Senior Financial Planning & Analysis Manager

Cornerstone OnDemand; United States; Remote; USD 122,000 - 196,000; Full time

Job summary

Cornerstone OnDemand is seeking a Senior FP&A Manager to partner with Engineering, Product and Technical Operations, shaping the financial view of SaaS development—from R&D through hosting costs to product margins.

You will own budgeting, forecasting, cost allocation, and KPI reporting, drive automation, and provide board-ready analyses to influence pricing, investments and strategy.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Business Administration or related field.
• 7+ years of corporate FP&A experience in SaaS/tech.
• Strong SaaS gross margin and cost-to-serve understanding.
• Experience modeling cloud/hosting/infrastructure costs.
• Advanced Excel; Oracle PBCS and SmartView experience.
• SQL, Python/R; Power BI/Tableau for data analysis.

Responsibilities

• Partner with Engineering, Product and Technical Operations to translate roadmaps into financial plans.
• Own budgeting/forecasting for R&D, hosting, tooling, and vendor spend.
• Develop cost allocation models and product-level P&Ls.
• Prepare board and CFO reports highlighting cost, margins and KPIs.
• Drive automation of data pipelines and dashboards for cloud billing and GL data.

Skills

FP&A

Engineering partnership

Cost modeling

Excel proficiency

Oracle PBCS

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Finance/Accounting/Business

Tools

Oracle PBCS

SQL

Python/R

Power BI/Tableau

Job description

Senior Financial Planning & Analysis Manager – Remote, United States

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.

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

Our Culture
Spark Greatness. Shatter Boundaries. Share Success. Are you ready? Because here, right now – is where the future of work is happening. Where curious disruptors and change innovators like you are helping communities and customers enable everyone – anywhere – to learn, grow and advance. To be better tomorrow than they are today.

Who We Are
At Cornerstone, we believe in AI that works in the service of people, amplifying their judgment to drive high-performing, future-ready organizations forward. Cornerstone Workforce AI™, the intelligence platform for workforce readiness, brings together workforce and labor market data into a proprietary Cornerstone People Graph™, translating signals into intelligence, targeting learning where it matters, developing critical skills, and surfacing hidden talent. Delivered as an open, enterprise platform across whatever application your people work in every day, Cornerstone Workforce AI is built for scale, security, and trust, with certified AI guardrails. As an industry leader, Cornerstone is helping approximately 7,000 organizations, 140M+ users, across 186 countries build continuous workforce readiness..

Total Rewards
At Cornerstone, we are dedicated to inspiring excellence and pushing boundaries in everything we do. Our compensation strategy is based on three fundamental principles: equitable pay, market-driven research, and skill-based appraisals. As part of our mission to share success and empower individuals to thrive in an ever-changing world, the listed salary range is just one element of Cornerstone’s comprehensive compensation package. This compensation package may also include annual bonuses, short- and program-specific awards depending on the role, and a comprehensive benefit offering. The disclosed salary range reflects the geographic differential based on the location of the position if applicable. The starting salary for the successful applicant will depend on several job-related factors, including education, training, experience, certifications, location, business needs, and market demands. This range is based on a full-time position and may be adjusted in the future. Join us in shaping the future of work — tomorrow, together. Experience flexibility and empowerment in your career at Cornerstone. The BASE salary range for this position is: 122300 - 195700 USD.

Equal Employment Opportunity has been, and will continue to be, a fundamental commitment at Cornerstone OnDemand. All qualified applications are given consideration regardless of race, religion, color, gender, sex, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, 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] or [phone].

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