Senior Manager, Strategic Finance

Job description

**Merlin (NASDAQ: MRLN)** is a publicly traded aerospace and defense company building a non-human pilot to deliver full-stack autonomy for any aircraft from takeoff to touchdown. The Merlin Pilot autonomy system powers a growing range of aircraft and mission profiles and has been proven through hundreds of autonomous flights from Merlin's global flight test facilities, including Kerikeri, New Zealand; Smithfield, Rhode Island; and soon, Bedford, Massachusetts. Headquartered in Boston, Merlin is expanding its organization to accelerate the development and deployment of its autonomy platform, helping customers solve some of aviation's most pressing challenges, from pilot shortages to improving flight safety. Backed by some of the world's leading investors prior to its public listing, Merlin continues to advance the certification and commercialization of autonomous flight across commercial and defense aviation. **About You:** You bring 10+ years of progressive finance experience in FP&A, Strategic Finance, or revenue operations, with deep, hands-on knowledge of quote-to-cash and procure-to-pay processes. You've built workflows before, not just operated within them, and you have an understanding of ASC 606 revenue recognition in milestone or contract-based environments. You move comfortably across systems CRM (Salesforce), ERP (QuickBooks, Costpoint, or similar) and you're the person who spots a manual handoff or inefficient process and can't help but fix it. You're process-oriented and detail-driven, but are able to balance bringing structure to fast-moving environments without slowing them down. What should excite you about this role: Merlin's commercial and operational activity is scaling, and you'll be the architect of the financial infrastructure connecting customer commitments to recognized revenue and vendor relationships to recorded expenses. Near-term, you are the architect building these processes. Long-term, this converts into full P&L ownership of a product line which provides a clear path from operator to business owner. ### Responsibilities: - Build revenue forecasting models that connect pipeline to recognized revenue with appropriate consideration for contract type, milestone, and performance obligation structure - Establish controls and system workflows that reduce manual handoffs and create an auditable trail from opportunity to cash receipt - Design and implement (in collaboration with our Procurement team) a scalable procure-to-pay process: requisition, purchase order, vendor onboarding, invoice processing, and payment - Partner with Legal, Accounting, and business owners to implement and ensure adherence to a tiered approval framework commensurate with spend risk - Build the operating expense forecasting and accrual processes that give FP&A reliable visibility into committed and incurred spend - Support the implementation of financial planning tools and systems in partnership with Finance and IT - Create the monthly/quarterly operating cadence: actuals reviews, variance analysis, and re-forecast processes for assigned functions within the organization - Support the build and delivery of the annual operating plan and budget - Drive continuous improvement: identify bottlenecks, eliminate manual work, and automate where possible - Assume full P&L ownership for an assigned product line, including revenue, gross margin, and operating expense (long-term) ### Qualifications: - 10+ years of progressive finance experience in FP&A, Strategic Finance, revenue operations, or finance business partner roles - Deep understanding of quote-to-cash and procure-to-pay processes - Hands-on builder: has designed and implemented processes and models from scratch - Familiarity with ASC 606 revenue recognition, particularly in a milestone- or contract-based environment - BA/BS in Accounting, Finance, or related field required ### Nice to Have: - Background at a defense, aerospace, SaaS, or hardware-intensive technology company - MBA or CPA