Topline & Sales Finance Strategy Manager

About the role

Proofpoint’s FP&A | Finance Strategy Topline & Sales team is the central Topline and Sales finance team for the consolidated company. We plan and run the business across every route to market, in a competitive industry that changes fast.

In this role, you’ll be the go-to engine of capacity for the Sr. Director of FP&A, Topline & Sales, and a force multiplier for the Topline and Sales FP&A team. The Tier 1 FP&A Team continues to own the forecast and the reporting; this role adds to that team rather than taking from it. You’ll pick up the cross-component, non-traditional work streams that decide how Topline, Sales cost and routes to market fit together, so the whole team gets to faster insights and a more comprehensive scope across the business.

• Take on large-scale Planning and run-the-business (RTB) collaboration at the Sr. Director’s direction, driving priority work to an executive-ready answer.
• Partner with the Sr. Director’s direct-report leads and the Topline and Sales FP&A team as added capacity wherever Topline, Sales cost and routes to market need deeper alignment, helping the team move faster and cover more ground while each owner keeps their area.
• Own non-traditional work streams end to end, anchored to big-picture assumptions and backed by a detailed grasp of the core drivers, so assumptions, handoffs and numbers hold together across routes to market and the FP&A team when the business pivots.
• Build scenario models and what-if tools that tie to the system of record, flagging issues rather than burying them.
• Diagnose data and definition issues through system changes and migrations, tracing why a metric moved and landing a defensible fix with the owners.

• Support the major quarterly forecast insights against the established annual operating plan (AOP), complementing the Tier 1 FP&A Team’s forecast with historical compares and driver walks that show what moved, why, and what it means for the rest of the year.
• Partner with Product and Product FP&A to keep Topline and Sales assumptions aligned with the product plan, including ARR and NARR by product.
• Support the long-range plan (LRP), keeping it connected to the latest narrative and translating changes from cycle to cycle into clear drivers that help drive collaboration across teams.

• Support the strategy behind the annual Sales cost envelope: headcount and capacity, fully loaded cost, productivity, and the growth cap the envelope must hold.
• Model on-target earnings (OTE) and on-target incentive (OTI), including pay mix and quota capacity, and support the commissions cycle from plan design and cost modeling through attainment and payout.

• Read a target’s P&L on both a GAAP and a cash basis, normalize it, and translate it into topline, cost and synergy implications.
• Support diligence and integration planning for sales organizations: leadership overlap, capacity, compensation harmonization, and the risks and opportunities to retention and pipeline.
• Bring acquired businesses’ baselines and forecasting methods onto Proofpoint standards after close.

• Hold a point of view across every route to market, including direct, distribution, resellers, MSP and marketplace, and how each route’s economics compare.
• Analyze rebate structures and tiers, partner margin and contra revenue, and their gross-to-net effect on the topline.

• Present to the CRO, CEO and CFO, turning large, complex data sets into clear, defensible recommendations.
• Help prepare board, Operating Partner and QBR materials through the AOP cycle, where timelines are fixed and the bar is investor-grade.
• Partner with GMs, Sales Operations and FP&A | Finance Strategy leadership to align multiple work streams, resolving conflicting priorities and assumptions with precision and professionalism.
• Move easily between altitudes, from board-level narrative to line-item driver, and know which one the room needs.
• Communicate crisply across Teams, Outlook and similar tools, with executive-ready summaries that lead with the answer, the drivers and the risks. State your commitments clearly, then deliver on them.

• Have 8+ years of progressive experience in FP&A, sales finance, corporate development, investment banking or transaction advisory, including meaningful Topline experience in B2B SaaS or enterprise software.
• Have presented to C-suite executives and partnered with GMs or business unit leaders across concurrent work streams, influencing decisions without formal authority.
• Have a strong professional presence, credible across the many touchpoints this role has in the business, from teammates to the C-suite.
• Bring high energy, optimism and a forward-looking view, and add momentum to every room you’re in.
• Are first into the fire, and make sure the team is covered ahead of your own needs.
• Are a quick-change artist: flexible through fast pivots, comfortable defining the question before answering it, and confident driving alignment while the path is still forming.
• Make the people around you better by documenting your methods, building reusable models and shared definitions, and coaching teammates informally.
• Handle highly sensitive, need-to-know material, including deal and board work, with complete discretion.
• Build advanced models and work comfortably with large data sets in Excel and enterprise planning tools.
• Are an early adopter of AI who uses Claude and similar tools to turn large data sets into turnkey insights, with the domain judgment to validate the output and flag where the risks sit.
• Bring hands-on depth in the SaaS topline, sales compensation plans (including at least one full commissions planning cycle), headcount and capacity modeling for a large sales organization, and channel economics across routes to market.
• Have M&A experience, such as deal models, synergy cases, diligence or post-close integration, and can reconcile an operating plan to a deal model.
• Have a strong command of GAAP, including ASC 606 revenue recognition and ASC 340-40 treatment of commissions, and of cash-basis reporting, and can reconcile the two.

• An MBA; a CPA is a plus.
• A background in cybersecurity or private equity-backed software.

• Location: Sunnyvale, CA. In office Monday through Thursday, with occasional Fridays and remote flexibility when the work demands it, plus ad hoc collaboration across Sales, Finance and Corporate Development.
• Global coverage: regular early-morning and late-evening coverage across time zones. As the central Topline and Sales team for the consolidated company, we support stakeholders in the Americas, EMEA and APJ.
• Cadence: expect peak intensity around the AOP cycle, quarter-end and board meetings, including occasional evening and weekend sprints around board and deal timelines.
• Travel: none required.

Apply even if you don’t match every line. Strong candidates rarely check every box. If this work energizes you and your experience lines up with most of it, we want to hear from you.

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