Senior Financial Analyst

City of Mountain View (CA); Mountain View (CA); Hybrid; USD 126,000 - 189,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work schedule

On-site City Hall

Accessible recruitment process

Job summary

The City of Mountain View seeks a Senior Financial Analyst to ensure the annual budget narrative and the underlying numbers align across all departments. You will check the math, refine the narrative, and catch discrepancies before publication.

This hybrid role requires a bachelor’s degree in public administration or finance and several years of public budgeting experience; a CPA or MBA is highly desirable and will be favored.

Qualifications

• Equivalent to a bachelor’s degree in public administration, business administration, finance, accounting, economics, or related field.
• A master’s degree or CPA is highly desirable.

Responsibilities

• Coordinate the City’s annual budget from department submission through Council adoption, ensuring narrative and numbers align.
• Forecast and track revenue at midyear, 1-year, and 5-year horizons, including property and sales taxes with outside consultants.
• Maintain fund schedules underneath forecasts and ensure data accuracy.
• Write and refine the budget narrative for City Council and public consumption.
• Manage relationships with outside financial and revenue consultants.
• Support fee studies and cost allocation as needs evolve.
• Operate the financial platform (CentralSquare) to run reports and keep the source data clean.

Skills

Budget reconciliation

Financial analysis

Narrative storytelling

Communication

Attention to detail

Education

Bachelor's degree in public administration, finance, accounting, economics

Master's in business/public administration or CPA desirable

Tools

CentralSquare

Tyler Munis

Job description

If you're the kind of person who can read a several-hundred-page budget document and see a story instead of a bunch of numbers, we want to hear from you.

Every year, Mountain View's City Council approves their annual budget document. On paper, it's a financial exercise. In practice, it's the plan for what the City anticipates to deliver each year along with the resources to accomplish its commitments. The budget specifies which programs are expected to run, which positions are filled, and what all of it costs.

Thirteen city departments each write their own piece of that plan. This position is the one who makes sure all the pieces agree with each other and that the numbers underneath them are accurate. Ultimately, this finished document must be transparent, complete and on time.

This year that meant closing a General Fund with $195.7 million in expected revenue against $194.9 million in expected expenditures, a budget the City Manager called narrowly balanced. When the margin is that tight, every number has to hold, and that is precisely the work this role exists to do.

The Work

Most departments in the City has have their own budget analyst, who writes their piece of the budget. Their staffing costs, their program requests, their capital needs, and the narrative that explains it all. This position is where every one of those pieces gets checked before anyone else sees them.

You’ll check the math. You’ll check that the story matches the math. You’ll catch the transposed digit, the fee that was accidentally counted twice, the narrative paragraph that may say something the numbers don’t actually support.

Catching those discrepancies and making the fixes is why the City Council, the credit rating agencies, and the residents can trust what’s been published.

A budget document isn’t just a compliance filing. It’s a public record of what the City is prioritizing and promising to deliver. That only works if the narrative and the numbers say the same thing. Part of this job is making sure they always do.

Good Governance Has to Add Up

In 2026, Mountain View City Manager Kimbra McCarthy became the first-ever recipient of ICMA’s Good Governance Award. The national recognition honors ethical leadership, transparent decision-making, accountability, and effective governance—and highlights the strong partnership between the City Council and City Manager.

Those principles come to life through work happening across the organization. In this role, they show up in forecasts that hold, budget narratives that tell the full story, and financial information that decision-makers and residents can trust.

You won’t just help produce the City’s budget. You’ll help protect the credibility behind it.

Specific responsibilities include:

• Coordinating the City's annual budget from department submission through Council adoption. You'll check both the narrative and the numbers from every department's budget analyst for accuracy, completeness, and timeliness.
• Forecasting and tracking revenue at midyear, at one year, and five years out, including property and sales tax projections developed with the City's outside consultants.
• Maintaining the fund schedules underneath those forecasts.
• Writing and refining the budget narrative that goes to City Council and the public, so the story and the ledger always match.
• Managing relationships and contracts with the City's outside financial and revenue consultants.
• Supporting fee studies and cost allocation work as the City's needs evolve.
• Working inside the City's financial platform (CentralSquare), to run reports, track detail, and keep the numbers clean at the source. (Experience with other comparable systems such as Tyler Munis are helpful and will transfer to Central Square).

To view the full job description, visit our website: Senior Financial Analyst

Compensation. Full range $126,037 to $189,056 annually, with a control point of $157,547. Starting salary is flexible within the range based on experience, specialized expertise, and internal equity. This is an unrepresented, exempt position.

Schedule. Hybrid, typically three days a week in the office at City Hall, 500 Castro Street, in Downtown Mountain View. The first three to six months will be on‑site five days a week while you train. This is independent work, with no supervisory responsibility.

What you'll need. Equivalent to a bachelor's degree in public administration, business administration, finance, accounting, economics, or a related field, plus three years of increasingly responsible professional experience in public agency budget development, financial analysis, or fiscal administration. A master's degree in business or public administration, or a CPA, is highly desirable.

Who Thrives Here? Someone who...

• likes reconciling a number until it's right, and treats “close enough” as not an answer.
• has worked inside a public agency's budget process before, and wants to go deeper into that work.
• can translate a department's finance jargon into a narrative that a Council member or member of the public can follow.
• is comfortable telling a colleague their numbers don't reconcile and can do it without damaging the relationship.
• finds satisfaction in owning complex processes end-to-end rather than directly supervising a team. This role requires independent work by design.

Accessibility and Accommodations

The City of Mountain View is committed to providing an accessible and inclusive recruitment process. If you need a reasonable accommodation to complete the application or participate in any stage of the selection process, please contact Human Resources at [phone]. Advance notice helps us make timely arrangements, but accommodation requests may be made at any stage of the process.

Equal Employment Opportunity

The City of Mountain View is an equal opportunity employer. Applicants are considered based on job-related qualifications without regard to any status protected by federal, state, or local law.