(Associate) Director, R&D and Clinical FP&A

The Opportunity

The unprecedented convergence of multi-modal data, advanced disease modeling, and computational power is revolutionizing drug discovery. insitro is harnessing this moment to redefine how medicines are developed for complex diseases. Our AI/ML-enabled platforms integrate and scale data to rapidly discover novel biological insights to redefine complex diseases and identify new targets and drugs.

To enable this vision we're seeking a highly motivated (Associate) Director of R&D and Clinical FP&A to be the strategic financial partner to our Research, Development, and Clinical organizations. This is a critical FP&A role that will own the financial planning, analysis, and decision support for our entire R&D and clinical trial portfolio. You'll be instrumental in shaping our financial strategy as we transition into a clinical-stage company, providing the insights needed to allocate resources effectively and drive our programs forward. This is a highly visible role with significant interaction with senior leadership across the company.This role will report to the Director of Corporate and Strategic Finance and will be hybrid with the expectation of being onsite 3 days a week.

Responsibilities

• Strategic Business Partnership: The primary finance business partner for our R&D and Clinical leadership. This includes hands-on, on-the-ground work with a wide range of scientific and operational teams—including Drug Discovery, Program Management, Research Operations, Therapeutic Area (TA) colleagues, Pre-Clinical Development, and Clinical Operations & Development —to provide financial guidance and strategic support
• Financial Planning & Analysis: Support annual and mid-year budgeting and long-range planning processes for all R&D and clinical programs, ensuring accuracy and efficiency. Develop robust financial models to forecast & track evolving clinical trial costs, R&D departmental expenses, and headcount. Partner in the purchase order (PO) approval workflow to ensure spend is reviewed against budget, capturing both in- and out-of-budget items as part of the financial oversight process. Work to develop and maintain a rolling latest estimate based on evolving needs of the organization
• Clinical Trial Finance: A strong partnership with the Clinical Team (Clinical Trial Managers, Clinical Operations, Vendor Management) to be fully integrated into the study budget from inception through completion. Manage the development of multi year clinical trial cost forecasting models and scenario analysis to support strategic and program level decision making. Provide business support to the clinical teams to help create transparency around key parameters in critical business areas, including enrollment rates, clinical accruals & costs per patient
• Pre-Clinical Program Finance: Act as a finance business partner to pre-clinical program teams, collaborating closely with project leads, functional heads, and program managers to develop budgets, review performance, and deliver analytics in support of portfolio reviews and decision-making
• Performance Reporting: Prepare and present monthly and quarterly financial reports for the R&D and Clinical leadership, providing insightful variance analysis and commentary on performance against budget and forecast to communicate conclusions and recommendations to senior leadership. Support commentary and analysis provided to the BoD regarding performance of all R&D and clinical functions
• Accounting Collaboration: Partner with the Accounting team to manage the month-end close process for R&D and clinical activities, with a focus on ensuring the accuracy of clinical trial accruals and prepaid expenses. This will include supporting the preparation of pre-clinical and clinical accounting journal entries and reconciliation
• Decision Support: Provide data-driven financial analysis to support key portfolio decisions, business development activities (e.g., collaborations, licensing deals), and other strategic initiatives
• Process Improvement: Drive development and implementation of key process improvement initiatives. Proactively engage with Finance colleagues and business partners to develop continuous process improvements to planning, analyses and reporting

About You

• Bachelor's degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, or a related field. An MBA or CPA is highly preferred
• 8+ years of progressive experience in financial planning and analysis (FP&A)
• Biotech or pharmaceutical industry experience is required. Direct experience supporting R&D an