Senior Manager, Strategic Projects, Cloud & AI Finance

Company: PALO ALTO NETWORKS Published: 16th January 2023 Closing Date: 27th February 2023

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The Cloud Finance team is seeking to add a high-impact Sr. Manager, Strategic Projects to its team. We’re looking for a self-starter with strong analytical skills, an effective communicator, and a leader passionate for driving change in a dynamic fast-paced environment – all-in-one.

Working alongside a tight-knit cross-functional group with Product, Strategy, IT, and Operations, the Cloud Infrastructure Finance team manages usage, spend, and utilization for cloud infrastructure across all of PANW, with cloud infrastructure representing a key input for our cloud, AI, and cloud-delivered security service offerings. We enable the business units to efficiently drive their business by providing state of the art tools (e.g. dashboards, analytics) and processes (benchmarking, corporate forecasting and controls) for “all things cloud”. Members of the the Cloud Infrastructure Finance team, in partnership with the cross-functional team, directly manage relationships with our Cloud Service Providers, provide detailed tracking and analysis (including working with IT to develop such tools) to ensure that compute power is most efficient and ingestion costs are minimized, and provide Executive Staff with insightful, proactive recommendations to drive both topline and bottom-line growth across various portfolios within the Company.

The ideal candidate will be a problem-solver and advisor at heart. We are looking for someone with solid business judgment and experience tackling complex business issues. Identifying a comprehensive framework, gathering evidence and building a lucid narrative are skills critical to success in this role. Flexibility and quick thinking are essential, as you would be expected to build analyses and marshal resources in a dynamic environment to address novel business questions.

This is a solid foundation for finance leaders with opportunities for career growth and personal development. If you want to be part of a team of trustworthy advisors that is looked upon to make informed and persuasive recommendations to the C-level suite, apply today.

Your Impact

• Nurture deep, trusted partnerships with your respective technical teams, partnering closely with engineering and technical leaders across our various cloud and AI, and cloud delivered security service offerings
• Provide analytical rigor and bring strategic leadership to operational initiatives
• Evaluate tradeoffs in team planning, investment, and operational strategies
• Execute strategic and financial planning processes for your teams (e.g., Monthly Business Reviews, Forecasts, Annual Budget, and Long Range Plan)
• Drive continuous process improvement, standardization, simplification and reporting enhancements
• Develop and monitor critical success metrics, and communicate actionable insights
• Build and own scenario ad hoc models for in-depth analyses

Your Experience

• Bachelor’s in Finance, Economics, or equivalent (e.g., CPA, MBA) strongly preferred or equivalent military experience required –  Prior management consulting (Bain, BCG, McKinsey), and/or investment banking experience a plus.
• Generally 7+ years of relevant experience showing career progression – Experience overseeing large cloud infrastructure budgets for technology companies and/or working with product management strongly preferred
• Demonstrated ability and desire to work in and influence a matrixed organizational structure as an individual contributor
• Analytical problem-solver with the ability to gather, analyze and synthesize large amounts of data in order to drive effective and efficient executive decision-making – Own the end-to-end recommendation process
• Experience in, or willingness and aptitude to quickly learn SQL a must
• Experience with and/or a willingness to master various financial systems/ BI tools (i.e. SAP, Tableau)
• Extensive experience building integrated bottoms-up models from scratch with an ability to build enterprise level infrastructure plans, both near-term operational and forward conceptual
• Go-getter mindset and ability to maintain high-performance under tight timelines with a “roll-up sleeves mindset”
• Exceptional presentation/leadership skills, concise and fluent in communication

The Team

You have a passion for numbers, our organization has a passion for cybersecurity. You’re looking for a career with a more fulfilling mission. We have open positions to top talent seeking a financial challenge. Our finance department deals with numbers daily, supporting infrastructure, dealing in automation, building elegant models and solutions to empower our business lines and solutions. The ideal candidate has exceptional skills in financial modeling and analytics and an innovative mindset to approach finance problems differently. Our innovation doesn’t stay in Research and Development. Within finance, we seek people who are looking to try new things, while solving business critical equations. If you’re seeking a financial challenge but with a world-wide impact — this is it.

Our Commitment 

We’re trailblazers who dream big, take risks, and challenge cybersecurity’s status quo. It’s simple: We can’t accomplish our mission without diverse teams innovating, together.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations for all qualified individuals with disabilities. If you require assistance or accommodation due to a disability or special need, please contact us at accommodations@paloaltonetworks.com .

Palo Alto Networks is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity in our workplace, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or other legally protected characteristics.

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.

The compensation offered for this position will depend on qualifications, experience, and work location. For candidates who receive an offer at the posted level, the starting base salary (for non-sales roles) or base salary + commission target (for sales/commissioned roles) is expected to be between $139,400/yr to $225,500/yr. The offered compensation may also include restricted stock units and a bonus. A description of our employee benefits may be found here .

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