Head of Finance

Head Of Finance

San Francisco, California

About Highnote

Founded in 2020 by a team of leaders from Braintree, PayPal, and Lending Club, Highnote is an embedded finance company that sets the standard in modern card platform management. As an all-in-one card issuer processor and program management platform, we provide digital-first organizations with the flexibility to seamlessly issue and process payment cards, embed virtual and physical card payments, and integrate ledger and wallet functionalities—empowering businesses to drive growth and profitability.

We've raised $145M+ and have grown our team to 140+ employees. Headquartered in San Francisco, we've managed to build one of the most advanced payments teams in the industry, with team members in 25+ US states.

Operating through our core values of customer obsession, executional excellence, intentional inclusion, we're helping businesses grow for the future by creating the payment products demanded by tomorrow, with the ability to solve for use cases that don't exist yet.

We are fast-moving, hands-on, and strongly believe everyone deserves a seat at the table. We believe we're unlocking incredible opportunities that can change the future of payments, as long as we have the right people to make it happen.

Job Description

This is a leadership role for a finance leader who wants to shape the direction of a high-growth payments company. Reporting to the COO and partnering closely with the CEO and the rest of the leadership team, you will be the person who looks ahead, reads what the numbers are telling us, and proactively lays out the financial moves the company should make. You will not wait to be asked for analysis. You will bring it, defend it, and help us act on it.

Payments is a business of fine margins and constant tradeoffs, where economics, mix, and cost all move together. We are looking for a leader who understands those dynamics, sees around corners, forms a clear point of view, and turns it into recommendations the leadership team can act on with confidence. You will also stand behind those numbers when it counts, including with our auditors, where your judgment and the integrity of our reporting matter.

We want someone who is genuinely forward-leaning on technology and AI, and who will use it to transform how our financial operations run. The goal is to take our analysis to the next level, using automation and AI to produce sharper, faster, and deeper insight and to give the team more room for the thinking that moves the business, all while preserving the auditability and control our reporting depends on.

What You Will Own

Financial and analytical leadership.

• Proactively analyze the business, spot where we are heading financially, and recommend the steps we should be taking, ahead of being asked.
• Own the strategic financial narrative: what is driving performance, what it means for the plan, and where the risks and opportunities are.
• Run scenario and sensitivity work so leadership can see the financial impact of major decisions, new products, and customer changes before they are made.
• Be a genuine partner to the CEO and COO, translating financial reality into clear, defensible guidance that shapes company decisions.

Planning and reporting.

• Guide the annual operating plan and regular forecasting, working with the team that runs the day-to-day modeling, and hold the overall view of revenue, gross profit, operating expense, and burn.
• Deliver a clean, insightful reporting package to the leadership team and the board that explains what happened, why, and what we should do about it.

Capital, burn, and treasury.

• Manage burn and runway with a clear point of view on where spend earns its keep and where it does not.
• Own cash flow, treasury, and banking relationships, and support debt facilities and covenant compliance.
• Support equity and debt fundraising with the model, the diligence materials, and the analysis investors will expect.

Controls and audit.

• Partner with the Controller, who owns the monthly close and tax, to keep reporting accurate, timely, and audit-ready, and to strengthen internal controls as we scale.
• Stand behind the company's financial positions and judgments with our external auditors, and defend the decisions we make when they are examined.
• Keep financial reporting compliant with GAAP and appropriate for our size and phase.

Strategic initiatives.

• Lead the financial workstreams behind our strategic and regulatory initiatives, including the financial planning, projections, and capital considerations they require.

Transforming financial operations.

• Own the finance technology stack, from the NetSuite core to the tools around it, and set the standard for how a high-performing finance function runs.
• Use automation and AI to transform financial operations across forecasting, reporting, invoicing, and reconciliation, taking analysis to the next level and freeing the team for higher-value work, while preserving auditability and control at every step.

Team and leadership.

• Lead, coach, and raise the bar for a strong existing finance team, and build the organization the company needs as it scales.

What Great Looks Like In Your First Year

• A trusted voice. The leadership team looks to you for the financial read on where the business is heading, and you are bringing recommendations before anyone has to ask.
• A forecast people rely on. Leadership relies on the forecast, and the gap between plan and actuals is small and well understood.
• Disciplined burn. Burn and runway are managed deliberately, and every major spend decision has a financial case behind it.
• Audit-ready and defensible. Our financial positions hold up cleanly under audit, and the judgments behind them are well documented and defensible.
• Operations transformed. Automation and AI are elevating the quality and speed of our analysis and freeing the team for higher-value work, with full auditability preserved.

What You Will Bring

• Twelve or more years in finance, with a strong track record as a strategic finance leader at a high-growth payments or fintech company.
• Range across stages. You have thrived in both small, fast-moving companies and larger, more structured ones, and you have grown in scope and responsibility alongside the businesses you have been part of.
• Payments fluency. Deep, practical knowledge of payments economics, including card issuing and acquiring, interchange, network costs, and the money flows and profit drivers that sit behind them. This is essential.
• Analyst, not just accountant. A strong financial analyst at the core, not just a steward of the books. You are as comfortable building the analysis and forming the recommendation as you are making sure the numbers are right.
• Sharp and rigorous. Exceptional analytical horsepower. You get to the heart of complex, ambiguous problems quickly, and bring rigor and clear judgment to every recommendation.
• Tech and AI forward. Genuine comfort with technology, and a track record of using automation and AI to transform financial operations and take analysis to the next level, without compromising auditability or control.
• Experience scaling a finance function through rapid revenue growth and into new business lines such as credit or acquiring.
• Experience managing burn and runway, and supporting fundraising, debt, or both.
• Experience working with external auditors and standing behind financial reporting and judgments under review.
• A track record of leading finance teams and raising the standard of the people and processes around them.
• Clear, direct communication, sound judgment, and the composure to bring order to a fast-moving environment.

How We Work

We move quickly, we are direct with each other, and we care about getting the details right. You will have real ownership from day one and the ear of a leadership team that treats finance as a partner in the business, not a scorekeeper. If you want to shape the financial direction of a payments company through one of the most consequential phases of its growth, we would like to talk.

Why Highnote?

• We're a startup that allows for our employees to truly build from the ground up and impact every layer of our organization.
• We're a team of payments obsessed individuals. While some of us come from the