Strategic Finance Manager, R&D

At Vanta, our mission is to help businesses earn and prove trust. We believe that security should be monitored and verified continuously, and we empower companies to practice better security and prove it with ease. Vanta has a kind and talented team, and while some have prior security experience, many have been successful at Vanta without it. 

The Strategic Finance team drives leverage and investing in opportunities for growth. Our team is tasked with building targets, setting budgets, and helping leaders execute against plans. This encompasses a wide breadth of business partnership and reporting for the Executive Team and Board of Directors. This dynamic team is responsible for in-depth data analysis and strategic awareness that drive decisions and the overall direction of the company.

As a Strategic Finance Manager, R&D at Vanta, you will be a financial liaison between the Strategic Finance team and R&D functions (Engineering, Product, and Design) at the company. You will be instrumental in providing strategic guidance, completing various projects related to investments Vanta makes across R&D activities, and budgeting/forecasting for the organization. This role will report into the Senior Manager of Strategic Finance, R&D and provides the opportunity to blend financial know-how, thought leadership, and business partnership. By doing so, you’ll not only strengthen our day-to-day execution but also unlock new strategic capacity for the Finance team and Vanta as a whole. This role is ideal for someone who combines financial expertise with a builder’s mindset and thrives in creating scalable systems that enable growth. You will use sound business judgement and critical thinking to unlock growth within the business. Top performers challenge accepted norms and back up their beliefs with data driven decision making.

What you’ll do as a Strategic Finance Manager, R&D:

• Cross-functional collaboration: Partner with R&D teams, Accounting, and other G&A business leaders to enable key stakeholders on insights produced and provide recommendations to improve business outcomes.

• Deliver strategic insights: Lead financial efforts and provide insights on various projects such as return on investment for R&D spend, KPI reporting and optimization, and external benchmarking.

• Be an athlete: Thrive in the end-to-end process of nimbly providing real-time insights that can translate into frameworks for long-term success.

• Think critically: Identify topics that merit further investigation and utilize data and frameworks to provide new perspectives.

• Operationalize planning: Oversee R&D headcount management and movement tracking to forecast and manage departmental costs. Operate as Finance liaison for the annual operating plan and long range planning processes.

• Enforce spend discipline: Serve as the Finance approver on R&D spend deployment. Identify major swings in spend, track against budget, and adjust forecasts in real time.

• Deliver results: Prepare recommendations on incremental investment opportunities by weighing financial and strategic trade-offs

• Manifest leadership: Share responsibilities with existing finance leadership, expanding the team’s reach into strategic and analytical support across the business.

How to be successful in this role:

• Experience: 5+ years of related experience, ideally in corporate finance, financial planning, and analysis (FP&A), investment banking, or investment management. FP&A or strategic finance experience supporting SaaS businesses and/or the tech industry is critical

• Technical Skills: Advanced proficiency in Excel, PowerPoint, Google Docs/Sheets/Slides. Bonus for experience in SQL and NetSuite

• Analytical Thinking: Strong capability to tackle projects, extract key insights, and translate them into actionable strategies that drive business impact.

• Collaboration: Proven ability to work effectively and establish relationships with business partners.

• Communication: Excellent verbal and written communication skills, capable of conveying financial insights in a comprehensible and engaging manner.

• Self starter: Time and project management skills, the curiosity and drive to dig a level deeper

• Builder Mindset: Passion for systematizing processes, reducing bottlenecks, and creating scalable solutions

• Education: Bachelor's degree in Econ