Director of Finance Systems

Company Description

Uncommon Schools is a nonprofit network of successful charter public schools that are closing the academic achievement gap and preparing students from historically underserved communities for success in college and beyond. Uncommon currently manages 57 schools serving more than 20,000 students in six cities: Boston, Camden, New York City, Newark, Rochester, and Troy. Uncommon graduates persist in and graduate from college at rates far higher than their peers. We believe that every child deserves an outstanding education, and we are committed to working beyond the walls of our schools to achieve that goal through our professional development workshops, books, and district partnerships.

Job Description

As a member of Uncommon’s Finance Team, the Director of Finance Systems will own workstreams that are integral to the organization’s financial planning and analysis (FP&A) function. Beyond technical knowledge, the Director must have strong change management, planning, and communication skills in order to lead technology and processes at Uncommon’s scale and high standard. Star team members are focused, hard-working, fast, and hold themselves and their work to a high standard.

Expert Administration of Products in FP&A Portfolio - Workday & Adaptive

• Manage Use Cases: Deeply understand stakeholders’ goals and use cases for the platforms.
• Own Processes: Develop and lead implementation of all processes for day-to-day platform use (i.e. maintaining integration with other Uncommon systems, handling user permissions).
• Own Policy & User Management: Build policy resources, including user management policy around roles, access level, and responsibilities
• Technical Support: Design and manage a system to identify, triage & work with vendors and Uncommon’s IT Team to resolve technical issues.
• Own the Product Roadmap and Maintenance Strategy: Lead system upgrades, backups, testing, and connectivity with other enterprise applications.
• Build Expertise: Attend trainings/webinars offered by vendors to build expertise.

Work with partners to understand and champion the appropriate long-term vision for finance platforms.

• Process improvement: Use robust product knowledge to align Uncommon’s business processes with the technical capabilities of FP&A systems, and monitor technical debt associated with FP&A systems and processes
• Strategy and Planning: Partner with organizational to drive strategy for FP&A systems, including setting the right vision to get buy-in from operational partners and executors.
• Communication: Empathize, prioritize and communicate effectively with non-technical users.
• Organizational Change: Collaborate with leaders across Uncommon to prepare and support all elements of the organization in embracing new business processes related to finance systems.

Lead product enhancements with support and input from other teams and vendors

• Enhancements: Through product knowledge and conversations with partners, identify new areas/ways the product can be used (either internally and externally) to support and improve FP&A business processes.
• Project Management: Build detailed project plans, assemble teams of internal and external collaborators, and lead execution from start to finish.

Training and documentation

• Knowledge Base: Own creation and management of knowledge base for support, troubleshooting, and process improvement.
• Training: Develop and facilitate technical training for end users.

Vendor Management

• Contract & Payment: Manage renewal and payment of yearly contracts for product and ongoing consultant support
• Manage Relationship: Build relationship with vendor and support consultants, act as liaison between vendor, consultant(s), and Uncommon on any projects.

Qualifications

Required Skills/Abilities:

• 5+ years of directly related work experience required
• Experience with technical project or product management in financial services, technology, or education industries
• Understanding of financial principles and GAAP accounting
• Experience developing systems and refining processes for a team that improve the team's work quality and/or efficiency
• Demonstrable ability to create and implement sophisticated project plans affecting more than fifty stakeholders
• Experience managing high level collaborators with a high quality bar
• Demonstrated ability to diagnose issues, identify root causes, and implement effective solutions
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, and experience developing communication plans
• Growth mindset and interest in giving and receiving feedback with the goal of constantly improving
• Self-sufficient with the ability to ask questions and request help when needed
• Advanced skills in Excel and Google Sheets/Forms
• Passion for learning and teaching new applications and products

Preferred Skills/Abilities:

• Experience as an administrator or power-user of Workday and/or Adaptive
• Workday and/or Adaptive certification preferred
• Experience preparing or reading financial statements or managing an organizational budget
• Experience building complex financial models
• Solid understanding of help desk ticketing software (e.g. Zendesk)
• Working knowledge of querying structured data sources using SQL or similar languages