Manufacturing Finance Automation Analyst

GENERAL JOB DESCRIPTION The Business Analyst, AI Automation & Operations Finance will be responsible for identifying, designing, and implementing AI-driven solutions that improve financial processes, costing methodologies, operational reporting, productivity analysis, forecasting, and decision support across manufacturing and supply chain operations. This role acts as the bridge between Operations Finance, IT, Supply Chain, Manufacturing, and Data & Analytics teams, leveraging emerging AI technologies, automation tools, digital workflows, and intelligent agents to eliminate manual activities, improve data quality, accelerate decision-making, and enhance financial insights. The ideal candidate combines strong finance and costing expertise with hands-on experience in AI tools, intelligent automation, business process redesign, and data analytics. Essential Job Functions: Finance Process Automation - Identify finance and operational processes suitable for automation using AI, machine learning, workflow automation, and intelligent agents. - Eliminate manual reporting, reconciliations, costing updates, data cleansing, and variance analysis activities. - Design scalable automation solutions that improve accuracy, speed, and internal controls. AI Agent & Bot Development - Partner with IT and business stakeholders to develop AI-powered agents and digital assistants. - Build and deploy bots to automate: - Standard costing maintenance - BOM and routing validation - Manufacturing variance analysis - Productivity reporting - Supply chain analytics - Forecasting support - Accounts receivable and collections workflows - Evaluate emerging AI technologies and recommend business applications. Costing & Manufacturing Finance - Improve standard costing processes and profitability analysis. - Support inventory valuation, labor and overhead absorption reviews. - Automate: - Cost rollups - Cost change analysis - Margin reporting - Freight and logistics cost analysis - Plant performance scorecards - Develop predictive models for material, labor, and freight cost management. Business Analysis & Process Improvement - Map current-state processes and design future-state automated workflows. - Gather business requirements and convert them into automation-ready solutions. - Lead workshops with Operations, Supply Chain, Plant Finance, and Corporate Finance teams. - Quantify expected ROI from automation initiatives. Analytics & Decision Support - Build executive dashboards and self-service analytics solutions. - Create predictive and prescriptive financial models. - Develop KPI frameworks for: - Productivity - Cost savings - Working capital - Inventory - Manufacturing performance - Supply chain efficiency Governance & Controls - Ensure compliance with finance, audit, SOX, and internal control requirements. - Maintain automation controls, documentation, and change-management procedures. - Define performance metrics and monitoring processes for AI solutions. EDUCATION, EXPERIENCE & SKILLS Education - Bachelor's degree in: - Business Analytics - Information Systems - Industrial Engineering - Computer Science - Finance and Accounting with proven information system background - Experience implementing automation or AI initiatives in finance organizations Preferred: - MBA - Relevant AI/Automation certifications AI, Data & Automation Experience Experience with some combination of: - Microsoft Copilot / Copilot Studio, Salesforce Agentforce, and OCI AI/Agent capabilities for enterprise AI, copilots, AI agents, and agentic solutions - Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), Autonomous Data Warehouse (ADW), and Oracle Analytics Cloud (OAC) for cloud, data, analytics, and reporting solutions - Generative AI, LLMs, AI/ML, and agentic automation applied to business processes - Enterprise data and analytics, including data integration, warehousing, modeling, visualization, and advanced analysis - Workflow automation, RPA, process optimization, and enterprise application integration - Data governance, security, quality, and responsible use of enterprise data and AI KEY COMPETENCIES Business Acumen - Strong understanding of manufacturing economics and operational drivers. - Ability to connect financial outcomes to operational performance. - Willing to learn costing and financial concepts AI & Innovation Mindset - Curiosity around emerging AI capabilities. - Ability to rapidly prototype and scale new solutions. Problem Solving - Translate ambiguous business challenges into data-driven solutions. - Identify automation opportunities and measurable ROI.