Finance & Operations Lead

Hi there! We're Alma We're on a mission to make immigration more accessible, transparent, and human through cutting-edge technology and thoughtful legal support. We're backed by top-tier investors (Bling, Forerunner, Village Global, NFX, NEA, MVP, Conviction, and Silkroad Innovation), and our team combines decades of experience across immigration law, product, operations, and high-growth startups. We're hiring a Strategic Finance & Operations Lead to be the first dedicated finance hire at Alma — and, just as importantly, the person who becomes the glue across our operations. You'll sit next to our CEO, own the numbers end to end, and fix the unglamorous things that are quietly slowing the company down. This is a builder's seat, not an analyst's seat. You will own our finance function, bring structure to legal and internal operations, and design the systems we'll need six and twelve months from now — not just the ones we need this month. Two things to be honest about up front. First, this role is roughly half strategic and half in-the-weeds; the in-the-weeds half is what makes the strategic half credible. Second, plenty of people take a seat like this for two or three years and then head to business school or a bigger finance org. That's a completely legitimate reason to apply. We'd rather have a sharp person for two great years than a lukewarm one for five. What You'll Do Strategic Finance (~50%) Own the model and the money Build and own Alma's financial model end to end — the analytical engine we use to make decisions Run the monthly cycle: close in partnership with our accountants, reconcile, and turn the output into something leadership can act on within days, not weeks Own budget vs. actuals, rolling forecasts, cash management, and runway — and flag problems a quarter before they arrive Build and maintain unit economics at the case and client level, so we always know where margin comes from and what's eroding it Own headcount planning and the hiring ledger as we scale the attorney, paralegal, and GTM base Support the raise and the board Own monthly investor updates and quarterly board reporting alongside the CEO Partner on our next fundraise: build the data room, own the diligence workstreams, and be the person who can answer any question about our numbers in the room Bring rigor to commercial decisions Pricing: model deal structures, discounting, and creative pricing so we win on quality without giving away margin Compensation and commissions: pressure-test the plans our Sales Ops lead calculates, and model the cost of any change before we make it Build/buy/outsource analysis as we decide what to automate, what to staff, and what to hand to specialists Business Operations (~50%) Be the glue Own internal and legal operations: find the processes that are broken, duplicated, or being run by the wrong team — and fix them Partner with our Head of Legal and Head of Product to decide what should become a process, what should be automated, and what should simply stop Own the connective work between legal, sales, and client success that currently has no owner Build the rules Write the spend and approval policies we don't have yet — budget requests, discretionary spend, vendor onboarding — so these become decisions with a rule behind them instead of one-off Slack asks Manage AR/AP oversight and the outsourced finance stack (bookkeeping, IOLTA reconciliation, audit support). You coordinate the specialists; you're not the one doing the bookkeeping Design the reporting cadence, dashboards, and metric definitions the company runs on Write the playbooks so the next five people in operations inherit a system instead of tribal knowledge Take the special projects Vendor and tooling consolidation, procurement, and cost optimization across the company Office and real estate decisions, market and comp benchmarking, and whatever the highest-stakes open question is that month Employee onboarding and offboarding operations What this role is not: you won't own sales ops (that sits with our Sales Ops lead), and you won't be doing daily bookkeeping or IOLTA reconciliation (both handled by specialists). You Should Apply If You have 1–3 years of investment banking, or a banking-and-consulting combination — enough time to have genuinely learned finance, not just modeling mechanics You've already done a stint in finance, strategy, or ops at an early-stage startup. If you haven't, you should be able to tell us clearly why you want to You're excellent in Excel and can build a three-statement model from scratch, then explain it to someone who doesn't care about models You have real judgment about money. Handed a budget request from a team lead, you can decide whether it's reasonable — and then write the policy so the next ten requests answer themselves You want breadth over depth right now. Finance, ops, and strategy in one seat reads as exciting to you rather than unfocused High agency, low ego. You'll build a board deck in the morning and untangle a vendor invoice in the afternoon, and neither feels beneath you You can influence people who don't report to you, across legal, sales, product, and engineering You move fast and you finish. You've worked brutal hours in banking and you'd rather spend the same intensity on work that compounds Nice to have: SQL, or the appetite to learn it in your first month. A lot of what you'll want to know lives in our database You're excited about immigration specifically. Our clients are founders, researchers, and operators trying to build their lives here, and the work matters in a way finance work usually doesn't You Should NOT Apply If You want a pure strategy seat. Half this job is operational cleanup, and someone who resents that will be unhappy quickly You're looking for a defined scope and a manager who hands you workstreams You want to be remote. This role is in our San Francisco office — the judgment calls in this job happen in five-minute hallway conversations, not async threads You want to manage a team on day one. You'll be an individual contributor first, with real room to grow into leading the function You need to be precise more than you need to be fast. We need both, but you have to know which one the moment is asking for What It's Like to Work at Alma We're a small, mission-driven team reimagining immigration from the ground up. We value thoughtfulness, speed, and building systems that scale. We work closely across functions and care deeply about the people we serve. Our conviction is that great attorneys make a client's experience great — and that our job in product and operations is to free them from everything that isn't their client. Benefits & Perks Competitive base salary based on experience, plus meaningful equity 100% Health coverage + Vision + Dental 20 days PTO + 10 Federal Holidays $250 per month in wellness allowance Direct, daily access to our CEO and leadership team, on the decisions that actually shape the company A rare scope for someone this early in their career: build a finance function from zero, with the support to grow into leading it A Quick Note We know the "perfect" candidate doesn't exist. If this role excites you but you don't meet every qualification, we'd still love to hear from you. Immigration is complex. So are people. That's what makes this work so meaningful. #J-18808-Ljbffr Alma