Associate Director, Treasury and Commodity Risk Management
Leprino Foods
Denver, CO
Description:
Within our Corporate Finance team in Denver, Leprino is seeking an Associate Director, Treasury & Commodity Risk Management to lead Treasury, Credit, & Collections while shaping how commodity and market risk is managed across the Cheese and Nutrition Global Business Units. This role works closely with senior leaders to guide hedging strategy, manage earnings volatility, and clearly explain how market movements affect profitability.
At Leprino, starting compensation for this role typically ranges between $162,000 and $189,000. This position has an annual target bonus of 15%.
What You’ll Do:
- Lead team across Treasury, Credit, & Collections functions, ensuring coordinated risk management, cash discipline, and effective customer outcomes.
- Build and guide Leprino’s commodity and market risk approach.
- Design, refine, and expand hedging strategies that reduce earnings volatility across milk (including all components), cheese and nutrition ingredients, and related exposures.
- Set priorities and direction for Treasury activities, including cash forecasting, liquidity planning, and coordination with conservative investment policies.
- Oversee Credit and Collections strategy, ensuring disciplined credit decisions, effective collections practices, and thoughtful escalation when market or customer risk shifts.
- Partner closely with senior leaders, presenting monthly updates on market conditions, hedge performance, and risk trade-offs to Leprino’s C-suite and the President.
- Lead hedging strategy across the Cheese and Nutrition Global Business Units, directing execution, while partnering closely with Sales to align market risk decisions with commercial outcomes.
- Evaluate hedge structures, counterparties, and instruments, ensuring alignment with governance standards and approved risk limits.
- Guide customer fixed-price and hedging programs, reviewing exposures, assumptions, and settlement mechanics prior to distribution.
- Monitor basis risk and liquidity constraints in dairy markets, adjusting strategies when inputs and outputs move out of sync.
- Participate in the Financial Risk Management Committee, contributing clear perspectives on markets, exposures, and results.
- Encourage shared learning across teams, building understanding of commodity risk and hedging concepts throughout the organization!
You Have At Least (Required Qualifications):
- Bachelor’s degree in finance, accounting, economics, or a closely related discipline.
- 6+ years of progressive experience in commodity risk management, hedging, or closely related finance roles.
- Direct, hands-on experience designing or executing hedging programs using derivatives tied to commodities and or FX.
- Regular experience presenting complex financial or market topics to senior executives, including C-suite or President-level audiences.
- Willingness to travel up to 10% as needed.
We Hope You Also Have (Preferred Qualifications):
- Master’s degree in finance, economics, or a related field.
- Progressive leadership experience managing people leaders.
- 8-10 years of progressive experience in commodity risk management, hedging, or closely related finance roles.
- Background in dairy, food, nutrition, agriculture, or another commodity-driven manufacturing environment.
- Experience working in or alongside large, centralized risk management teams at scaled organizations or cooperatives.
- Professional credentials such as CFA or CTP, or comparable advanced training in risk and derivatives.
At Leprino, we believe in equal employment opportunity and make employment decisions based on each individual’s unique talents, experience, skills, and knowledge; we do not discriminate on the basis of any personal characteristics. We know we are better together and are committed to creating an inclusive and supportive culture in which all employees can thrive.
Offering You In Return:
A chance to be part of a global team of individuals passionate about producing and delivering high-quality products that help feed and nourish families around the world. Leprino Foods could not be where it is today without our incredible employees. That is why we share in our success together by rewarding you for your hard work. Hiring great people who are in it for the long run is our goal. Through competitive salaries and bonuses, life, medical/dental/vision coverage, voluntary benefits, employee assistance programs, wellness incentives, tuition assistance, vacation, ten paid holidays, sick time, paid parental leave, annual merit increases, as well as the LFC Profit-Sharing & 401(k) plan. Your impact will be noticed and rewarded, as you seek to further our company, our customers, and one another.
Our Story:
Leprino’s history dates back to the 1950s, when Jim Leprino first started making small batches of mozzarella for local markets and eateries in the Little Italy neighborhood of Denver. We’ve grown a bit since then. Today, Leprino is the world’s largest manufacturer of mozzarella and lactose, and a leading producer of whey protein. Still owned by Jim and the Leprino family, our sights are set to be the “World’s Best Dairy Food and Ingredient Company.” From a small corner grocery store we have grown to over 5,500 employees throughout the globe. Will you join us on our journey?
Leprino uses Psychemedics for a 90-day hair follicle drug test as a pre-employment screening tool and also participates in E-Verify. Some positions at the Denver corporate office may require Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) based on role and location.
About the Company
Leprino Foods
From our headquarters in Denver to our production plants located across the country, our growth continues to provide exciting career opportunities. It’s our vision to become the world’s best dairy foods ingredients producer, and we’re looking for great people to help us get there. If you have a strong work ethic, a focus on providing excellent service to external and internal customers, an innovative spirit that’s not satisfied with status quo, and a passion for producing quality products and services, we’d be excited to have you join our organization.
Culture
Our unwavering commitment to product quality and unparalleled customer service encompasses simple principles that guide the efforts of every member of the Leprino Foods' team.
