Vice President of Finance

The Vice President of Finance is a key strategic partner to the CFO/COO, CEO, and executive leadership team, responsible for building and leading a Finance organization that drives cash generation, deleveraging, forecast credibility, commercial optimization, and enterprise value creation. The role brings a commercial enterprise mindset, connecting financial strategy and performance with customer, operational, and capital decisions to improve business outcomes. Chosen Foods operates with a lean and entrepreneurial model. Accordingly, this is a hands-on leadership role. The VP of Finance must be equally comfortable developing enterprise-level recommendations, leading a high-performing Finance organization, and personally executing the company's most important and complex financial initiatives. The role is designed for a high-potential, future-CFO-caliber leader with the capability to assume broader Finance leadership responsibilities over time. This position is based in San Diego, CA and operates on a hybrid schedule (3 days in office per week).

Responsibilities:
Cash, Capital Structure & Capital Allocation

• Partner with the CFO/COO to maximize free cash flow, liquidity, working capital, and disciplined capital deployment.
• Drive disciplined management of debt service and paydown, total net debt, leverage, covenant headroom, and the company's path toward an optimal capital structure.
• Lead financial evaluation of significant investments, strategic opportunities, and resource allocation decisions using disciplined ROI, ROIC, cash generation, and value-creation frameworks.
• Support financing strategy, lender relationships, refinancing alternatives, and capital structure analysis.

Forecast Credibility & Enterprise Performance

• Lead the company’s enterprise planning and performance framework, including the Long-Range Plan, Annual Operating Plan, forecasting, and executive performance management.
• Build and maintain forecast credibility through rigorous assumptions, clear ownership, and early identification of risks and opportunities.
• Ensure Finance identifies material performance gaps early enough for management action and brings recommendations, not simply explanations after the fact.
• Provide leadership and oversight to FP&A while empowering the Director of FP&A to own the planning, forecasting, reporting, and business-partnering operating cadence.

Business Optimization & Enterprise Value Creation

• Build a measurable pipeline of opportunities to improve revenue quality, gross margin, EBITDA, working capital, and cash flow.
• Bring a commercial enterprise mindset to partnerships with Sales, Marketing, Operations, and Supply Chain, connecting customer, channel, pricing, trade, product, procurement, logistics, inventory, and supply chain economics to value creation.
• Lead financial analysis and recommendations for significant commercial, operational, and supply chain decisions.
• Establish clear financial ownership and benefit tracking for margin expansion, productivity, and optimization initiatives.

Automation, Analytics & AI

• Set the strategic direction for Finance technology, analytics, automation, dashboarding, and AI in partnership with Finance and IT leadership.
• Drive measurable productivity improvements through simplification, standardization, automation, self-service reporting, and AI-enabled workflows.
• Challenge recurring manual processes and low-value activities before adding incremental resources.
• Ensure Finance systems, dashboards, and reporting tools provide timely, trusted, and actionable information and scale with company growth.

Strategic Finance & Executive Decision Support

• Serve as a trusted strategic and financial advisor to the CFO/COO, CEO, and executive leadership team.
• Take ownership of complex and ambiguous business problems, develop a clear point of view, and bring recommendations and potential solutions rather than simply escalating problems.
• Lead or support strategic projects including financing, M&A, major commercial or supply chain opportunities, strategic partnerships, transformation initiatives, and other CFO/CEO priorities.
• Communicate complex issues clearly, frame decisions and tradeoffs, and encourage thoughtful challenge and ideation before converging on a recommendation.

Finance Leadership, Talent & Organizational Scalability

• Lead, develop, and retain a high-performing Finance organization capable of supporting continued growth toward and beyond $1 billion in revenue.
• Coach and develop Finance leaders, creating clear accountability, succession depth, and internal career pathways.
• Build organizational capability through talent, technology, automation, and process improvement before adding unnecessary layers or headcount.
• Partner closely with Accounting, Tax, Treasury, controls, audit, and enterprise risk, with the potential to assume broader Finance leadership responsibilities over time based on performance and organizational needs.

Success Measures

• Free cash flow, working capital, debt paydown, net debt leverage, and capital allocation performance improve through disciplined Finance leadership and cross-functional execution.
• Forecasts are credible, actionable, and identify material risks and opportunities early enough for management to act.
• Finance establishes and delivers a measurable pipeline of margin, productivity, and value-creation opportunities.
• Manual Finance work is materially reduced through automation, dashboarding, process simplification, and AI adoption.
• Major enterprise decisions are supported by rigorous analysis, clear scenarios, economics, risks, alternatives, and a well-developed Finance point of view.
• Finance talent is developed and retained, with clear succession depth and scalable capabilities across the organization.

Supervisory Responsibilities
Direct leadership of the Finance organization, including the Director of FP&A and other Finance leaders as assigned. Responsible for organizational design, succession planning, talent development, performance management, and ensuring clear ownership and accountability across the function. The role will partner closely with Accounting and Tax.

Professional Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, Business, or related field required; MBA, CPA, or equivalent advanced financial qualification strongly preferred.
• 12+ years of progressive Finance experience, including significant leadership responsibility across FP&A, strategic finance, corporate finance, or related disciplines.
• Demonstrated experience partnering with CEOs, CFOs, executive leadership teams, Boards, ownership groups, and lenders on complex business and financial decisions.
• Strong command of P&L, balance sheet, cash flow, working capital, capital structure, leverage, capital allocation, and enterprise value creation.
• Strong commercial and enterprise business acumen, with demonstrated ability to connect financial analysis to customer, operational, and strategic decisions.
• Proven track record of building and developing high-performing Finance teams while operating both strategically and hands-on.
• Experience in CPG, consumer products, food and beverage, or a similarly complex operating environment strongly preferred; experience with M&A, financing, strategic transactions, and Finance transformation is a plus.

Physical Requirements
The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. While performing the duties of this Job, the employee is regularly required to sit; use hands to handle or feel and talk or hear. The employee is frequently required to reach with hands and arms. The employee is occasionally required to stand; walk and stoop, kneel, crouch, or crawl. The employee must be able to lift and/or move up to 15 pounds and occasionally lift and/or move up to 25 pounds. Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision, distance vision, color vision, peripheral vision, depth perception and ability to adjust focus.

Work Environment
Work is performed inside a temperature-controlled office building with an open floor plan. This job operates in a professional office environment with a business casual dress code. This role will routinely utilize standard office equipment such as computers, phones, photocopiers, filing cabinets, and other office machines. Must be able to work in a fast-paced environment.

Disclaimer
This job description indicates in general terms the type and level of work performed as well as the typical responsibilities of employees in this classification and it may be changed by management at any time. Other duties may also apply. Nothing in this job description changes the at-will employment relationship existing between the Company and its employees.

Dedication to DEI&B
We’re an equal opportunity employer to all, regardless of age, ancestry, color, disability (mental and physical), exercising the right to family care and medical leave, gender, gender expression, gender identity, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, race, religious creed, sex (includes pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, and related medical conditions), and sexual orientation military or veteran status, national origin, political affiliation. Chosen Foods is an employer that values a diverse and inclusive environment that is representative of individuals of all backgrounds, experiences, and lifestyles, allowing all employees to feel comfortable being their true, authentic selves in a space that enables productivity and meaningful work.