Senior Financial Planning & Analysis Manager

Cornerstone OnDemand; Jackson (MS); Remote; USD 120,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Cornerstone OnDemand is seeking a Senior FP&A Manager to partner with Engineering and Product, owning the financial view of SaaS product development, hosting, and AI-related costs. You will drive budget, forecast, and unit-cost analysis, delivering GAAP-compliant P&Ls and actionable insights.

The role emphasizes building scalable models, performance metrics, and clear communication to senior leadership, with a focus on optimizing cloud and data center spend in a fast-paced SaaS environment.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of corporate FP&A experience, ideally supporting Engineering, Technical Operations, or Product in a SaaS/tech company.
• Strong understanding of SaaS economics including gross margin, cost of sales, unit economics, and cost to serve.
• Experience modeling cloud, hosting, or infrastructure costs and familiarity with cloud pricing constructs.

Responsibilities

• Partner with Engineering, Product, and Technical Operations leadership to translate roadmaps into financial plans.
• Own R&D and Engineering budgeting, forecasting, headcount, contracting, tooling, and vendor spend.
• Build business cases and ROI for build-vs-buy, vendor rationalization, and migration decisions.
• Manage hosting and cloud cost model and track infrastructure spend by service, product, and customer segment.
• Develop product-level P&Ls and cost allocation methodologies for GAAP reporting.
• Prepare board and executive reports with budget- vs-actual variance commentary and KPI dashboards.

Skills

SaaS FP&A

Unit economics

Advanced Excel modeling

SQL

Python/R

Power BI/Tableau

Oracle PBCS

Education

Bachelor's degree in Finance, Accounting, or Business

Tools

Oracle PBCS

Power BI

Tableau

SQL

Python

Excel

Job description

We’re seeking a highly skilled and motivated Senior Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) Manager to serve as the finance partner to our Engineering and Product organizations. This critical role will own the financial view of how we build, host, and deliver our SaaS products—from R&D investment and cloud/data center infrastructure to consumption-based AI costs and product-level margins—ensuring tight timelines, high-quality reporting, and decisions grounded in unit economics.

In this role you will...

Engineering & R&D Financial Partnership:

• Serve as the primary finance partner to Engineering, Product, and Technical Operations leadership, translating technical roadmaps into financial plans and trade-offs

• Own R&D and Engineering budgeting and forecasting, including headcount, contractors, tooling, and vendor spend

• Build business cases and ROI for build-vs.-buy, vendor rationalization, and migration decisions

• Support software capitalization analysis with Accounting and track engineering efficiency metrics (e.g., R&D as a percent of revenue, cost per engineer)

Cost of Sales & Hosting Cost Management:

• Separate and forecast cost of sales vs. operating expense—including hosting, third-party software, support, and professional services—in line with GAAP and company policy

• Own the hosting and cloud cost model (public cloud, colocation, and data centers), including usage drivers, reserved capacity, and commit utilization

• Analyze infrastructure spend by service, product, and customer segment; drive optimization with Engineering/FinOps and support month-end accruals with Accounting

Infrastructure Contracts, Capacity & Data Center Strategy:

• Model infrastructure vendor contracts (cloud, CDN, colocation, network, hardware leases), including commits, tiered pricing, true-ups, overage exposure, and renewals

• Build capacity and build-out models for new infrastructure and data center footprints, including capex vs. opex, depreciation, lease accounting, and payback

• Evaluate owned/colocated data centers vs. public cloud, including migration costs, dual-running periods, and steady-state savings

AI & Consumption-Based Cost Modeling:

• Model consumption-based AI and platform costs, including token-based pricing (input/output, model tier, caching), GPU/compute, and inference costs

• Build driver-based forecasts linking customer adoption and per-unit cost to total spend, and assess the margin impact of AI features to inform pricing and packaging

• Establish unit-cost metrics (e.g., cost per token, transaction, active user, or tenant) and a reporting cadence to monitor them

Product Margin & Cost Allocation:

