Senior Financial Systems and Innovation Manager

Foley & Lardner LLP; Milwaukee (WI); Hybrid; USD 173,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Foley & Lardner LLP is seeking a Senior Manager, Financial Systems in Milwaukee to lead strategy, operation, and delivery of the firm’s accounting and integrated finance systems. You will serve as a senior liaison between Finance, Technology, vendors, and stakeholders, driving critical projects and ensuring data integrity and reporting excellence.

This role reports to senior leadership and oversees a team of financial systems professionals.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree required; IT, Accounting, Finance, Business Administration or related field preferred.
• Minimum of ten (10) years in finance/accounting systems support and leadership of complex initiatives.
• Minimum of five (5) years of people management leading technical or cross-functional teams.
• Experience with professional services firms or law firms is strongly preferred.
• Experience with financial systems projects, upgrades, integrations, reporting tools, data governance and dashboards is preferred.
• Experience collaborating with consultants, vendors, and internal technology teams is advantageous.

Responsibilities

• Provide leadership for the firm's financial systems, including accounting, reporting, and integrations.
• Lead, mentor, and manage financial systems professionals and project teams.
• Act as senior liaison between Finance, Technology, consultants, vendors, and internal stakeholders.
• Coordinate resources, track milestones, resolve issues, and document decisions on key initiatives.
• Ensure data accuracy, consistency, and complete financial reporting across dashboards and systems.
• Drive system innovation, process improvement, and automation across Finance.
• Oversee incident management, root cause analysis, and remediation efforts.
• Maintain comprehensive documentation for systems, procedures, and reporting logic.
• Communicate changes, risks, and solutions to management and cross-functional teams.
• Lead month-end close processes and ensure timely financial reporting.

Skills

Leadership

People management

Stakeholder collaboration

Project management

Education

Bachelor's Degree in IT/Accounting/Finance/Business

Tools

3E

Job description

Overview

Foley & Lardner LLP is a great place to work because of what we do and how we do it. Here, your unique perspectives, experiences, and abilities will be embraced and developed, so you can excel. Being a part of Foley means having the opportunities and resources necessary to gain experience, advance professional goals, and forge meaningful connections. It's a place where you can build your career and enjoy professionally satisfying work. We have over 2,300 people who are #HappyatFoley, and we think you will be too.

The Senior Manager, Financial Systems is responsible for leading the strategy, operation, and project delivery of the firm's accounting and integrated finance systems. This role serves as a senior liaison between Finance, Technology, internal stakeholders, and external vendors to ensure financial applications, data, reporting, integrations, and related business processes support the firm's evolving needs. The position provides leadership to financial systems professionals, plays a key role in driving critical projects and system initiatives, leads innovation and process improvement, and ensures operational excellence across financial systems support, documentation, upgrades, testing, and issue resolution. This role has significant impact on the accuracy, integrity, availability, and strategic use of financial data across the firm.

Job Details

• ID 2026-3578
• Category Accounting/Finance
• Type Regular Full-Time
• FLSA Status Exempt
• Scheduled Hours 40+
• Workplace Hybrid

US-IL-Chicago | US-TX-Houston | US-WI-Milwaukee

Responsibilities

• Provide leadership and oversight for the firm's financial systems, including accounting, reporting, integrations, and related finance applications.
• Lead, mentor, and develop financial systems professionals including responsibility for work direction, professional development, coaching & mentoring, performance reviews, performance management, compensation, etc.
• Serve as a key liaison between Finance, Technology, consultants, vendors, and internal stakeholders on firmwide financial systems, roadmaps, projects, integrations, and issue resolution.
• Manage strategically important financial systems projects, including coordinating resources, resolving issues, documenting decisions, and meeting project milestones.
• Ensure financial data is accurate, consistent, complete, and appropriately reflected across dashboards, financial reports, accounting systems, and other integrated firm systems.
• Drive innovation, process improvement, automation, and efficiency across Finance by identifying opportunities to better leverage systems, data, workflows, and platform capabilities.
• Oversee incidents, outages, and recurring issues; analyze root causes and ensure remediation plans are implemented to reduce future disruption.
• Maintain thorough functional and operational documentation for systems, procedures, projects, integrations, reporting logic, and process changes.
• Communicate system changes, enhancements, risks, issues, and solutions clearly to management, peers, staff, vendors, and cross-functional stakeholders.
• Lead the administration and governance of month-end financial processes, ensuring adherence to close schedules, and overseeing the accurate and timely distribution of month-end financial reporting.
• Monitor legal industry, professional services, financial systems, reporting, and technology trends to help inform the future direction of the firm's finance technology roadmap.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree required; Information Technology, Accounting, Finance, Business Administration, or a related field strongly preferred.
• Minimum of ten (10) years of overall experience supporting finance and/or accounting systems, including significant experience leading complex systems initiatives, managing financial systems operations, supporting reporting and data integrity, and working collaboratively with Finance, Technology, business stakeholders, and external vendors required.
• Minimum of five (5) years of people management experience leading technical, systems, project, or cross-functional teams is required.
• Prior law firm or professional services experience strongly preferred.
• Prior experience with applications such as 3E preferred.
• Experience managing financial systems projects, upgrades, integrations, reporting tools, data governance, dashboards, and process improvement initiatives preferred.
• Experience working with consultants, vendors, external developers, and internal technology teams preferred.

In support of transparency and equity in the workplace, Foley provides salary ranges for all positions. The figures below represent the full compensation range of this position. The actual offered amount will be between the range minimum and midpoint based on the following factors: education, experience, geographic market, and internal pay equity at Foley.
Milwaukee- $173,200 to $259,800
Chicago and Houston- $190,500 to $285,800

Foley & Lardner LLP is a top ranked law firm with offices throughout the United States and abroad. At Foley we strive to remain true to our core values- our clients, integrity, our people, citizenship, diversity, trust & respect, stewardship & accountability and professional satisfaction. As a result, we offer the highest quality legal counsel to our clients, as well as outstanding professional opportunities for our employees.

Foley employees enjoy a comfortable, yet professional work environment, exceptional benefit package, state-of-the-art technology, work/life balance, great working relationships and much more.

We invite you to consider a career with Foley.