Chief Financial Officer (CFO)
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Reports To: CEO / Founder
About the Role:
We are seeking a strategic, hands-on Chief Financial Officer (CFO) to help lead the next phase of growth and operational maturity for one of our client's organization. This executive will serve as a key business partner to the leadership team, driving financial strategy, operational excellence, process optimization, and scalable growth initiatives across finance, operations, production, sourcing, sales, and market expansion.
The ideal candidate is equally comfortable developing long-term strategic plans and rolling up their sleeves to build foundational processes, reporting frameworks, and operating rhythms. This role requires exceptional analytical capabilities, experience within consumer products, manufacturing, food & beverage, CPG, or related industries, and the ability to translate complex business challenges into actionable solutions.
Fluency in English is required. Fluent Russian language skills are strongly preferred.
Key Responsibilities:
- Financial Leadership & Process Transformation
- Assess current-state financial management, accounting, and operational processes and develop a roadmap toward best-in-class future-state practices.
- Build scalable financial infrastructure, controls, reporting processes, and performance management frameworks.
- Partner with leadership to establish key operational and financial metrics that support data-driven decision-making.
- Identify opportunities to improve efficiency, accountability, and organizational effectiveness.
Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)
- Identify critical business functions requiring documented SOPs.
- Design and implement process documentation standards across departments.
- Establish governance frameworks to ensure process consistency and compliance.
- Drive adoption of SOPs and continuous process improvement initiatives.
Systems & Business Intelligence
- Evaluate current ERP, accounting, reporting, and operational systems.
- Recommend and implement technology improvements to streamline workflows and enhance reporting capabilities.
- Develop executive dashboards and KPI reporting frameworks.
- Ensure systems integration across finance, operations, sourcing, production, and sales functions.
Financial Planning & Reporting
- Establish a disciplined and repeatable financial reporting cadence, including:
- Monthly close and actuals reporting
- Monthly P&L forecasting
- Weekly 13-week cash flow forecasting
- Improve forecasting accuracy and visibility into business performance.
- Deliver actionable insights to leadership and investors through financial analysis and reporting.
Sourcing & Product Cost Analysis
- Conduct detailed SKU-level profitability and product cost analyses.
- Evaluate sourcing partners and vendor performance.
- Design and implement a vendor scorecard framework to measure quality, cost, reliability, and strategic value.
- Identify opportunities to improve gross margins, reduce costs, and increase sourcing efficiency.
Production Capacity & Operational Optimization
- Assess current production processes, scheduling practices, and staffing models.
- Determine maximum production capacity and identify cost-effective opportunities to increase output.
- Analyze per-unit production costs and productivity metrics.
- Recommend operational improvements that enhance efficiency, throughput, and profitability.
Sales Strategy & Commercial Performance
- Evaluate current sales processes, activity tracking methods, incentive plans, and organizational structure.
- Assess account profitability and customer segmentation opportunities.
- Develop account tiering frameworks with defined guardrails for:
- Target order size
- SKU assortment
- Pricing strategy
- Product margin requirements
- Partner with leadership to improve sales productivity and customer profitability.
Demand & Supply Planning
- Strengthen forecasting and planning processes across the organization.
- Improve alignment between demand forecasting, sourcing, inventory management, and production planning.
- Develop reporting frameworks to measure sell-in, sell-through, inventory turns, and forecast accuracy.
- Drive initiatives that optimize working capital and inventory performance.
Product Development & Innovation Governance
- Build a repeatable framework for evaluating new product opportunities.
- Establish financial, strategic, and operational criteria for product launch decisions.
- Create go/no-go decision processes and post-launch performance measurement standards.
- Support innovation efforts with robust business case development and ROI analysis.
Market Expansion & Growth Initiatives
- Partner with leadership to develop and execute expansion plans into New York and additional target markets.
- Evaluate new market opportunities, regulatory considerations, and operating requirements.
- Identify and assess local partners, vendors, distributors, and service providers.
- Create scalable rollout frameworks to support future expansion initiatives.
Qualifications
Required:
- Bachelor's degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, Business Administration, or related field.
- 10+ years of progressive finance and operational leadership experience, including executive-level responsibilities.
- Proven experience building and scaling finance functions in high-growth companies.
- Expertise in FP&A, cash flow management, forecasting, financial reporting, and operational finance.
- Strong understanding of manufacturing, production, supply chain, sourcing, and inventory management.
- Demonstrated ability to drive operational transformation and process improvement initiatives.
- Strong analytical, strategic thinking, and problem-solving skills.
- Excellent communication and executive stakeholder management abilities.
- Fluent English language skills.
Preferred:
- CPA, CMA, MBA, or equivalent advanced credential.
- Experience in consumer products, CPG, food & beverage, manufacturing, or distribution environments.
- Experience implementing ERP systems and business intelligence/reporting platforms.
- Multi-state expansion experience.
- Fluent Russian language skills.
- Experience working in founder-led and entrepreneurial organizations.
- Key Success Metrics
- Improved forecasting accuracy and reporting timeliness.
- Increased gross margins and product profitability.
- Enhanced production efficiency and capacity utilization.
- Reduced inventory risk and optimized working capital.
- Successful implementation of scalable operating processes and SOPs.
- Strong vendor management and sourcing performance.
- Successful execution of expansion initiatives and market entry strategies.
- Leadership Competencies
- Strategic and operational thinker
- Hands-on and execution-oriented
- Data-driven decision maker
- Change agent and builder
- Collaborative business partner
- Results-focused leader with a continuous improvement mindset