• Build and maintain product-level P&Ls and gross margin analyses combining SaaS subscription revenue with direct and allocated costs

• Design and document allocation methodologies for shared costs (hosting, support, R&D, IT, and Facilities) using drivers such as census, headcount, usage, and customers/users, for both forecasting and GAAP P&L reporting

• Calculate per-user and per-customer cost to serve, and analyze profitability by product, segment, and cohort to inform investment, pricing, and sunset/migration decisions

Financial Planning, Reporting & Process Improvement:

• Manage the annual budget and quarterly forecast cycles for a private-equity-owned SaaS company, aligning plans to organizational goals and strategic initiatives

• Ensure the accuracy and integrity of financial reporting, leveraging advanced Excel-based modeling and rigorous data analysis to produce actionable insights

• Prepare monthly, quarterly, and annual Board of Directors (BOD) and CFO reports highlighting engineering cost, hosting, and gross margin KPIs; develop P&Ls, finance slides, and quarterly business review (QBR) decks for Engineering and Product leadership with budget-vs.-actual variance commentary

• Identify risks and opportunities and provide recommendations to senior management

• Drive automation and process efficiency, including data pipelines and dashboards connecting cloud billing, usage telemetry, and general ledger data, and support other FP&A managers by automating tasks and analyses

• Collaborate with Accounting, Tax, Treasury, Procurement, and Legal, ensure GAAP and policy compliance, and contribute to strategic planning on infrastructure investment, platform strategy, and product profitability

Financial Planning System Support (Oracle PBCS):

• Manage and maintain Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service (PBCS) processes, including data integration, model configuration, user access, and reporting templates

• Provide expert-level troubleshooting in partnership with the CSOD IT team and optimize workflows for planning efficiency and usability

You’ve got what it takes if you have...

• Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Business Administration, or related field or experience

• 7+ years of corporate FP&A experience, ideally supporting Engineering, Technical Operations, or Product organizations in a SaaS or technology company; accounting experience is a strong plus

• Strong understanding of SaaS economics, including gross margin, cost of sales classification, unit economics, and cost to serve

• Experience modeling cloud, hosting, or infrastructure costs and familiarity with cloud pricing constructs (commits, reserved capacity, usage-based pricing)

• Experience building cost allocation models and product-level P&Ls, with a solid accounting foundation—including GAAP cost classification (cost of sales vs. opex), capex vs. opex, depreciation, lease accounting, and software capitalization—and the ability to partner closely with Accounting

• Advanced Excel proficiency (complex models, pivots, Power Query/Power Pivot, dashboards) and strong experience with Oracle and SmartView

• Hands-on experience administering Oracle PBCS as a system owner, including troubleshooting with IT

• Strong data analysis orientation—ability to extract, transform, and analyze large datasets (e.g., cloud billing and usage data) using SQL, Python/R, and tools such as Power BI/Tableau

• Excellent communication skills, able to explain financial concepts to technical audiences and technical concepts to finance and executive audiences

• Ability to collaborate in a fast-paced environment and manage tight deadlines; prior experience managing or mentoring team members is a plus

• Demonstrated commitment to valuing diversity and contributing to an inclusive working and learning environment; consideration for privacy and security obligations

An extra dose of awesome if...

• Advanced degree or certification (e.g., CPA, CMA, MBA)

• Experience leading headcount planning and system uploads

• Experience maintaining constant-currency reporting using Excel and PBCS

• Experience overseeing monthly vendor reporting and providing entity-level forecasts to support Tax and audit needs

• Experience with FP&A consolidation, including consolidating inputs from multiple business partners into a single forecast

• Experience providing user training and enablement to promote self-service reporting and system adoption

#LI-remote

Equal Employment Opportunity has been, and will continue to be, a fundamental commitment at Cornerstone OnDemand. All qualified applicants are given consideration regardless of race, color, gender, age, sexual orientation, national origin, marital status, citizenship status, disability, veteran status, or any other protected class as provided in applicable Federal, State, or Local fair employment laws. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please contact us at [e-mail]