Principal Program Manager

POSITION SUMMARY:  
The Finance Product Principal is a senior level individual contributor who leads finance technology, product strategy, roadmap, and delivery to improve financial operations, reporting, controls, decision support, and user experience.
This role partners across Finance, Corporate IT, Product,  Operations,  and vendors,  to translate finance priorities into practical enterprise-aligned, scalable solutions that advance modernization, digital maturity, and financial stewardship.
Success requires finance and technology acumen, product discipline, executive communication, and the ability to drive outcomes in a complex, matrixed environment without direct authority over delivery teams.
As a senior individual contributor, the role also elevates product management capability by mentoring peers, sharing finance technology expertise, and modeling effective product practices across teams.

ACCOUNTABILITIES:  
Product Strategy & Roadmap:
•    Own and make prioritization decisions for the vision, roadmap, and value proposition of assigned finance technology products and capabilities.
•    Translate Finance and enterprise priorities into sequenced product outcomes, investment recommendations, and measurable business value.
•    Align finance technology priorities with enterprise architecture, security, data strategy, and modernization efforts and organization-wide standards for scalable technology adoption.
•    In collaboration with Finance leadership, identify opportunities to reduce manual work, improve accuracy, accelerate cycle times, strengthen controls, and enhance decision support.
•    Serve as a senior individual contributor and trusted advisor to Finance and enterprise leaders on technology investment priorities, product trade-offs, governance, and value realization.
Product Lifestyle & Delivery:
•    Lead assigned products from discovery through implementation, adoption, measurement, enhancement, and retirement.
•    Determine product backlog priorities using clear criteria for value, risk, capacity, dependencies, user impact, and technical complexity.
•    Lead cross functional efforts for requirements design, user stories, acceptance criteria, process flows, data needs, reporting outcomes, and success measures.
•    Oversee planning, backlog refinement, demos, stakeholder reviews, testing, release readiness, and benefits realization.

Cross-Functional Leadership:
•    Lead through influence across multiple stakeholders including Finance, IT, Product, , Operations, , and vendors to align priorities, resolve trade-offs, and advance shared outcomes. .
•    Represent Finance users by understanding pain points, validating needs, and designing practical solutions that fit daily work while applying industry best practice.
•    Translate technical concepts into business language and business needs into clear technology requirements.
•    Clarify roles, decision rights, dependencies, support models, and escalation paths to sustain progress on priority work.
•    Drive senior-level decision making by presenting clear recommendations, risk considerations, value metrics, and implementation implications across business and technology stakeholders.

Systems, Data & Governance:
•    Support enhancement and optimization of ERP, planning, forecasting, reporting, workflow, automation, analytics, and related finance tools.
•    Improve data quality, master data, reporting integrity, access, and integration between finance systems and enterprise applications.
•    Track product performance, adoption, quality, cycle time, support volume, control effectiveness, and value realization.
•    Ensure requirements relating to documentation, testing, change control, auditability, security, privacy, etc.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS: 
Knowledge of:
•    Finance processes, systems, controls, reporting, planning, forecasting, procurement-to-pay, order-to-cash, and related workflows.
•    Product management practices, including strategy, roadmaps, discovery, backlog management, prioritization, lifecycle management, and value measurement.
•    Finance technology, including ERP, EPM, workflow, automation, analytics, business intelligence, data visualization, and systems integration.
•    Data management, including master data, data quality, reporting definitions, governance, and reconciliation.
•    Agile, Lean, continuous improvement, security, privacy, audit, and internal control practices.
        Ability to:
•    Lead enterprise-level work through influence, alignment, decision-making, and reliable execution.
•    Translate business needs into practical technology requirements and technical constraints into clear business choices.
•    Develop business cases, ROI narratives, value metrics, cost-benefit trade-offs, and investment recommendations.
•    Prioritize competing needs and communicate trade-offs to senior leaders, delivery partners, and end users.
•    Communicate complex information clearly to executive, technical, and nontechnical audiences.
•    Shape enterprise practices, standards, and ways of working by applying deep finance product expertise and influencing adoption across teams.
•    Coach and mentor others through expertise, feedback, knowledge sharing, and role modeling of effective product leadership practices without direct supervisory responsibility.
        
        Education and/or Experience:
•    Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Business Administration, Information Technology, Computer Science, Data/Analytics, or related field, or equivalent relevant experience.
•    12+ years of progressive experience in finance, finance technology, product management, business systems, digital transformation, or related functions.
•    Experience leading finance system implementations, ERP/EPM modernization, reporting and analytics improvements, automation, or complex cross-functional technology programs.
•    Experience owning a product roadmap, backlog, enhancement portfolio, or comparable technology delivery scope.
•    Experience influencing senior leaders and cross-functional teams in a matrixed environment.
•    Experience with innovation and emerging technologies, partnering with Finance, Business, and IT to identify and prioritize opportunities around AI, automation, and digital modernization.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS: (Additional qualifications that may make a person even more effective in the role, but are not required for consideration)
•    Master’s degree in Business, Finance, Information Systems, Analytics, or related field.
•    Product management, agile, project management, Lean Six Sigma, or comparable certification.
•    Experience with Oracle, Jira, Aha!, ServiceNow, Salesforce, MuleSoft, or comparable tools.
•    Experience with financial data architecture, ERP migrations, cloud platforms, data governance, or reporting modernization.
•    Experience in nonprofit, healthcare, life sciences, government contracting, regulated, or sensitive-data environments.