Senior Manager, Finance and Strategy - R&d

Samsara Samsara · Enterprise · San Francisco, CA · Finance and Strategy

This role is for a Senior Manager, Finance and Strategy, partnering with the R&D organization. The role involves financial planning and analysis (FP&A), forecasting, and controllership for R&D and Supply Chain Operations, including AI infrastructure spend. The candidate will use AI tools to automate reporting and accelerate analysis, and will manage a team. The role requires strong financial modeling and analysis skills, people management experience, and ideally experience with AI tools and cloud cost management.

What you'd actually do

  1. Serve as the finance lead for Samsara's R&D organization, partnering directly with C-level leaders on budget trade-offs, headcount decisions, and infrastructure investment
  2. Own FP&A for R&D and Supply Chain Operations — monthly BvA reviews with VP-level leaders, quarterly reforecasts, and the annual operating plan across Software, Firmware, and Hardware Engineering, Product Management, and Supply Chain Operations
  3. Own forecasting and controllership across Samsara's largest cost drivers: COGS and Gross Margin, hardware costs (including cash and COGS), employee expenses, total compensation economics, and AI infrastructure spend
  4. Build scalable financial processes and use AI tools to automate reporting, accelerate analysis, and deliver real-time visibility to R&D leadership
  5. Lead, develop, and manage a high-performing team

Skills

Required

  • 7+ years of experience in Corporate Finance, financial planning and analysis, or strategic finance experience
  • 2+ years of People management and development experience
  • Strong financial modeling and analysis capabilities
  • Ability to work collaboratively and cross-functionally
  • Strong communication and presentation skills; comfortable presenting to senior management

Nice to have

  • Experience at a high-growth tech company
  • Prior partnership with technical leaders
  • Ability to lead teams and drive longer-term initiatives while balancing delivering results
  • Willingness and ability to build new financial processes and mechanisms
  • Ability to thrive in a fast-growing environment with high degrees of ambiguity
  • Experience with AI tools (e.g., Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT, Gemini, etc.)
  • Familiarity with AWS cloud cost management
  • Expertise working with systems (e.g., Adaptive Planning, NetSuite, Salesforce, Workday, etc.)
  • Experience working with large datasets and technical data management and analysis skills (e.g., SQL, Tableau, etc.)

What the JD emphasized

  • AI infrastructure spend
  • AI tools to automate reporting
  • AI tools (e.g., Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT, Gemini, etc.)