About this role
Location: Remote – East Coast with 20% Travel
About ESS
ESS is one of the nation’s leading education staffing companies, partnering with more than 1,200 school districts to provide substitute teachers, paraprofessionals, clinicians, and other K-12 staff. Every school day, ESS fills tens of thousands of assignments that keep classrooms running for millions of students.
About the Role
We’re looking for a Financial Planning & Analysis Manager to help ESS understand its financial performance and plan for its next stage of growth. This is a hands-on, highly analytical role: you’ll own budgeting and forecasting, build financial models, explain variances, and partner directly with operational leaders and senior management.
It’s a role for someone who asks “Why?” when a number moves, can turn complex data into a clear story, and wants their analysis to change decisions, not just fill a report.
Why This Role
- Direct visibility with senior leadership; your analysis shapes real business decisions.
- End-to-end ownership of the budgeting and forecasting process.
- Exposure to strategic work, including acquisitions, pricing, and growth initiatives.
- The opportunity to build a more sophisticated, data-driven FP&A function as ESS grows.
What You’ll Do
Planning & Forecasting
- Lead the annual budget and long-range planning processes.
- Own monthly, quarterly, and annual forecasts, partnering with business leaders to keep them realistic.
- Build scenario analyses and driver-based models to evaluate opportunities and risks.
Analysis & Business Partnering
- Analyze revenue, labor costs, margins, and expenses against budget, forecast, and prior year.
- Investigate significant variances and explain the business drivers behind them.
- Prepare reporting packages and presentations for senior management, with clear recommendations.
- Provide ad hoc analysis to support operational and strategic decisions.
Systems & Process
- Use Workday Adaptive Planning for budgeting, forecasting, reporting, and modeling.
- Build and maintain reporting models and dashboards using ERP, BI, and other data sources.
- Automate manual reporting and improve the accuracy and consistency of financial data.
Strategic Finance
- Support financial analysis of acquisitions, pricing, investments, and other strategic initiatives.
- Identify opportunities to improve profitability, efficiency, and operating performance.
What We’re Looking For
- Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, Business, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
- 5+ years of experience in FP&A.
- A track record of leading budgets and forecasts and building financial models from the ground up.
- Advanced Excel skills and comfort working with large datasets.
- Experience presenting financial results and recommendations to non-finance leaders.
- Strong experience with Workday Adaptive.
Nice to Have
- Experience managing or mentoring financial analysts.
- Workday ERP, Power BI, Tableau, or other BI tools.
- Experience with M&A, pricing, or profitability analysis.
- Experience in a multi-location, labor-driven business such as staffing or services.
Is This You?
If you enjoy answering questions like “What’s driving this?”, “What happens if we change this?”, and “What should we do next?”, and you’d rather bring ideas to the table than wait for instructions, we’d like to hear from you.
All interested candidates must complete our Culture Index Survey. Please use the link below to access and complete our survey.
https://surveys.cultureindex.com/s/H65Y13ZG2l/69423