Quality
Service
Innovation
People
Perpetuating a fulfilling, challenging and safe work environment that encourages continuous improvement, provides equal opportunity, offers economic satisfaction through the recognition and rewarding of achievement, and ensures we maintain a healthy respect for our competitors, customers, suppliers and fellow employees in a clean and safe work environment.
Ethics
Conducting our affairs and nurturing our relationships with customers, suppliers, co-workers, mutual interest groups and others in a forthright and ethical manner.
Citizenship
Recognizing our responsibilities toward, and encouraging involvement in, our industry and local communities while respecting individual freedom of choice and maintaining the highest standards of environmental and regulatory compliance.
Benefits Click to learn more
Our Story Behind the superior quality and performance of our cheese lies the legacy of a man with a vision - to make the finest mozzarella cheese available anywhere.
Mike Leprino, Sr. arrived in America in 1914 with little more than fierce determination and a tough set of principles. In 1950 with the help of his family, Mike Leprino began making small batches of ricotta and mozzarella cheese for delivery to local grocery stores. An uncompromising commitment to product quality and customer service fueled demand for Leprino cheese.
Today the company he founded is the world's largest producer of mozzarella cheese and remains singularly focused upon making the finest cheese and whey products.
Results Through People
Environment
Our employees perform their best and feel considerable pride because they are active contributors to the continued success of the largest mozzarella maker in the world - and especially to the continued success of our customers. Employee teams propose and implement ideas to improve our products, service and technology, and track their success. In fact, our employees frequently surpass their own records when it comes to safety standards and innovative processes.
Culture
The culture of Leprino Foods Company is one of hard work, striving for excellence, high expectations and pride. To be successful requires high energy and passion, with a desire to take on challenges and do what it takes to keep Leprino Foods at the top of its industry. The hard work encountered here proves to be worthwhile when considering that we work for a market leader with great financial security and long-term stability. We are extremely committed to quality and to customer service.
At Leprino Foods, we believe:
- Exceptional customer service is the attitude of caring among all our employees that motivates them to go beyond traditional boundaries in order to facilitate the realization of our Vision.
- Exceptional customer service involves serving others as each of us would like to be served.
- Exceptional customer service must be pro-active, not reactive. It means anticipating a customer’s needs.
- Exceptional customer service is not limited to external customers, it must also be extended to our internal customers, to fellow employees, to our suppliers, and to all other business contacts.
- Exceptional customer service takes everyone’s efforts. One employee with a lack of effort can create poor customer service.
- Exceptional customer service is fundamental to achieving our Vision. It is not a vision in and of itself.
Employees of Leprino Foods Company will agree that most positions and departments offer a high level of growth to the employees. This comes from both promotional advancement and personal growth opportunities. In addition, we offer an extensive list of training opportunities to all levels of employees. This can range from PC training and operator training all the way to leadership training and ways to further develop the competencies possessed by successful leaders.
Mission and Philosophies
Our mission and philosophy at Leprino Foods is to establish, through our actions, an unparalleled standard of excellence in people, products, and service while increasing our market share and perpetuating a healthy company that appropriately rewards all our efforts and investments. We believe that the health and longevity of our company can best be achieved through an uncompromising commitment by all of us to Leprino Quality as a way of life. Leprino Quality is exemplified by an attitude of continuous improvement in each of the following areas:
- Product Quality: Operating our facilities in a neat, clean, orderly, and well-maintained fashion while producing distinctively superior quality cheese and whey products that add value to our customers’ businesses.
- Customer Service: Perpetuating a proactive customer-centered attitude among all of us, which produces distinguished service in every aspect of our internal and external customer relationships.
- Leadership and Innovation: Breaking traditional barriers and constantly expanding the horizons of our industry through bold leadership in product and process technology which continues to create new standards of excellence in product value.
- People: Perpetuating a fulfilling and safe work environment that:
- Values the importance of clean, organized, and well-maintained facilities,
- Encourages the involvement of everyone in the business problem-solving, decision-making process, while not tolerating Company politics,
- Fosters a willingness to innovate and stretch personal and collective boundaries,
- Provides equal opportunity for personal and leadership development,
- Promotes company pride though an unselfish, teamwork-driven attitude among all of us,
- Offers economic satisfaction through the recognition and rewarding of individual and collective contributions, and
- Maintains a focus on safety in all aspects of our business.
- Ethics: Conducting our affairs and nurturing our relationships with customers, suppliers, co-workers, mutual interest groups and others in a forthright and ethical manner.
- Citizenship: Recognizing our responsibilities toward, and encouraging involvement in, the communities of which we are a part, while respecting individual freedom of choice, and maintaining the highest standard of environmental and regulatory compliance.
As an employee of Leprino Foods, you will have a chance to make a difference by joining one of the many Leprino Employee Involvement Teams and Task Forces.
We all benefit from these teams by having employees bring better problem solving, new ideas, and efficiencies to the Company. Team members benefit personally as well. Through involvement in one or more of these teams, members enhance their knowledge of Leprino’s operations and get the opportunity to work with people outside their normal contacts, doing tasks outside their normal scope of work. Team members also learn basic tools to help identify and work through problems – tools that will help them every day in their job and their personal life.
Community Involvement
Each of our locations has employees active in the communities they work and reside in. Leprino Foods is involved either by sponsorship, participating in, or donating to many worthwhile events.
College Recruiting Click to learn more
Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer