Stella-Jones is a leading manufacturer of essential infrastructure products focused on serving utilities and railroads, as well as supplying big box home improvement stores across North America. Headquartered in Montreal, Canada and publicly traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange, Stella-Jones operates a vast network of facilities that employs more than 3,000 employees across the United States and Canada. Built on strong foundations with a coast-to-coast reach, we offer real opportunities for career success and community impact.
Position Overview
The FP&A Manager will play a critical role in supporting the Utility Products business unit by leading financial planning, analysis, and business partnering activities. This role will act as a key liaison between Sales, Accounting, Procurement, Operations, and IT to drive informed decision-making and performance management. The successful candidate will partner closely with the Divisional Accounting Director, who is responsible for costing and inventory valuation, and will translate these inputs into actionable insights, forecasts, and planning outputs. This role will own Sales-facing financial support, including reporting, budgeting, forecasting, and analysis, while ensuring alignment with operational and procurement assumptions. In addition, this role will be a key contributor to the ongoing transformation of the company’s data environment, planning processes, and financial systems, helping to drive improved data quality, automation, and scalability of FP&A capabilities.
This FP&A position will be based at our head office in Saint-Laurent with a hybrid schedule (typically 3 days in-office / 2 days remote), and will involve up to 15% travel to company locations in Canada and the United States. To learn more about our utility pole products you would be supporting (including a 1-minute video overview), visit our product page: https://www.stella-jones.com/en/products/utility-poles
Key Responsibilities
Budgeting & Forecasting:
- Lead the annual budgeting process, quarterly forecasts, and long-range planning cycles for Wood Utility Products business unit.
- Consolidate inputs from Sales, Procurement, Operations, and Accounting into cohesive financial plans.
- Maintain and manage planning models within SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC), ensuring data accuracy and integrity.
- Translate costing and inventory assumptions into financial forecasts and scenario analyses.
Reporting & Analysis:
- Deliver timely and accurate monthly financial reporting, including variance analysis against budget, forecast and prior year.
- Prepare executive-level presentations highlighting key drivers, risks, and opportunities.
- Provide actionable insights to improve profitability, cost management, and operational efficiency.
- Develop and enhance dashboards and reporting tools to support decision-making.
Business Partnering (Sales Focus):
- Act as the primary Finance partner to the Sales organization.
- Support pricing analysis, volume forecasting, margin analysis, and customer profitability initiatives.
- Provide financial guidance to support commercial strategies and decision-making.
Data Strategy & Systems Optimization:
- Play a key role in advancing the organization’s FP&A data strategy, ensuring alignment between financial, operational, and commercial data.
- Partner with IT and Finance leadership to optimize the data environment, including data governance, data models, and system integrations.
- Drive continuous improvement in planning processes, with a focus on automation, standardization, and scalability.
- Enhance the use of SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC), Power BI, and other planning and reporting tools to improve data accessibility, accuracy, and usability.
- Identify opportunities to leverage data and analytics to generate deeper business insights and improve forecasting accuracy.
Cross-Functional Collaboration:
- Work closely with the Divisional Accounting Director to incorporate costing and inventory data into forecasts and reporting.
- Partner with Procurement and Operations to understand cost drivers and incorporate assumptions into planning cycles.
- Ensure alignment between financial plans and operational realities.
Team Leadership:
- Lead, mentor, and develop a team of 3 FP&A analysts.
- Foster a high-performance, collaborative team environment focused on continuous improvement.
- Drive standardization and efficiency in FP&A processes and deliverables.
Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, Finance, or related field
- CPA, CFA, or MBA preferred
- 7+ years of progressive experience in FP&A, finance, and/or accounting roles
- Excellent accounting foundation with deep understanding of financial statements, costing, and inventory.
- Proven experience in business partnering, particularly with Sales and Operations teams.
- Experience in a manufacturing environment highly preferred
- Proven team leadership and team development capabilities
- Demonstrated experience supporting or leading finance transformation, system implementations, or data initiatives.
Technical Skills
- Experience with financial planning tools, preferably SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC).
- Strong understanding of data structures, data flows, and financial systems architecture.
- Advanced Excel and financial modeling skills.
- Experience with data visualization and BI tools (e.g., Power BI or similar).
- Familiarity with ERP systems and data integration concepts.
Key Competencies
- Excellent business acumen and strategic thinking.
- Excellent communication and presentation skills, with the ability to influence senior stakeholders.
- High attention to detail combined with the ability to see the big picture.
- Strong analytical mindset with a focus on leveraging data for decision-making.
- Ability to manage multiple priorities in a fast-paced environment.
As a Stella-Jones employee, you will enjoy access to excellent benefits and incentives, including:
- Extended health and dental coverage
- Life insurance and accidental death & dismemberment (AD&D)
- Short-Term and Long-Term disability coverage
- Competitive compensation
- Annual Profit Share Program
- Retirement program (RRSP) with generous Company match (150% of employee's 4% contribution)
- Company Share Purchase Program with 25% Company contribution match
- Career advancement opportunities
Stella-Jones is an equal opportunity employer that is committed to diversity and inclusion in the workplace. We prohibit discrimination and harassment of any kind based on race, color, sex, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, genetic information, pregnancy, or any other protected characteristic as outlined by federal, provincial, or local laws.
This policy applies to all employment practices within our organization, including hiring, recruiting, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, leave of absence, compensation, benefits, training, and apprenticeship. Stella-Jones makes hiring decisions based solely on qualifications, merit, and business needs at the time.
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