Job Description

The Senior Manager, Finance & Strategy (F&S) Transformation will lead the next phase of Finance & Strategy transformation, with a focus on building scalable, AI-enabled planning, forecasting, reporting, and process automation capabilities across the F&S organization.

This role will sit within Corporate Finance & Strategy and will own the business side of F&S planning systems (Adaptive Insights), while driving broader transformation initiatives that reduce manual work, improve process discipline, and enable more decision-ready insights. This is a senior individual contributor role with no formal direct reports.

The role will serve as the functional lead for the F&S Transformation portfolio, providing day-to-day direction and prioritization across transformation initiatives and matrixed resources.It will partner closely with Corporate F&S, functional F&S teams, IT, and the Finance-wide AI / Process Innovation team.

We are looking for a strong transformation builder with FP&A systems experience, project management discipline, stakeholder communication skills, and a bias toward automation and scalable process design.

Key Responsibilities:

• Own the F&S Transformation roadmap across planning systems, process improvement, automation, and F&S-specific AI use cases.

• Lead the business ownership of Adaptive and related planning systems, including support model, enhancement roadmap, prioritization, stakeholder communication, and partnership with Finance Systems / IT.

• Drive scalable process improvement across forecasting, reporting, planning workflows, variance analysis, and management reporting.

• Identify and implement F&S-specific AI / automation opportunities that reduce manual work and improve decision-ready insights, in partnership with the Finance-wide AI / Process Innovation team.

• Create operating discipline through intake, prioritization, documentation, testing, release management, and roadmap governance.

• Provide functional leadership for the F&S Transformation team, including day-to-day direction, prioritization, and coaching.

• Partner cross-functionally with Corporate F&S, functional F&S, IT, and other Finance stakeholders to align priorities, manage tradeoffs, and drive adoption.

• Shift the team from reactive support to proactive transformation by reducing recurring issues through root-cause fixes, process redesign, automation, and self-service enablement.

Qualifications:

• 7+ years of experience in FP&A, Finance & Strategy, Finance Transformation, Finance Systems, or a related role.

• Strong understanding of forecasting, planning, management reporting, and core FP&A processes.

• Experience applying AI, automation, BI, reporting tools, data models, or system integrations to improve finance processes, reporting, planning, or decision support.

• Hands-on experience with financial planning systems such as Adaptive, Anaplan, Oracle EPM, Pigment, OneStream, Hyperion, or similar.

• Proven ability to lead complex transformation or systems initiatives from strategy through execution, including roadmap management, prioritization, stakeholder alignment, and change management in ambiguous, fast-moving environments.

• Strong process improvement mindset, with experience simplifying, standardizing, and automating workflows.

• Excellent communication skills, including the ability to translate technical issues into business impact, risks, and decision tradeoffs.

• Experience leading complex cross-functional initiatives through influence

• SaaS, subscription business, PE-backed, IPO readiness, or public-company readiness experience preferred.

Where we Work:

• Hybrid: In this role, our hybrid experience is designed at the team level to give you a rich onsite experience packed with connection, collaboration, learning, and celebration - while also giving you flexibility to work remotely for part of the week. This role must attend our local office for part of the week.

#LI-LM5

The US annualized base salary range for this position is $146,000.00-$220,000.00. This position may also be eligible for bonus, benefits, or related incentives. While this range reflects the minimum and maximum value for new hire salaries for the position across all US locations, the offer for the successful candidate for this position will be based on job related capabilities, applicable experience, and other factors such as work location. Please note that the compensation details listed in US role postings reflect the base salary only (or OTE for commissions based roles), and do not include bonus, benefits, or related incentives.

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Zendesk software was built to bring a sense of calm to the chaotic world of customer service. Today we power billions of conversations with brands you know and love.

Zendesk believes in offering our people a fulfilling and inclusive experience. Our hybrid way of working, enables us to purposefully come together in person, at one of our many Zendesk offices around the world, to connect, collaborate and learn whilst also giving our people the flexibility to work remotely for part of the week.

As part of our commitment to fairness and transparency, we inform all applicants that artificial intelligence (AI) or automated decision systems may be used to screen or evaluate applications for this position, in accordance with Company guidelines and applicable law.

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