Candidates with strategic finance experience and AI-native mindset will find this high-impact role at Substack's San Francisco HQ.
Derived from job-description analysis by Serendipath's career intelligence engine.
Original posting from Substack via Ashby
Substack is building a new economic engine for culture, giving the brightest, most interesting, and most creative people on the internet the power of their own publishing platform. Substack empowers independent writers, artists, videographers, podcasters, and creators of all types to create, share, and make a living off their work through subscriptions, while offering them creative freedom, ownership, and a direct connection to their audiences.
We are looking for a motivated self-starter to partner with our Head of Strategic FP&A to build a lean AI-native strategic finance and FP&A function. At Substack, you’ll work directly alongside leaders across the company to shape the future of independent publishing and media. You’ll analyze our most pressing business challenges and play a leading role in the company-wide forecasting and budgeting process.
Responsibilities
- Business Partnering: Provide cross-functional colleagues with analytical frameworks to evaluate key departmental resource allocation decisions. A wide range of business needs will emerge as the company grows; specific analysis may include:
- Paid Marketing: Determine the return on ad spend benchmarks we should set for different marketing channels.
- Creator Partnerships: Set the number of team members to hire in each market as the company scales internationally.
- Company-Wide Budgeting & Forecasting: Help drive Substack’s annual budget cycle and rolling quarterly re-forecasts. Work directly with department heads to build driver-based operating budgets and headcount plans aligned with core business goals.
- Budget vs. Actuals (BvA) & Variance Analysis: Establish spending discipline and monthly BvA cadences across the company. Analyze variance drivers, keep teams on track to meeting their budget targets, and surface proactive risk-mitigation options when expenses or revenues deviate from plan.
- Corporate Financial Model & Long-Range Strategy: Investigate core business drivers to contribute to building, maintaining, and continuously upgrading Substack’s multi-year corporate financial model. Translate high-level strategic goals into granular financial roadmaps.
- AI-Native Finance Architecture: Help architect an AI-native FP&A organization. Leverage automation and modern data workflows to accelerate financial modeling, variance reporting, and scenario planning.
About You
- Strong Professional Foundation: 4–8 years of total experience, typically beginning at an investment bank, investment firm, or consulting firm, followed by strategic finance or FP&A roles at fast-paced technology-enabled companies.
- AI-Native Mindset: You are eager to adopt the latest AI tools to automate repetitive work and focus on strategic problem-solving.
- Intuitive Understanding of Data Analysis and Financial Modeling: This AI-native mindset should be paired with a strong conceptual grasp of how data is extracted, analyzed, and visualized; you have a foundational understanding of SQL and Python/R, familiarity with visualization tools like Looker/Power BI, and have rigorous training in spreadsheet analysis.
- Experience with any modern FP&A tools (e.g., Adaptive, Aleph, Fintastic, Causal, Cube) is a plus.
- Best Practices Champion: You appreciate the lessons you’ve learned from all the companies you’ve worked at and understand that there are times to reinvent the wheel and times to roll with what already works well.
- High Ownership: High self-confidence, low ego, and high hustle, with the desire to make things better.
- Motivated by Substack’s Mission: Substack is at a key inflection point as a company, operating in an industry experiencing rapid change. It must make key strategic decisions and execute on them effectively to thrive. Identifying with Substack’s mission is critical to your fulfillment and impact in the role.
Substack’s compensation package includes a market-competitive salary, equity for all full-time roles, and exceptional benefits. Our cash compensation salary range for this role is $120,000 - $200,000. Multiple factors, including candidate experience and expertise, determine final offer amounts and may vary from the amounts listed above.
Substack is an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity or transgender status), age, national origin, veteran or disability status. We’re seeking people passionate about enabling independent expression and building a better business model for creators. If you want to see what media, communities, and content can become when unmoored from advertising models, and you have the skills and experience to contribute, we’d love to meet you.
Please see our Privacy Notice for details regarding Substack's collection and use of personal information relating to the application and recruitment process by clicking here https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UjmY1acxnd27iIde83PxR7XdecR29aIyfkkmEOwAMGY/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.a0wuzmt3mjmm.
Source: Substack careers (Ashby)