Sr Director Finance

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the enterprise annual budget and rolling forecast, coordinating submissions across all seven regions and HQ into a coherent plan aligned with corporate and EQT objectives.
• Lead enterprise Leveraged Cash Flow (LCF) planning and forecasting in alignment with EQT's infrastructure investment framework.
• Drive forecast accuracy by challenging assumptions and working with regional and HQ finance leaders to close gaps.
• Transform First Student's forecasting into a system-driven, AI-enabled process.
• Shift the team's primary output from forecast maintenance to insight generation - proactively surfacing risks, opportunities, and recommendations for leadership.
• Deliver routine P&L, CapEx, and LCF performance reports to the VP, CFO, and CEO, and prepare Board and EQT reporting packages with driver-based executive narratives.
• Lead the transition from variance-to-plan reporting to a KPI-driver framework - connecting financial outcomes to the operational metrics (retention, renewal rates, ridership, cost per bus) that caused them.
• Develop and maintain standardized reporting templates, dashboards, and KPI frameworks across all reporting cycles.
• Lead enterprise CapEx planning, budgeting, and monitoring - including EV fleet expansion - consolidating regional submissions and tracking actuals versus plan for executive and investor reporting.
• Consolidate regional P&L, CapEx, and LCF submissions into enterprise-level views; serve as the primary HQ FP&A point of contact for planning assumptions and reporting standards.
• Oversee HQ SG&A planning and monitoring; partner with functional leaders on bottom-up budgets and flag risks to plan early.
• Lead STIP financial planning - target-setting, accrual modeling, and payout projections - and maintain accurate accruals through forecast cycles.
• Partner with the Senior Finance Director, Pricing to incorporate contract pricing and renewal retention assumptions into enterprise financial plans.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's in Finance, Accounting, Economics, or related field; MBA or CPA strongly preferred.
• 10+ years of progressive FP&A experience in a corporate or enterprise finance role within multi-site, service, contract, or transportation industries.
• Proven expertise in enterprise financial consolidation, budgeting, forecasting, and variance analysis across P&L, CapEx, and Cash Flow.
• Experience modernizing FP&A through system-driven forecasting or advanced analytics; familiarity with Anaplan, Pigment, OneStream, or similar AI-enabled planning platforms is a strong plus.
• Proficiency in SAP, Oracle, or equivalent ERP; Hyperion or comparable CPM platform; advanced Excel and financial modeling required.
• Experience with KPI-based driver variance frameworks; familiarity with SG&A planning, CapEx, LCF modeling, and STIP financial planning.
• Proven executive communication - synthesizing complex multi-region financials into clear narratives for C-suite, board, and private equity audiences; PE-backed environment experience preferred.
• Collaborative, organizationally agile people leader with a track record of developing high-performing finance teams.