Senior Manager, Strategic Projects, Cloud 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.

We have the vision of a world where each day is safer and more secure than the one before. These aren’t easy goals to accomplish – but we’re not here for easy. We’re here for better. 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

We’re changing the nature of work. Palo Alto Networks is evolving to meet the needs of our employees now and in the future through FLEXWORK, our approach to how we work. From benefits to learning, location to leadership, we’ve rethought and recreated every aspect of the employee experience at Palo Alto Networks.  And because it FLEXes around each individual employee based on their individual choices, employees are empowered to push boundaries and help us all evolve, together.

Job Description

Your Career

The Cloud Finance team is seeking to add a high-impact Sr. Manager, Strategic Projects to its team. We’re looking for a self-starter with strong analytical skills, an effective communicator, and a leader passionate for driving change in a dynamic fast-paced environment – all-in-one.

Working alongside a tight-knit cross-functional group with Product, Strategy, IT, and Operations, the Cloud Infrastructure Finance team manages usage, spend, and utilization for cloud infrastructure across all of PANW, with cloud infrastructure representing a key input for our cloud, AI, and cloud-delivered security service offerings. We enable the business units to efficiently drive their business by providing state of the art tools (e.g. dashboards, analytics) and processes (benchmarking, corporate forecasting and controls) for “all things cloud”. Members of the the Cloud Infrastructure Finance team, in partnership with the cross-functional team, directly manage relationships with our Cloud Service Providers, provide detailed tracking and analysis (including working with IT to develop such tools) to ensure that compute power is most efficient and ingestion costs are minimized, and provide Executive Staff with insightful, proactive recommendations to drive both topline and bottom-line growth across various portfolios within the Company.

The ideal candidate will be a problem-solver and advisor at heart. We are looking for someone with solid business judgment and experience tackling complex business issues. Identifying a comprehensive framework, gathering evidence and building a lucid narrative are skills critical to success in this role. Flexibility and quick thinking are essential, as you would be expected to build analyses and marshal resources in a dynamic environment to address novel business questions.

This is a solid foundation for finance leaders with opportunities for career growth and personal development. If you want to be part of a team of trustworthy advisors that is looked upon to make informed and persuasive recommendations to the C-level suite, apply today.

Your Impact

• Nurture deep, trusted partnerships with your respective technical teams, partnering closely with engineering and technical leaders across our various cloud and AI, and cloud delivered security service offerings
• Provide analytical rigor and bring strategic leadership to operational initiatives
• Evaluate tradeoffs in team planning, investment, and operational strategies
• Execute strategic and financial planning processes for your teams (e.g., Monthly Business Reviews, Forecasts, Annual Budget, and Long Range Plan)
• Drive continuous process improvement, standardization, simplification and reporting enhancements
• Develop and monitor critical success metrics, and communicate actionable insights 
• Build and own scenario ad hoc models for in-depth analyses

Qualifications

Your Experience

• Bachelor’s in Finance, Economics, or equivalent (e.g., CPA, MBA) strongly preferred or equivalent military experience required - Prior management consulting (Bain, BCG, McKinsey), and/or investment banking experience a plus.
• Generally 7+ years of relevant experience showing career progression - Experience overseeing large cloud infrastructure budgets for technology companies and/or working with product management strongly preferred
• Demonstrated ability and desire to work in and influence a matrixed organizational structure as an individual contributor
• Analytical problem-solver with the ability to gather, analyze and synthesize large amounts of data in order to drive effective and efficient executive decision-making - Own