Sr. Financial Analyst / Manager - R&D Finance & FinOps

AI at Zapier

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Location: Americas

About the Team

Strategic Finance at Zapier is responsible for addressing some of our most business-critical challenges. Our team combines deep analysis with a strong understanding of our business priorities to help shape decision-making, evaluate new investments, and drive efficient capital allocation. We strive to be a trusted thought partner that enables sustainable growth and drives strategic outcomes across the company.

About the Role

We're looking for a dedicated Sr. Financial Analyst/Manager (aka Finance Business Partner / FinOps leader) to support our R&D organization and join Zapier's Strategic Finance team. This person will partner closely with Product, Engineering, and Infrastructure leaders to drive financial accountability, improve investment visibility, and enable better decision-making across our R&D portfolio.

The ideal candidate has done this before, you've served as a finance partner to R&D or product teams and know how to translate technical roadmaps into financial frameworks. While R&D partnership is the core of this role, you'll also contribute to broader corporate finance efforts including board materials, competitive intelligence, and strategic planning. For the right candidate, we're open to leveling this role at the Senior Financial Analyst or Manager level.

Location: This role is fully remote, and we're excited about candidates interested in working within the North America time zones (Pacific Time - Eastern Time)

About You

• This isn't your first rodeo. You have 4-6+ years of accounting/finance-specific experience, with 2+ years of working with R&D orgs. A background in Big 4 Accounting, Investment Banking, or Management Consulting with meaningful ownership of operating expense areas - ideally R&D or technical cost structures, is a plus.

• You understand financial modeling well. You have experience building bottoms up and high level financial models.

• You understand how modern R&D organizations operate. You can translate engineering, product, and infrastructure inputs into clear financial implications and trade-offs.

• You're energized by owning a process from A-Z. You take initiative, thrive in ambiguity, and enjoy seeing things through from scoping and modeling to execution and follow-through.

• You're resourceful. You love a challenge and always question the status quo. You are highly adaptive and enjoy getting creative to solve new problems.

• You love data. You are innately curious, analyze everything, look for trends, and always forever truth-seeking. Experience writing SQL is a plus.

• You care about the nitty gritty. You are detail-oriented, highly organized, understand priorities, and thrive in a fast paced environment.

• You love to collaborate and coordinate. You're comfortable driving cross-functional alignment and take pride in delivering high-quality work with minimal oversight.

• You actively experiment with AI. You think critically about where automation and AI can meaningfully improve financial analysis, forecasting, and decision support.

• You use AI in your work today — not occasionally, but as part of how you operate at a high level. You can point to workflows you've built, how your approach has evolved through iteration, and the impact on quality, efficiency, and experience — while intentionally applying AI for the right outcomes, setting a high bar for outputs, and taking ownership of what ships.

Things You'll Do

• Own R&D financial planning and analysis. Lead forecasting, budgeting, and variance analysis for R&D spend, including headcount, cloud infrastructure (AWS), tooling, and AI-related costs.

• Model and manage cloud & infrastructure economics. Build and maintain models that explain cloud costs, key usage drivers, unit economics, and scaling behavior; partner with technical teams to improve cost visibility and efficiency.

• Analyze and support AI investments. Evaluate and track AI-related spend (internal and vendor-based), assess ROI and trade-offs, and support decision-making as AI usage scales across the product and internal operations.

• Drive strategic insights for R&D leadership. Identify trends, risks, and optimization opportunities across R&D spend, translating complex cost drivers into clear recommendations for leadership.

• Develop scalable, decision-ready models. Build flexible models to support scenario planning, capacity planning, and long-term investment decisions tied to product growth and technical architecture.

• Support executive and board-level reporting. Prepare clear, concise materials that explain R&D performance, cloud and AI cost dynamics, and forward-looking implications for company strategy.

• Improve tools, processes, and data quality. Enhance forecasting accuracy, automate reporting where possible, and improve how R&D, cloud, and AI cost data flows into FP&A systems and decision-making.

How to Apply

At Zapier, we believe that diverse perspectives and experiences make us better, which is why we have a non-standard application process designed to promote inclusion and equity. We're looking for the best fit for each of our roles, regardless of the type of companies in your background, so we encourage you to apply even if your skills and experiences don't exactly match the job description. All we ask is that you answer a few in-depth questions in our application that would typically be asked at the start of an interview process. This helps speed things up by letting us get to know you and your skillset a bit better right out of the gate. Please be sure to answer each question; the resume and CV fields are optional.

Education is not a requirement for our roles; however, if you receive an offer, you will need to include your most recent educational experience as part of our background check process.

After you apply, you are going to hear back from us—even if we don't see an immediate fit with our team. In fact, throughout the process, we strive to never go more than seven days without letting you know the status of your application. We know we'll make mistakes from time to time, so if you ever have questions about where you stand or about the process, just ask your recruiter!

Zapier is an equal-opportunity employer and we're excited to work with talented and empathetic people of all identities. Zapier does not discriminate based on someone's identity in any aspect of hiring or employment as required by law and in line with our commitment to Diversity, Inclusion, Belonging and Equity. Our code of conduct provides a beacon for the kind of company we strive to be, and we celebrate our differences because those differences are what allow us to make a product that serves a global user base. Zapier will consider all qualified applicants, including those with criminal histories, consistent with applicable laws.

Zapier prioritizes the security of our customers' information and is dedicated to adhering to all applicable data privacy laws. You can review our privacy policy here.

Zapier is committed to inclusion. As part of this commitment, Zapier welcomes applications from individuals with disabilities and will work to provide reasonable accommodations. If reasonable accommodations are needed to participate in the job application or interview process, please contact View email address on click.appcast.io.

Application Deadline

The anticipated application window is 30 days from the date job is posted, unless the number of applicants requires it to close sooner or later, or if the position is filled.

Even though we're an all-remote company, we still need to be thoughtful about where we have Zapiens working. Check out this resource for a list of countries where we currently cannot have Zapiens permanently working.