Candidates with media advertising agency experience and advanced Excel skills will find this strategic leadership role in client financial governance and profitability optimization.
Derived from job-description analysis by Serendipath's career intelligence engine.
Original posting from Underscore Marketing via Greenhouse
Director, Client Finance
Location: United States-Remote
Strategic Finance Leadership Role
Position Overview
The Director, Client Finance is a strategic leadership position tasked with ensuring financial integrity, operational governance, and strong economic performance throughout the entire client lifecycle—from RFP initiation to project closeout. This role collaborates closely with Client Services, Project Management, Finance, Delivery, and Leadership teams to manage client profitability and client compliance. This role will report directly to the CFO.
The Director is responsible for monitoring, analyzing, and optimizing client financial outcomes. This includes revenue, margins, and profitability to ensure alignment with organizational goals and supporting continuous improvement initiatives.
This is not a transactional accounting or billing role. Instead, the Director, Client Finance serves as a commercial partner and leader for client operations — translating delivery realities, staffing dynamics, and client economics into actionable insight, governance, and decision support.
The ideal candidate brings experience in all commercial aspects successfully managing a client portfolio for a media advertising agency. Exposure to Pharma clients is preferred.
Key Responsibilities
Enterprise Planning & Forecasting
Partner closely with Finance on monitoring revenue recognition and pacing to approved scope
Own revenue and margin forecasting methodologies, assumptions, and forecast accuracy
Ensure CRM is accurate and up to date
Adhere to governance models, escalation thresholds, and operating cadences to proactively manage financial risk
Forecast demand, staffing pressure, and margin exposure across the business
Build scalable reporting and decision frameworks that improve visibility and accountability
Client Financial Performance
Lead interpretation of client-level financial performance, including pacing, burn, margin health, and delivery efficiency
Translate project management inputs, scope signals, staffing realities, and delivery risks into clear financial insight
Identify early warning signs related to margin erosion, scope creep, delivery inefficiencies, or commercial risk
Develop clear financial narratives and decision tradeoffs for leadership and account teams — not just reporting data
Distinguish between timing shifts, scope changes, estimation gaps, and operational inefficiencies
Surface recurring trends and lessons learned to improve pricing strategy, forecasting accuracy, and delivery systems
Provide leadership teams with actionable insights that support timely intervention and stronger business outcomes
Contract Compliance & Commercial Oversight
Oversee financial governance of MSAs and SOWs to ensure consistency, clarity, and reduced commercial risk
Partner with Client Services and leadership teams during SOW development and client presentations
Ensure commercial assumptions align with operational realities, resourcing, and delivery expectations
Ensure standards, guardrails, and governance processes across client contracts and commercial engagements are followed
Pricing Strategy & Commercial Modeling
Support and evolve, in collaboration with CFO, the agency’s master pricing model, including scope-to-hours, cost, margin, and pricing methodologies
Maintain and refine economic assumptions tied to staffing structures, utilization, delivery models, and service mix
Analyze pricing effectiveness relative to realized delivery outcomes and profitability
Partner with CFO to define margin guardrails, discounting logic, and commercial risk thresholds
Partner with Client Services on pricing builds, scope changes, contract expansions, and commercial negotiations
Support client procurement conversations alongside Client Services, New Business, and Leadership when needed
Capacity Planning & Delivery System Management
Partner with business unit leaders to create staffing models and workforce plans aligned to business demand
Manage utilization and throughput expectations grounded in operational realities
Identify systemic delivery constraints, inefficiencies, and operational bottlenecks
Recommend improvements to staffing structures, delivery models, and scope assumptions
Build staffing and scenario models tied to pipeline activity and future business growth
Qualifications
8–12+ years of experience in progressive client finance roles
Experience within a media agency, or project-based environment strongly preferred
Proven experience managing financial governance processes and scalable operating models
Strong understanding of pricing strategy, resource planning, margin management, and delivery economics
Ability to synthesize financial, operational, and delivery data into strategic recommendations
Strong executive communication skills with the ability to influence senior stakeholders and cross-functional teams
Experience partnering with Client Services, Delivery, Finance, and Leadership teams in fast-paced environments
Advanced Excel/modeling capabilities and comfort working within data-heavy environments
Strong analytical mindset balanced with operational pragmatism and business judgment
Knowledge of Wrike and CoPilot
Success in This Role Looks Like
Improved forecast accuracy and financial visibility across client engagements
Earlier identification and mitigation of margin and delivery risk
Disciplined pricing, scoping, and commercial decision-making
Stronger alignment between staffing models, delivery realities, and client economics
Increased accountability and consistency in financial governance practices
Clear executive-level insight that supports profitable, scalable growth
Why This Role Matters
As the agency continues to scale, the Director, Client Finance will play a critical role in helping the organization operate with greater rigor, predictability, and commercial discipline. This role will help bridge the gap between Finance, Client Services, and Delivery — ensuring strategic decisions are grounded in operational and financial reality while enabling the business to grow profitably and sustainably.
Interested?
Apply by submitting your resume and a brief note outlining your healthcare or media experience.
Underscore Marketing is a woman-owned, independent agency specializing in life sciences. Since 2002, we've helped clients gain a competitive edge through bold, data-driven promotional strategies that deliver measurable results.
Our team comprises media, strategy, and omnichannel analytics experts who thrive on collaboration, innovation, and results. When you join Underscore, you become part of a dynamic environment where your ideas matter, your growth is supported, and your work helps elevate brands in a competitive healthcare landscape.
If you're passionate about making a difference and want to be part of a team that values integrity, creativity, and results, if that sounds like you, we invite you to share.
Equal Employment Opportunity Statement
Underscore is committed to creating a diverse and inclusive workplace. We provide equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic under applicable law. We believe that diversity drives innovation and success, and we welcome candidates from all backgrounds to apply.