Senior Financial Analyst, Services Finance

Company Description

Our Mission

At Palo Alto Networks® everything starts and ends with our mission:

Being the cybersecurity partner of choice, protecting our digital way of life.
Our vision is a world where each day is safer and more secure than the one before. We are a company built on the foundation of challenging and disrupting the way things are done, and we’re looking for innovators who are as committed to shaping the future of cybersecurity as we are.

Who We Are

We take our mission of protecting the digital way of life seriously. We are relentless in protecting our customers and we believe that the unique ideas of every member of our team contributes to our collective success. Our values were crowdsourced by employees and are brought to life through each of us everyday - from disruptive innovation and collaboration, to execution. From showing up for each other with integrity to creating an environment where we all feel included.

As a member of our team, you will be shaping the future of cybersecurity. We work fast, value ongoing learning, and we respect each employee as a unique individual. Knowing we all have different needs, our development and personal wellbeing programs are designed to give you choice in how you are supported. This includes our FLEXBenefits wellbeing spending account with over 1,000 eligible items selected by employees, our mental and financial health resources, and our personalized learning opportunities - just to name a few!

At Palo Alto Networks, we believe in the power of collaboration and value in-person interactions. This is why our employees generally work full time from our office with flexibility offered where needed. This setup fosters casual conversations, problem-solving, and trusted relationships. Our goal is to create an environment where we all win with precision.

Job Description

Your Career

This is an onsite role based at our headquarters in Santa Clara, CA.

Palo Alto Networks is looking for a highly skilled Senior Financial Analyst supporting our Global Customer Services (GCS) team reporting to the Senior Manager of GCS Finance. This role will be instrumental in driving expense and headcount management, forecasting, financial modeling, monthly and quarterly close, and strategic planning. You’ll collaborate closely with business leaders to deliver data-driven insights and enable operational excellence across our rapidly growing services organization.

Success in this role requires strong analytical and communication skills, financial acumen, and a passion for optimizing spend while supporting business growth.

Your Impact

• Work in a fast-paced team environment to drive top-line growth and deliver bottom-line profitability with a focus on maximizing shareholder value

• Improve business performance by providing insightful reports, dashboards, analyses, and models. Drive accountability for business results utilizing operational and financial metrics

• Actively manage and provide in-depth analysis of expenses and headcount, identifying trends, variances, and opportunities for optimization to support strategic decision-making.

• Ongoing focus on efficiency gains with models to optimize global resource allocation to meet customer and growth requirements

• Continuously explore enhancements and automation across our portfolio of reports, analytics and dashboards to ensure accuracy and increase efficiency

• Drive key projects and engage in AI related initiatives to improve business and financial results. Analyze and report the drivers and outcomes. 

• Work closely with the Sr. Finance manager to support Tech Services functional executives to scale with company growth and ensure achievement of business and financial objectives

• Partner with cross-functional teams (Tech Services leadership, Corporate Finance, Accounting, IT, and Operations) to ensure alignment on goals and accurate financial tracking

Qualifications

Your Experience 

• 5+ years of experience in FP&A and finance business partnering, preferably within the high-tech industry working with large datasets, consolidating, analyzing and creating data-driven models

• Deep understanding of financial fundamentals including Profit and Loss (P&L) management, headcount planning, ROI analysis and accounting principles

• Strong analytical skills with the ability to identify data requirements and interpret complex financial data and metrics

• Strong business acumen and ability to communicate financial concepts clearly to non-financial stakeholders

• Passion for solving complex business problems using a variety of