Manager, Strategic Finance

Job description

At Serve Robotics, we’re reimagining how things move in cities. Our personable sidewalk robot is our vision for the future. It’s designed to take deliveries away from congested streets, make deliveries available to more people, and benefit local businesses. The Serve fleet has been delighting merchants, customers, and pedestrians along the way in Los Angeles, Miami, Dallas, Atlanta and Chicago while doing commercial deliveries. We’re looking for talented individuals who will grow robotic deliveries from surprising novelty to efficient ubiquity. ### **Who We Are** We are tech industry veterans in software, hardware, and design who are pooling our skills to build the future we want to live in. We are solving real-world problems leveraging robotics, machine learning and computer vision, among other disciplines, with a mindful eye towards the end-to-end user experience. Our team is agile, diverse, and driven. We believe that the best way to solve complicated dynamic problems is collaboratively and respectfully. **JOB OVERVIEW** The **Manager, Strategic Finance** is the finance leader responsible for shaping where Diligent Robotics invests and how it grows. Working directly with the Diligent CEO and COO as principal business partners, the role leads the analysis behind the company’s biggest decisions: strategic prioritization, target and market sizing, sum-of-the-parts valuation, capital budgeting (NPV, IRR, payback), and the investment cases for new markets, partnerships, and M&A. Success requires a deep command of the operational drivers of the Diligent Robotics business (fleet deployment, utilization, unit economics, hospital customer dynamics, and cost structure) and an equally deep understanding of the Serve Robotics business, so that every recommendation is grounded in how the combined business actually runs. The role also owns the planning and forecasting foundation that makes that analysis credible, including the budget, long-range plan, and the Pigment planning environment. The role may begin as an individual contributor with line of sight to building and leading a team within the first 12 months. We have a strong preference for someone based in Austin, TX :) **JOB DUTIES** **Strategic Finance and Capital Allocation** ● Lead strategic prioritization for the business: frame trade-offs across initiatives, quantify resource requirements and expected returns, and recommend to the CEO and COO where the company should invest, scale back, or stop ● Own capital budgeting and investment analysis, building NPV, IRR, payback, and scenario and sensitivity models for capital deployment, major programs, pricing changes, and new market entry, and setting the hurdle-rate and return frameworks used to evaluate them ● Size targets and market opportunities (TAM/SAM, unit economics, adoption and penetration curves) to underpin company goals, board-level targets, and the long-range plan ● Build and maintain sum-of-the-parts analyses that value and compare business lines, products, and markets, and use them to drive portfolio, pricing, and resource-allocation decisions ● Lead financial modeling for M&A, strategic partnerships, and commercial agreements, including valuation, synergies, integration scenarios, deal structuring inputs, and post-deal performance tracking against the original investment case ● Own the long-range strategic plan: translate company strategy into a multi-year financial model with explicit growth, margin, and capital assumptions, and refresh it as the strategy evolves ● Define and maintain the KPI and unit-economics framework the CEO and COO use to run the business, ensuring the metrics tie to the financial model and to value creation ● Prepare and deliver executive-ready presentations, valuation outputs, and financial narratives for leadership meetings, board reviews, and investor discussions, ensuring alignment between strategy, financials, and messaging ● Run ad hoc strategic analyses on pricing strategy, go-to-market investments, competitive positioning, and corporate development opportunities **Executive Business Partnership (Diligent and Serve)** ● Serve as the primary Strategic Finance and FP&A partner to the Diligent Robotics CEO and COO, acting as their trusted advisor on operating performance, resource allocation, and investment decisions ● Develop a deep, first-hand understanding of the operational drivers of the Diligent Robotics business by spending time with operations, deployment, and customer teams, and translate that understanding into forecast assumptions, KPIs, and decision frameworks ● Build an equally deep understanding of the Serve Robotics business, including its operating model, drivers, and strategic priorities, so that Diligent investment cases are evaluated in the context of the combined business ● Operate with strong executive presence, communicating complex financial concepts clearly to non-finance stakeholders and influencing decisions through data-driven insight ● Build toward team leadership: as the function scales, hire, develop, and manage finance staff, set priorities and quality standards for the team’s work, and establish processes that scale beyond a single contributor **Planning and Forecasting Foundation** ● Own the company-wide operating budget, rolling forecast, and long-range plan, reconciling top-down targets with bottom-up functional inputs so forecasts are internally consistent, realistic, and decision-useful ● Run the monthly and quarterly forecast cycle, including variance analysis and commentary that connects results to the operational and strategic drivers of the business ● Partner with functional leaders and Accounting to challenge assumptions, surface risks and opportunities early, and ensure forecasts, actuals, and financial statements tie ● Serve as the systems owner for Pigment, the company’s newly completed planning environment, with responsibility for building financial models and conducting analysis within it, maintaining and extending the build, and keeping it the single source of truth for planning ● Improve data accuracy, speed, and scalability through automation and process redesign, leveraging advanced Excel/Google Sheets, Pigment, and emerging AI and workflow-automation tools, so that more of the team’s time goes to strategic analysis **EXPERIENCE, QUALIFICATIONS, & SKILLS** Required Experience, Qualifications, and Skills ● 6-8+ years of progressive experience in strategic finance, corporate finance, investment banking, corporate development, or FP&A with significant strategic scope, preferably in a tech, robotics, or high-growth environment ● Demonstrated ownership of strategic finance work, including capital budgeting (NPV/IRR), target or market sizing, sum-of-the-parts or valuation analysis, and M&A or partnership modeling, with examples of recommendations that changed a decision ● Experience building and defending multi-year financial models and investment cases in front of executives, boards, or investors ● Proven ability to partner directly with C-level executives (CEO/COO) and to influence senior leadership through analysis and executive presence ● Demonstrated curiosity and track record of learning an operating business from the ground up, getting close to operations and customers rather than just the general ledger, and converting that knowledge into better forecasts and decisions ● Proven ownership of a company-wide budget, forecast, and long-range planning cycle ● Expert-level proficiency in Google Sheets and Excel, including complex modeling and automation techniques ● Hands-on experience with Pigment or a comparable enterprise planning platform (Pigment strongly preferred) ● Solid understanding of accounting principles and financial statements; experience with ERP systems (e.g., NetSuite) ● Strong business acumen and excellent analytical, problem-solving, and communication skills ● Comfortable operating with ambiguity and evolving priorities in a fast-scaling organization Preferred Experience, Qualifications, and Skills ● Investment banking, management consulting, venture capital/private equity, or corporate development experience ● Experience in robotics, hardware, healthcare technology, or other capital-intensive operating businesses ● Prior people-management experience, or demonstrated readiness to build and lead a small team ● MBA, CFA, or CPA Additional Information ● Travel required 2-4 times per year, approximately 4-5 business days per trip ● This role is expected to begin as an individual contributor; team scope, structure, and leveling will be revisited as the function grows ● This role may take on additional responsibilities as the company continues to scale