Head of Finance & Operations

Job Description

Job Description

About Avante

Ask any employee to explain their benefits, and you'll likely get a confused shrug. Ask any HR leader if their benefits investment is working, and you'll get an honest "I don't know." For employees, benefits are confusing and overwhelming. For HR and finance leaders, benefits are the second-largest expense, but they lack the visibility to know what's working and what's wasted. 

At Avante, we're changing that. We're an AI-native benefits intelligence platform built to turn benefits complexity into clarity. For employees, our agent Carly provides personalized, always-on benefits guidance. For benefits leaders, our agent Ava monitors their entire program, surfaces what needs attention, and delivers strategic intelligence on costs, utilization, and outcomes in seconds. Together, these agents create a closed-loop system where employee engagement data informs benefits strategy, and smarter strategy improves the employee experience. 

We're based in Seattle and New York, and work 4 days a week in the office (one day remote). We're growing fast, serving enterprise customers like Samsung, Zscaler, and News Corp.

The Role

Avante is hiring its first in-house Head of Finance & Operations. This is the senior-most finance role in the company, reporting directly to the CEO, with a seat on the leadership team. We need someone who shows up as a business leader first and a finance leader second, whose instinct is to build, create, and solve. You will be a true partner and challenger to the rest of the executive team, with the judgment to lead cross-functional calls and drive the company forward. You will own finance and the operating backbone of the company (financial planning and analysis, capital strategy, board support, people operations, legal and contracts, and business operations), but operational rigor at this level is expected, not the differentiator. What sets you apart is the ability to shape the big bets and build.

What You'll Do

Finance, Planning, and Capital

• Own the model, planning, and the numbers . Own forecasting and planning, build FP&A, accounting, and financial systems, and give the leadership team and Board a clear, current read on the business at all times. Define, track, and communicate the metrics that run the business: ARR, NRR, churn, gross margin, cash flow, and LTV/CAC.

• Steward capital and own board and investor relations. Act as a steward of capital, tell the ongoing financial and strategic story, engage investor networks, and represent the finance voice at board meetings.

• Stand up systems and controls. Put the right systems, oversight, and controls in place to support the next phase of our growth, without slowing the business down.

Strategy and Leadership

• Work in sync with the CEO and CoS on operational rigor: Bring an independent point of view and lead transformative, cross-functional bets in capital deployment, resourcing, product pricing and how we constitute and run the team.

• Turn strategy into operating plans. Translate the CEO's and leadership team's priorities into financial and operating plans, budgets, and targets, then hold the business accountable to them with clear metrics and honest reporting.

Operations, Legal, and People

• Run the operating backbone. Oversee people operations and HR, legal and contracts (including managing outside counsel), administration, and business operations. (Go-to-market and revenue operations sit with the CRO).

Team and Ways of Working

• Use AI as a core part of how you work. We're an AI company. We expect this leader to change everyone’s idea of what is possible in this job because of how they use AI to model, analyze, draft, and build their own workflows.

• Build and lead the team. Decide what we hold in-house versus with external partners and contractors, and when, fractionally and full-time. Sequence the hires and develop the people who run finance and operations day to day.

What We're Looking For

• Direct experience taking a company through series Seed into growth rounds and deploying meaningful capital. 

• 8+ years operating across functions: FP&A, FinOps, revenue or business operations, investing or diligence, or operating roles in high-growth B2B software.

• A track record of influencing decisions well beyond finance, as a business partner, not just a finance operator.

• A bias to build, not just to govern. Your instinct is to create and solve, not only to stabilize and control. 

• Experience with fundraising and investor/board relations.

• High ownership, a bias toward action, and comfort operating in ambiguity.

• Based in or willing to be in New York or Seattle, on-site four days a week.

Nice to Have

• Experience managing finance-adjacent functions such as people operations, business operations, and legal. 

• Experience moving a finance or operations function from fractional or outsourced to fully in-house.

• Experience carrying a company from Series A into its growth stage.

• Familiarity with HR, benefits, healthcare, or HR-technology buyers and markets.

• Bachelor's degree in Finance, Accounting, or related field required; MBA or CPA preferred.

Our Values

Our four values aren't aspirational. They translate into concrete operating tenets that shape how we make decisions every day.

Beat Yesterday. We act on 70% of the information rather than waiting for certainty, then adjust. For a finance leader that means giving the team a usable answer today and refining it, not perfecting a model in isolation. We own our output regardless of how we produced it: AI can get you most of the way, but everything that goes out with your name on it is yours to stand behind.

Embrace Type 2 Fun. Building a function from scratch is hard, and we find meaning in the work anyway. We assume good intent and follow up directly rather than venting in side channels. We do unscalable things today, every hand-built model and process, that become scalable advantages tomorrow.

Stay Hungry, Stay Curious. We expect everyone to be the expert on AI in their function before anyone asks them to be, and at an AI company that bar is high. Learn the product, the domain, and the rest of the business well enough to ask good questions, and teach what you figure out.

Act Like an Owner. We say the uncomfortable thing early and surface problems when they're small, not the week they become a crisis. We close the loop every time. No one at Avante should ever have to ask whether their question was seen twice.

What We Offer

• Competitive base salary, and meaningful early-stage equity in a role with a path to CFO.

• Full benefits (medical, dental, vision, 401(k)).

Avante is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We’re building a diverse, inclusive team and welcome candidates of all backgrounds.