Job DescriptionPosition Overview We are seeking a financially rigorous and technically fluent Financial Analyst to join our Finance organization, focused on software and usage-based spend management. This role sits at the intersection of FP&A and FinOps - owning cost visibility, governance, and optimization across our key software and AI vendor relationships. You will partner with Engineering, IT, Procurement, and Finance leadership to drive budget accountability, improve forecast accuracy, and reduce waste. The ideal candidate brings strong financial analysis skills and the technical comfort to work directly with billing exports, usage APIs, and spend dashboards. This role will be hybrid 1-2 days a week out of our Chicago, West loop office.
To keep us headed in the right direction, we're looking for people who understand winning is a team sport, who value and seek to learn from our team's diverse experiences and backgrounds, who welcome a challenge and take risks in the pursuit of creating better outcomes for our customers, and who can, at any given time, step back to laugh and have some fun.
What You'll Do - Software Spend Reporting: Own monthly and quarterly reporting on software, SaaS, and consumption-based vendor spend. Build and maintain dashboards that deliver clear budget vs. actuals, trend analysis, and cost allocation by team and cost center.
- Forecasting & Budgeting: Develop financial models for usage-based and subscription spend. Lead the annual budgeting process for software categories and produce monthly variance analysis with clear explanations of drivers.
- Cost Optimization: Proactively identify waste, underutilized licenses, and inefficient consumption patterns. Quantify savings opportunities, develop business cases, and track realized savings against targets.
- Vendor Financial Oversight: Manage financial relationships across the organization's software and consumption-based vendor portfolio, including cloud platforms, AI services, and SaaS tools. Monitor billing structures, track spend against commitments, and maintain a forward-looking view of contract renewals, pricing changes, and budget exposure.
- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Serve as Finance's primary point of contact for Engineering and IT on software spend. Translate complex billing structures into Finance-relevant reporting and integrate software spend into QBR and strategic planning cycles.
- Procurement Partnership: Partner with Procurement on contract negotiations by modeling committed spend tiers, volume discounts, and renewal scenarios to improve contract outcomes.
We're Excited to Learn More About You Your experience may include:
- Bachelor's degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, or a related analytical field.
- 3+ years of experience in FP&A or financial analysis, with meaningful exposure to technology or software spend management.
- Demonstrated experience in budgeting, variance analysis, and financial forecasting.
- Advanced proficiency in Excel or Google Sheets for financial modeling; experience working with billing exports and usage-based spend data from cloud or SaaS vendors.
- Familiarity with BI tools (Power BI, Tableau, Looker) for spend reporting and dashboards.
- Ability to translate complex billing structures into clear financial reporting for non-technical stakeholders.
- Strong cross-functional communication skills; comfortable partnering with Engineering, Procurement, and Finance leadership.
You may have other skills or credentials, including:
- Familiarity with FinOps principles (FinOps Certified Practitioner a plus), applied in a Finance or FP&A context.
- Hands-on experience with cloud or SaaS vendor billing platforms and cost management tooling.
- Exposure to AI/ML cost structures, including token-based and consumption-driven pricing models.
- Experience with SaaS spend management platforms (e.g., Apptio Cloudability, CloudHealth, Zylo).
- Basic proficiency in SQL or Python for querying billing data or automating spend pipelines.
- Experience in a high-growth technology company where software spend is a material cost driver.
We know that talent comes from all backgrounds and experience levels. We encourage military members and their spouses as well as candidates without a degree or a background in tech to apply!
When You Join Team Applied, You Can Expect: A culture that values who you are and recognizes that you aren't just an employee; you are a teammate, and you matter. We thrive on the benefits of our different experiences and celebrate the uniqueness our teammates bring to work with them every day.
We flex our time together, collaborating remotely and in-person to empower our teams to work in the ways that work best for them.
A comprehensive benefits and compensation package that centers our teammates and helps them to bring their best to work every day:
- Medical, Dental, and Vision Coverage
- Holiday and Vacation Time
- A Bonus Day for Your Birthday
Learn more about the people behind our products at https://www1.appliedsystems.com/en-us/about-us/jobs/
Our targeted starting base salary in the United States for this position ranges from $75,000 - $93,000 USD. To determine a new team member's starting pay, we consider a variety of factors, including someone's depth, breadth, and variety of experience, skills, and responsibilities. Depending on the role, team members may also be eligible to participate in additional compensation plans such as bonus and commission.
Your Security Matters: Our candidates' personal information and online safety are top of mind for us. At Applied, we proactively protect your personal information and only communicate with candidates via a secure @appliedsystems.com email or through our official careers portal. Recruiters will never request payments, ask for financial account information or sensitive information like social security numbers.
AI Utilization We leverage AI tools to streamline parts of our recruitment workflow (such as resume parsing and interview scheduling). However, candidate screening, interviews, and final decisions are conducted by real humans.
#LI-Hybrid OR #LI-Remote
