Strategic Finance Manager: AI-Driven Growth & M&A

ParentSquare, Inc.; Santa Barbara (CA); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 185,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Employer-matched 401K

Stock options

Health + wellness reimbursements

PTO that increases each year

15 paid holidays

Job summary

ParentSquare, a Santa Barbara-based company, seeks a highly analytical Manager of Strategic Finance to shape our strategic direction and partner with executives on growth initiatives. You will lead strategic projects, evaluate M&A opportunities, and develop AI-enabled reporting frameworks to provide real-time visibility into progress against initiatives.

The role requires strong modeling, executive storytelling, and cross-functional collaboration in a fast-growth SaaS environment.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of strategic finance experience in SaaS, consulting, investment banking, private equity, or corporate development.
• Strong modeling and analytical skills; ability to present to senior leadership.

Responsibilities

• Lead strategic initiatives to drive growth, including M&A evaluation and diligence support, pricing/packaging strategy, and business cases for new products or markets.
• Serve as a strategic finance partner to executives, delivering unit economics analyses and ROI on strategic initiatives.
• Collaborate with Product, Sales, Marketing, Customer Success, and Operations on high-priority initiatives, from analysis to executive recommendation.
• Build AI-enabled reporting frameworks and dashboards for real-time visibility into progress on growth initiatives.
• Design and deploy AI agents and automated workflows to scale financial analyses and reporting as the business scales.

Skills

Strategic finance

Financial modeling

Executive communication

Cross-functional collaboration

Ambiguity management

AI tools

Tools

Excel

AI tools

Job description

ParentSquare is a rapidly growing Santa Barbara-based company that’s changing the way schools and parents communicate every day. Sound simple? We strive to keep it that way! Our mission is to give schools the power to incredibly enhance family engagement for all students. ParentSquare and RemindHub, our flagship products, serve over 22 million students and drive our mission by providing unified communications tools -forms, sign ups, payments, RSVPs, direct messaging, language translations, chat and more. Remind Chat, our free product, reaches over 80% of K-12 students, providing a safe and easy-to-use platform for direct communication between teachers and families. And our latest innovation, SmartSites, offers state-of-the-art websites for school districts, enhancing their online presence and accessibility.

We are not just creating a product; we are creating empowered educators and engaged parents to improve the lives of all students. We are passionate advocates for our customers and for our employees and we invite you to join us on this exciting journey.

Who we’re looking for:

We are seeking a highly analytical and motivated Manager of Strategic Finance to be a critical partner in shaping ParentSquare's strategic direction and business decision-making. This role will focus on strategic projects, cross-functional business partnering, and corporate development. The Manager of Strategic Finance will play a key role in structuring ambiguous business problems, evaluating growth opportunities, and delivering insight-driven recommendations to executive leadership.

This role will include:

Strategic Projects & Corporate Development: Lead strategic initiatives to drive organic and inorganic growth, including M&A evaluation and diligence support, pricing and packaging strategy, and business cases for new products or markets.

Cross-Functional Business Partnering: Serve as a strategic finance partner to business leaders and the executive team, delivering analysis on unit economics, ROI on strategic initiatives, and evaluation of build-vs-buy and partnership decisions.

Cross-Functional Initiative Leadership: Partner with Product, Sales, Marketing, Customer Success, and Operations on high-priority initiatives requiring financial analysis and business case development, driving the work from analysis through executive recommendation.

Strategic Reporting & KPI Frameworks: Build AI-enabled reporting frameworks and dashboards that deepen real-time visibility into progress against strategic growth initiatives.

AI-Driven Analysis & Process Automation: Design and deploy AI agents and automated workflows that scale financial analyses, research, and reporting processes, extending the team's analytical capacity as the business grows.

Our ideal candidate will have the following:

5+ years of prior experience in strategic finance at a SaaS company, strategy consulting, investment banking, private equity, or corporate development.

An AI-native mindset: you are proactive about using AI tools to accelerate research, modeling, and strategic analysis.

Strong financial modeling and analytical skills (a modeling test will be part of the process).

Comfort with ambiguity and the ability to structure unstructured, open-ended business problems into clear frameworks and recommendations.

Strong executive communication and storytelling skills, with experience preparing materials for and presenting to senior leadership or a board.

Strong cross-functional collaboration, with the ability to balance attention to detail with a view of the bigger strategic picture.

A self-starter with a bias to action - a proactive problem-solver who can roll up their sleeves and thrive in a fast-paced, high-growth environment.

The perks of working for us are great!

You’ll get your foot in the door as our company continues to grow. We’re big believers in work-life balance and provide:

An employer-matched 401K retirement savings program from day 1

Stock options

Health + wellness reimbursements

PTO that increases each year

15 paid holidays, including your birthday!

As a fully remote team, we’ll make sure you have all the tools and equipment you need to make your home office a place where you can thrive.

We're an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to age, race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran or disability status. We are committed to maintaining a drug-free workplace in compliance with applicable state laws.

The salary range for this role will be $150,000-$185,000, DOE.