Lead Spend Analyst
About the role
The Lead Spend Analyst is the hands-on engine behind data quality, automation, and insight generation for Sourcing & Real Estate. This role is responsible for assembling and maintaining the datasets that fuel budgeting, variance analysis, and accrual accuracy, while simultaneously leading the development of scalable analytics and automation solutions. You will act as a key partner to leadership, translating complex business needs into repeatable analytical frameworks that provide reliable, timely, and actionable visibility into spend and category performance.
Responsibilities
Budget & Variance Management: Prepare bottom-up budget inputs, including run rates, pipeline items, commitments, contract terms, and space metrics. Manage templates, versions, and reconciliations while maintaining ongoing forecast updates. Produce monthly actuals vs. budget and forecast vs. actuals packages, investigating drivers and flagging anomalies early.
Data Assembly & Master Data Quality: Pull and reconcile data from ERP, PO, contract, GL, and space systems. Ensure coding, definitions, and standards remain consistent, auditable, and business-relevant. Maintain location counts and space/spend KPIs, keeping linkages between space data and financial/sourcing datasets current.
Analytics & Spend Visibility: Support the development and day-to-day maintenance of dashboards for spend visibility, category performance, supplier metrics, and value tracking. Translate business needs into scalable analytical and reporting solutions that support category strategy and commercial decision-making. Develop repeatable analytical frameworks and data products to ensure consistent methodology across the organization.
Automation & Process Improvement: Identify and implement automation opportunities for recurring reports, manual data preparation, and repetitive analyses. Drive the adoption of modern tools (e.g., Power BI, Power Query, Power Automate, and SQL) to streamline data workflows. Standardize processes to improve cycle times for analytics requests and reduce manual reporting volume.
Strategic Support: Support AI and advanced analytics pilots, specifically focusing on classification and anomaly detection. Tie POs, invoices, contracts, and accruals together to maintain visibility and ensure audit-ready evidence for all reconciliations. Build and maintain comprehensive process documents, desktop procedures, and metric definitions.
Qualifications
Experience: 3–6 years in spend/procurement analytics, business intelligence, FP&A, or accounting.
Technical Skills: Strong Power BI and data modeling expertise. Proficiency in Excel and data manipulation (SQL, Power Query, or Power Automate preferred).
Domain Knowledge: Working knowledge of PO, supplier, contract, and space/real estate datasets. Experience supporting procurement is required.
Mindset: A "business owner" mindset with a focus on root-cause analysis and high attention to detail.
Communication: Ability to partner effectively with Finance, Sourcing, Real Estate, and IT to explain data-driven insights clearly.
Benefits
Total Rewards: We understand compensation is an important factor as you consider the next step in your career. The estimated salary range for this position is $97,700 to $130,000 and is based on multiple factors, including job-related knowledge/skills, experience, geographical location, as well as other factors. This position is eligible for annual bonus compensation with a target payout of 20% of the base salary. This position also provides health benefits such as medical, dental and vision; wellness benefits such as mental and financial health; and retirement savings (401K) commensurate with the standard rewards offered in each individual location or country. We also provide full-time employees with paid time off including vacation (15 days), Holidays (9 days), Personal days (3 days) and sick time off (72 hours).
About Us
A global leader in applied safety science, UL Solutions (NYSE: ULS) transforms safety, security and sustainability challenges into opportunities for customers in more than 110 countries. UL Solutions delivers testing, inspection and certification services, together with software products and advisory offerings, that support our customers' product innovation and business growth. The UL Mark serves as a recognized symbol of trust in our customers' products and reflects an unwavering commitment to advancing our safety mission. We help our customers innovate, launch new products and services, navigate global markets and complex supply chains, and grow sustainably and responsibly into the future. Our science is your advantage.
About The Team
At the core of our expanding organization is our Finance team. We're a growing group of professionals, based around the world, who share ideas, work together and innovate to drive strategic growth and ensure financial integrity. Whether you're an expert in taxes, treasury, accounting, financial planning and analysis or corporate strategy and development, we're always looking for ambitious finance professionals who want to make an impact at a publicly traded company that's leading the way in safety science. Join our team, be part of our global community and drive the success of our mission-driven organization.