[Hiring] Director, Finance of Product & Engineering @Avalara

Role Description

Avalara is seeking a Director, Finance & Strategy – Product & Engineering to serve as the embedded finance leader for Product & Engineering, the largest single organization within TCO. This role partners directly with senior Product and Engineering leaders to connect product strategy, roadmap decisions, headcount planning, and operating spend into a clear financial view of what it costs to build and maintain Avalara’s products and what return those investments are generating.

This is a high-visibility, high-ownership opportunity for a finance leader who wants to operate as a true business partner to technical executives, not simply as a reporting layer. The Director will help shape investment decisions, improve roadmap-to-P&L linkage, strengthen forecasting rigor, and ensure Product & Engineering’s cost structure is translated into credible, decision-ready financial narratives for Finance leadership.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of progressive experience in FP&A, strategic finance, or business-unit finance, ideally including direct support for Product, Engineering, R&D, or other technical organizations in SaaS or enterprise technology environments.
• Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, or a related field required; MBA, CFA, or CPA preferred.
• Demonstrated success serving as a direct finance partner to senior business leaders, with the executive presence and judgment to build credibility quickly with SVP-level stakeholders.
• Experience building and owning driver-based forecasting models, including headcount-to-cost, roadmap-to-cost, or related resource-planning models.
• Strong financial modeling and analytical skills, with the ability to move from ambiguous inputs to structured assumptions, scenarios, and recommendations.
• Comfortable pushing for clarity on assumptions and decisions while partnering from curiosity, influence, and business judgment.
• Experience leading planning, forecast, and business-review rhythms in complex, matrixed organizations.
• Strong systems and data fluency, including comfort working from shared data models and planning tools rather than building disconnected offline reporting.
• Experience with planning platforms such as Anaplan, Adaptive, or Pigment and analytics tools such as Tableau, Power BI, or similar; SQL a plus.
• Demonstrated ability to use AI tools to accelerate modeling, reporting, analysis, and synthesis while maintaining strong financial judgment.

Requirements

• Serve as the primary finance partner to the senior leaders across Product & Engineering, owning the day-to-day finance relationship for each aligned leader across budget, forecast, roadmap, and investment decisions.
• Build trusted relationships with technical executives and translate product and engineering priorities into financial implications, tradeoffs, and recommendation paths.
• Own the financial plan, forecast, and long-range view for the covered organization, ensuring roadmap changes are reflected prospectively in headcount and cost expectations rather than identified after the fact.
• Lead roadmap-to-P&L linkage by translating product roadmap decisions into forward-looking forecasts for headcount, cost, and resource allocation.
• Partner with Product and Engineering leadership on investment prioritization, resource tradeoffs, and reallocation decisions across the portfolio.
• Develop a clear view of product-development economics, including the cost to build and maintain products and the return profile of major investment areas.
• Lead monthly and quarterly business reviews for the covered organization, delivering clear driver-based narratives on performance, risks, opportunities, and required actions.
• Build and maintain KPI and assumption frameworks that connect roadmap execution, hiring plans, productivity, and spend performance into decision-useful financial insights.
• Produce category forecasts for the organization to the team’s reporting standards and cadence, and participate fully in category-owner accountability mechanisms.
• Model and stress-test forecast inputs using a clear assumption framework such as rate, volume, timing, and mix, rather than accepting unsupported topline figures.
• Ensure variances are explained at the driver level, with timing variances tied to an expected landing period and structural changes reflected in run-rate expectations.
• Surface emerging forecast risk early and proactively, and partner with business leaders to align on implications and mitigation actions before escalation.
• Apply the same analytical scrutiny to favorable and unfavorable variances, reinforcing a culture of forecast accuracy and operational accountability.
• Validate Cost of Revenue-tagged cost centers within the organization’s scope and provide the validated inputs required for consolidated gross-margin and cost-to-serve views.
• Validate headcount data for shared headcount-governance and consolidation processes, ensuring consistency with Finance standards and organizational operating reality.
• Partner with adjacent Finance teams on targeted cross-functional workstreams where Product & Engineering operational context is required, while maintaining clear ownership boundaries and a streamlined support model.
• Represent Product & Engineering in Avalara’s broader FP&A, annual operating plan, and long-range planning processes, ensuring the organization’s financial story is well integrated into company-level narratives and decision-making.

Benefits

• Total Rewards: In addition to a great compensation package, paid time off, and paid parental leave, many Avalara employees are eligible for bonuses.
• Health & Wellness: Benefits vary by location but generally include private medical, life, and disability insurance.
• Inclusive culture and diversity: Avalara strongly supports diversity, equity, and inclusion, and is committed to integrating them into our business practices and our organizational culture.