Cost Analyst (Manufacturing)

Key Responsibilities

• Develop, maintain, and govern standard costs for materials, labor, and overhead across multiple manufacturing locations.
• Perform detailed cost and variance analysis by plant, product line, and cost center; identify trends, risks, and improvement opportunities.
• Analyze and explain inter-plant cost differences, efficiencies, and capacity utilization.
• Support month-end and year-end close activities related to inventory, manufacturing costs, and COGS for all facilities.
• Partner with plant managers, operations leadership, and engineering teams at multiple sites to drive cost reduction, productivity, and process improvements.
• Support make/buy decisions, inter-plant sourcing strategies, and footprint optimization analyses.
• Develop cost models for new products, transfers between plants, and manufacturing process changes.
• Support budgeting, forecasting, and long-range planning at both the plant and consolidated manufacturing level.
• Monitor inventory valuation, excess and obsolete inventory, and reserve recommendations across all locations.
• Create standardized cost reporting, KPIs, and dashboards to enable consistent performance measurement across plants.
• Ensure costing methodologies, policies, and procedures are consistently applied across all facilities.
• Maintain data integrity within ERP systems and support system implementations, upgrades, or plant integrations.
• Document and enforce internal controls and cost accounting practices in compliance with GAAP and company policies.
• Serve as a manufacturing cost accounting subject matter expert for multi-plant operations.
• Act as the primary finance liaison for assigned plants while supporting enterprise-wide manufacturing initiatives.
• Mentor and review work of junior analysts or plant-level finance staff, as applicable.
• Collaborate with FP&A, supply chain, procurement, operations, and executive leadership.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, Finance, or a related field required.
• MBA, CPA, CMA, or equivalent certification preferred.
• 3–5+ years of progressive cost accounting or financial analysis experience in a manufacturing environment.
• Demonstrated experience supporting multiple manufacturing plants or complex operations.
• Strong knowledge of standard costing, inventory accounting, variance analysis, and manufacturing KPIs.
• ERP experience (e.g., SAP, Oracle, JD Edwards, Dynamics, or similar).

Skills & Competencies

• Advanced Excel skills; BI/reporting tools (Power BI, Tableau, etc.) preferred.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving capabilities.
• Ability to communicate financial results clearly to plant and non-finance leadership.
• Ability to manage competing priorities across multiple sites in a fast-paced environment.