Aerio Partners is representing a large-scale manufacturing organization in the search for a Senior Financial Analyst, Manufacturing to support financial performance, plant operations, costing, budgeting, forecasting, and operational decision-making.
This is a hands-on manufacturing finance role for someone who can connect plant activity to financial results. The position will work closely with operational stakeholders to analyze cost, labor, productivity, financial performance, and manufacturing variances while supporting ongoing planning and reporting.
What You’ll Do
- Support annual budgeting, forecasting, and recurring financial planning for a manufacturing operation
- Perform detailed financial analysis of plant and operational performance
- Prepare and explain actual-to-budget and actual-to-forecast variances
- Analyze labor, productivity, operating costs, and manufacturing performance drivers
- Support product costing and cost analysis, including understanding changes in production and profitability
- Partner with manufacturing and operational leadership to identify financial and operational performance issues
- Analyze cost-saving and productivity-improvement opportunities
- Prepare recurring financial reporting and management analysis
- Use financial and operational data to identify trends, risks, and opportunities
- Support audit-related analysis and vendor-payables review when required
- Develop and maintain analytical tools and models used for operational decision-making
- Partner with stakeholders across Finance, Accounting, Operations, Supply Chain, and manufacturing leadership
- Use Microsoft Excel and reporting/BI tools to organize and communicate financial data
- Support continuous-improvement initiatives, including Lean manufacturing and efficiency analysis where applicable
- Communicate financial findings and recommendations clearly to both finance and non-finance stakeholders
What We’re Looking For
- Approximately 3+ years of progressive manufacturing finance, plant finance, FP&A, cost accounting, operations finance, or related financial analysis experience
- Experience working directly with a manufacturing or operational business strongly preferred
- Strong budgeting and forecasting capabilities
- Demonstrated variance-analysis experience
- Experience analyzing labor, productivity, operating cost, and manufacturing performance
- Exposure to product costing or manufacturing cost analysis
- Power BI or comparable reporting/data-visualization experience preferred
- Strong financial analysis and problem-solving ability
- Ability to work directly with plant and operational stakeholders
- Strong communication, organization, and attention to detail
- Ability to manage recurring reporting responsibilities while supporting ad hoc analysis and operational initiatives
Ideal Background
The strongest candidates will come from a manufacturing, industrial, consumer products, or similarly operational environment and will have experience sitting close to plant operations rather than working exclusively in corporate reporting.
The role requires someone who can move beyond reporting what happened and explain the operating factors driving cost, labor, productivity, variance, and profitability.