Supply Chain Finance Manager
Los Angeles / South Bay, CA (Onsite) | ~10% Travel
A rapidly growing aerospace and defense manufacturer and systems integrator, supporting U.S. and allied defense programs across multiple platforms, is establishing its first-ever dedicated Supply Chain Finance function. This is a newly created role — there is no existing process to inherit, and the individuals who historically covered pieces of this work have since retired. You will build the budgeting, forecasting, cost estimating, and performance-management infrastructure for Supply Chain from the ground up.
The company is in a significant growth phase: expanding its physical footprint, carrying a strong backlog, and tracking several major new program awards — including a large-scale missile defense program with a leading prime contractor and a new directed-energy product line — that are expected to drive additional headcount and scope in this function in the near term.
Key Responsibilities
Budgeting, Forecasting & Long-Range Planning
- Lead annual budgeting for the Supply Chain organization, covering both contract-side and overhead expenses.
- Build out Estimate-at-Completion (EAC) forecasting methodology for supply chain costs — this process does not yet exist and needs to be designed from scratch.
- Develop long-range headcount and workforce planning models for the organization, tied to the budget.
- Establish performance reporting that measures actuals against budget and forecast.
Material Cost Estimating
- Serve as the Supply Chain focal point for material cost estimating, partnering with a broader cross-functional estimating group.
- Support modernization of a currently manual estimating process, including evaluation of dedicated cost-estimating tools.
- Help close the gap between proposal-stage cost and quote inputs and what buyers ultimately execute post-award, so proposed and actual costs stay connected.
Buyer & Supplier Cost Performance
- Analyze buyer performance against negotiated cost and quantity, by commodity.
- Evaluate the cost impact of shipping terms, expedited orders, and other landed-cost drivers on total cost of goods.
- Partner with buyers to move beyond reliance on historical PO pricing alone, incorporating quantity-based pricing relationships (learning and improvement curves) and appropriate competitive quoting practices.
- Build accountability frameworks for buyer cost performance in partnership with Supply Chain leadership, without directly managing procurement staff.
ERP Transition Support
Support the organization's upcoming migration to a current, DoD-compliant ERP environment, including data validation and reporting continuity throughout the transition.
Reporting, Tools & Process Improvement
- Build and improve cost and performance dashboards and reporting, with an emphasis on better automation (current environment is SAP and Excel; Power BI and Power Query are available but underused).
- Bring advanced Excel modeling skills — this is not an entry-level formula role; macro or VBA experience is a plus.
- Help identify where AI-assisted tools can reduce manual reporting effort.
- Apply Lean/Six Sigma methods to streamline supply chain finance processes.
Compliance & Risk Awareness
- Support the organization's readiness for cost and pricing compliance (TINA, CPSR, FAR, DFARS) — not mandatory, but a meaningful plus given an upcoming compliance review.
- Maintain awareness of evolving cost/pricing thresholds, including the current TINA certified cost and pricing data threshold ($10 million).
- Partner with the company's separate compliance and export-control function on ITAR and related matters as needed.
- Nice to have: a broader awareness of geopolitical and macroeconomic factors affecting materials and supply availability.
Qualifications and Skills
Required
- 5–8+ years of progressive finance experience in supply chain finance, operational finance, or cost accounting.
- Aerospace & Defense industry experience.
- Genuine, hands-on fluency with Bills of Material (BOM) — how they drive supply chain requirements, feed proposal pricing, and connect to purchase orders and buyer workflows. This is a real working knowledge, not textbook familiarity.
- Strong analytical and financial modeling skills; advanced Excel required.
- A true business-partner mindset: proven ability to build trust and credibility within an operations organization that may initially be cautious about finance involvement. This is a partnership role, not an audit or enforcement function.
- Material cost estimating experience.
- Lean/Six Sigma experience or certification.
- Familiarity with TINA, CPSR, FAR, DFARS.
- Bachelor's degree in Finance, Accounting, Supply Chain Management, Business Administration, or a related field.
Preferred
- Experience with SAP; SAP HANA and business intelligence platforms a plus.
- Experience supporting a live ERP migration (e.g., SAP ECC to S/4HANA) a plus.
- VBA or macro development experience.
- MBA or relevant advanced certification.
- A broader, geopolitically-informed view of supply chain risk.