FP&A Manager at Watchfire Signs in Danville, IL

Role Overview

Watchfire is seeking an experienced FP&A Manager to lead financial planning, forecasting, and performance analysis for a PE-backed manufacturing business. This role will serve as a key partner to the CFO and senior leadership, providing insight into financial performance, operational drivers, and forward-looking decision support.

In addition to core FP&A responsibilities, this role will manage the Project Estimation function, ensuring accurate costing, margin visibility, and alignment between estimating, operations, and finance.

Key Responsibilities

Financial Planning & Forecasting

• Own the annual budget, quarterly reforecast, and long-range planning processes
• Develop rolling forecasts for revenue, EBITDA, capital expenditures, and cash flow
• Partner with operations and sales to understand volume, backlog, pricing, and margin drivers

Management Reporting & Analysis

• Prepare monthly management reporting with clear variance analysis and insights
• Track and analyze KPIs across manufacturing, gross margin, SG&A, and working capital
• Identify risks and opportunities and provide actionable recommendations

Manufacturing & Costing Focus

• Analyze standard costing, labor efficiency, overhead absorption, and inventory trends
• Support margin improvement initiatives through detailed product, project, and customer analysis
• Ensure financial alignment between estimating assumptions and actual results

Project Estimation Management

• Manage the Project Estimation function, including oversight of estimating accuracy and processes
• Partner with Operations and Sales to ensure estimates reflect true cost structure and capacity realities
• Analyze estimate vs. actual performance and drive continuous improvement in bidding accuracy

PE & Executive Support

• Support CFO with board materials, lender reporting, and PE sponsor requests
• Provide ad hoc analysis related to capital investments, operational initiatives, or M&A activity

Systems & Process Improvement

• Improve FP&A and estimation models, tools, and reporting
• Leverage ERP and financial systems to enhance forecasting accuracy and visibility
• Standardize and automate reporting where possible

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Accounting
• CPA designation
• 5–8+ years of experience in FP&A within a manufacturing environment
• Strong financial modeling and Excel skills
• Experience working with standard costing, inventory, and operational metrics
• Ability to communicate financial insights to non-financial leaders

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in a PE-backed or leveraged environment
• Prior experience supporting project-based or engineered-to-order manufacturing

Benefits

• Medical
• Dental
• Vision
• Company Paid Life/ADD
• Voluntary Life/ADD
• Dependent Life/ADD
• 401k with Employer Match
• Vacation
• Personal Time

*Watchfire is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All aspects of employment including the decision to hire, promote, discipline, or discharge, will be based on merit, competence, performance, and business needs.