy to our work and to our neighborhoods.
Serve started with an insight: that delivery could be smarter, kinder, safer, and more in sync with how we live now. What if delivery didn’t mean more cars, more noise, more stress?
So we built something small, quiet, thoughtful. A robot that rolls at walking speed, waits its turn at crosswalks, and fits into the rhythm of everyday life. It has 98% less emissions, 90% less weight, and 99% less kinetic energy than a car.
Robots are not the future. They’re right here, right now!
You’ll have a contact person at Serve for every step of your interview.
USA (remote)
Full time
Remote
Finance
Compensation will vary based on geographic location and level. Leveling, as well as positioning within a level, is determined by a range of factors, including, but not limited to, a candidate's relevant years of experience, domain knowledge, and interview performance. The salary range listed in this posting is representative of the range of levels being considered for this position.'
At Serve Robotics, we’re reimagining how things move in cities. Our personable sidewalk robot is our vision for the future. It’s designed to take deliveries away from congested streets, make deliveries available to more people, and benefit local businesses.
The Serve fleet has been delighting merchants, customers, and pedestrians along the way in Los Angeles, Miami, Dallas, Atlanta and Chicago while doing commercial deliveries. We’re looking for talented individuals who will grow robotic deliveries from surprising novelty to efficient ubiquity.
We are tech industry veterans in software, hardware, and design who are pooling our skills to build the future we want to live in. We are solving real-world problems leveraging robotics, machine learning and computer vision, among other disciplines, with a mindful eye towards the end‑to‑end user experience. Our team is agile, diverse, and driven. We believe that the best way to solve complicated dynamic problems is collaboratively and respectfully.
The Manager, Strategic Finance is the finance leader responsible for shaping where Diligent Robotics invests and how it grows. Working directly with the Diligent CEO and COO as principal business partners, the role leads the analysis behind the company’s biggest decisions: strategic prioritization, target and market sizing, sum-of-the-parts valuation, capital budgeting (NPV, IRR, payback), and the investment cases for new markets, partnerships, and M&A. Success requires a deep command of the operational drivers of the Diligent Robotics business (fleet deployment, utilization, unit economics, hospital customer dynamics, and cost structure) and an equally deep understanding of the Serve Robotics business, so that every recommendation is grounded in how the combined business actually runs. The role also owns the planning and forecasting foundation that makes that analysis credible, including the budget, long‑range plan, and the Pigment planning environment. The role may begin as an individual contributor with line of sight to building and leading a team within the first 12 months.
We have a strong preference for someone based in Austin, TX
- Lead strategic prioritization for the business: frame trade-offs across initiatives, quantify resource requirements and expected returns, and recommend to the CEO and COO where the company should invest, scale back, or stop
- Own capital budgeting and investment analysis, building NPV, IRR, payback, and scenario and sensitivity models for capital deployment, major programs, pricing changes, and new market entry, and setting the hurdle-rate and return frameworks used to evaluate them
- Size targets and market opportunities (TAM/SAM, unit economics, adoption and penetration curves) to underpin company goals, board‑level targets, and the long‑range plan
- Build and maintain sum‑of‑the‑parts analyses that value and compare business lines, products, and markets, and use them to drive portfolio, pricing, and resource‑allocation decisions
- Lead financial modeling for M&A, strategic partnerships, and commercial agreements, including valuation, synergies, integration scenarios, deal structuring inputs, and post‑deal performance tracking against the original investment case
- Own the long‑range strategic plan: translate company strategy into a multi‑year financial model with explicit growth, margin, and capital assumptions, and refresh it as the strategy evolves
- Define and maintain the KPI and unit‑economics framework the CEO and COO use to run the business, ensuring the metrics tie to the financial model and to value creation
- Prepare and deliver executive‑ready presentations, valuation outputs, and financial narratives for leadership meetings, board reviews, and investor discussions, ensuring alignment between strategy, financials, and messaging
- Run ad hoc strategic analyses on pricing strategy, go‑to‑market investments, competitive positioning, and corporate development opportunities
- Serve as the primary Strategic Finance and FP&A partner to the Diligent Robotics CEO and COO, acting as their trusted advisor on operating performance, resource allocation, and investment decisions
- Develop a deep, first‑hand understanding of the operational drivers of the Diligent Robotics business by spending time with operations, deployment, and customer teams, and translate that understanding into forecast assumptions, KPIs, and decision frameworks
- Build an equally deep understanding of the Serve Robotics business, including its operating model, drivers, and strategic priorities, so that Diligent investment cases are evaluated in the context of the combined business
- Operate with strong executive presence, communicating complex financial concepts clearly to non‑finance stakeholders and influencing decisions through data‑driven insight
- Build toward team leadership: as the function scales, hire, develop, and manage finance staff, set priorities and quality standards for the team’s work, and establish processes that scale beyond a single contributor
- Own the company‑wide operating budget, rolling forecast, and long‑range plan, reconciling top‑down targets with bottom‑up functional inputs so forecasts are internally consistent, realistic, and decision‑useful
- Run the monthly and quarterly forecast cycle, including variance analysis and commentary that connects results to the operational and strategic drivers of the business
- Partner with functional leaders and Accounting to challenge assumptions, surface risks and opportunities early, and ensure forecasts, actuals, and financial statements tie
- Serve as the systems owner for Pigment, the company’s newly completed planning environment, with responsibility for building financial models and conducting analysis within it, maintaining and extending the build, and keeping it the single source of truth for planning
- Improve data accuracy, speed, and scalability through automation and process redesign, leveraging advanced Excel/Google Sheets, Pigment, and emerging AI and workflow‑automation tools, so that more of the team’s time goes to strategic analysis
Required Experience, Qualifications, and Skills
- 6-8+ years of progressive experience in strategic finance, corporate finance, investment banking, corporate development, or FP&A with significant strategic scope, preferably in a tech, robotics, or high‑growth environment
- Demonstrated ownership of strategic finance work, including capital budgeting (NPV/IRR), target or market sizing, sum‑of‑the‑parts or valuation analysis, and M&A or partnership modeling, with examples of recommendations that changed a decision
- Experience building and defending multi‑year financial models and investment cases in front of executives, boards, or investors
- Proven ability to partner directly with C-level executives (CEO/COO) and to influence senior leadership through analysis and executive presence
- Demonstrated curiosity and track record of learning an operating business from the ground up, getting close to operations and customers rather than just the general ledger, and converting that knowledge into better forecasts and decisions
- Proven ownership of a company‑wide budget, forecast, and long‑range planning cycle
- Expert‑level proficiency in Google Sheets and Excel, including complex modeling and automation techniques
- Hands‑on experience with Pigment or a comparable enterprise planning platform (Pigment strongly preferred)
- Solid understanding of accounting principles and financial statements; experience with ERP systems (e.g., NetSuite)
- Strong business acumen and excellent analytical, problem‑solving, and communication skills
- Comfortable operating with ambiguity and evolving priorities in a fast‑scaling organization
Preferred Experience, Qualifications, and Skills
- Experience in robotics, hardware, healthcare technology, or other capital‑intensive operating businesses
- Prior people‑management experience, or demonstrated readiness to build and lead a small team
- MBA, CFA, or CPA
- Travel required 2-4 times per year, approximately 4-5 business days per trip
- This role is expected to begin as an individual contributor; team scope, structure, and leveling will be revisited as the function grows
- This role may take on additional responsibilities as the company continues to scale
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