Deputy CFO

Job Description

Job Description

Deputy CFO

Reports to: Vice President for Finance and CFO · Hybrid: four anchored days per week on the organization's primary location.  Salary: to $175,000-185,000 commensurate with experience · Full benefits

Summary

Seeking a hands-on financial operator to own complete budget and treasury functions including the operating budget, the capital budget, the cash budget, and the cash flow forecast. The AVP is the administrator and enforcer of the organization's Budget Pak budgeting system across all budget owners, leads the monthly variance narrative to the CFO and the Board’s finance committee, and serve as the financial counterpart to the organization's contracted facilities financial function. This is one of two AVP positions reporting to the CFO, alongside the AVP & Controller; the Controller certifies the actuals, and this position owns the budget, the forecast, and the story they tell.

This is a producing role, not a supervising role. The AVP personally builds the models, personally administers the system, personally trains the budget managers, and personally writes the variance narrative. The organization is in an active financial turnaround; the successful candidate treats budget discipline and cash visibility as a vocation, finds no task in the function beneath them, and has the appetite for the volume of work a turnaround demands.

Responsibilities — Budget

• Own the annual operating budget cycle end to end: architecture, assumptions, revenue integration under the organization's net-tuition-revenue standards, expense development with every department, consolidation, and presentation drafts for the CFO.

• Own the capital budget: annual minor-capital planning, integration with the organization's capital program reporting, and the capital/operating classification discipline applied consistently across all spend.

• Administer Budget Pak as the organization's system owner: structure, security, budget-manager accounts, the flat-file interface with the general ledger, training, and — critically — enforcement. Every budget manager on location is required to work in the system; this position makes that requirement real, department by department, personally.

• Produce the monthly variance reporting cycle from Budget Pak — budget vs. actual vs. encumbered — and own the variance narrative delivered to the CFO, with actuals certified by the AVP & Controller.

• Serve as the organization's counterpart to the embedded Facilities Financial Controller (a contractor position): receive and interrogate the monthly facilities variance report, enforce the standards under which facilities budget data enters Budget Pak, and monitor performance of the facilities budget — the University’s largest non-personnel spend — against its annual target.

• Support the budget dimensions of Board and finance-committee materials, and respond to what-if and scenario requests from the CFO with speed and precision.

Responsibilities — Treasury

• Build, own, and maintain the organization's cash flow forecast — a rolling short-term model (13-week discipline) and the fiscal-year cash budget — updated on a defined cycle and reconciled to actual results, with variance drivers identified and explained.

• Manage daily cash operations: position monitoring, account structure, movement between operating and reserve accounts under CFO direction, and banking relationships at the operational level.

• Execute Title IV drawdowns in full compliance with federal cash management regulations, coordinated with Student Financial Services and the Controller’s office.

• Forecast and track the cash dimensions of the organization's capital program and related receivables, integrated with the master cash model.

Qualifications — Required

• Bachelor’s degree in accounting, finance, or a related field; CPA, CMA, CTP, CMFO, or MBA a plus.

• Ten or more years of progressive budget and/or treasury experience with direct, personal responsibility for building budgets and cash flow forecasts — not supervising their construction. Candidates will be asked to walk through models they personally built.

• Encumbrance-based budget control experience: purchase orders, appropriations or line control, committed-vs-available reporting.

• Demonstrated success implementing or enforcing a budgeting system across a resistant or untrained user population.

• Advanced Excel modeling skill sufficient to build and maintain the organization's cash and budget models without support staff.

• The work capacity and temperament of an operator: high volume, tight cycles, no task in the function treated as beneath the role.

Qualifications — Preferred

• Budget Pak (XLerant) experience — highly valued and weighed accordingly.

• Higher education finance experience: fiscal-year cycles, fund accounting, net tuition revenue concepts, Title IV cash management.

• New Jersey municipal or county finance experience (CMFO), where statutory encumbrance budgeting and cash control are the daily work.

• Dynamics GP / PowerCampus familiarity; comfort operating through an ERP transition.

• Experience in a financial turnaround or under rating-agency scrutiny.

Structure and Terms

• One of two AVP positions reporting to the Vice President for Finance and CFO; peers with the AVP & Controller. This is an individual-contributor position with no direct reports: the AVP performs the work of the function personally. The position works in close daily partnership with the AVP & Controller, who is the senior on-location finance presence and the day-to-day point of coordination; the ability to operate as a genuine peer within a two-person senior finance team is a condition of success in the role.

• Hybrid schedule with three anchored on-location days weekly, set to the budget-manager meeting calendar, the monthly facilities review, and close week; in person presence during these obligations is a condition of the arrangement, not a preference.