Lead Finance Business Partner (Services & Value Engineering)

Celonis

Madrid, SpainOn-siteFull-timeLeadFinancePosted 1d ago

For the curiousBuilt for leaders

About the role

Celonis is the trusted platform to industrialize Enterprise AI. At our core is the Celonis Context Model — which combines process data, business knowledge, and intelligence into a living digital twin of the enterprise that AI can actually understand, turning AI's operational blind spots into operational clarity. World's leading companies trust Celonis and its global ecosystem of partners to make their AI agents, people, systems, and processes work together, achieving transformational outcomes. We believe there's a massive opportunity to unlock global productivity and sustainability by giving AI the context to understand how every business process really works. Join our mission to make processes work for people, companies, and the planet.

The Team:

The Finance organization at Celonis is a strategic partner to our business, responsible for steering growth, profitability, and capital allocation across the company. Within Finance, the Go-To-Market (GTM) Finance team partners closely with the GTM executive leadership (Sales, Value Engineering, Marketing, Services, Partner & Ecosystem) to drive predictable, efficient growth and to ensure financial discipline in every aspect of our go-to-market engine.

The GTM Finance team is critical to Celonis’ successful go-to-market execution and operates in a highly visible environment to executive leadership. The goals and objectives of the GTM Finance team include:

Guiding and supporting executive GTM leadership to achieve their operational & financial objectives
Providing objective, data-driven insights that assist in strategic decision making
Acting as a trusted advisor and advocate to the GTM leadership
Developing and operating relevant KPI measurement frameworks to help steering business performance
Contributing to drive the overall financial success of Celonis

The Role:

As Lead Finance Business Partner (reporting into the VP, GTM Finance), you will go beyond traditional FP&A to act as a strategic advisor to the leaders of our Services and Value Engineering organizations. You will own the financial modeling, delivery economics, and operational metrics that drive services gross margin, utilization, and value-selling efficiency. The ideal candidate understands that Professional Services is the accelerator for customer time-to-value and a lever on margin, and that Value Engineering is critical to winning and expanding enterprise deals — and that both must be steered with disciplined cost, capacity, and ROI management.

The work you’ll do:

Strategic Financial Partnership

Advisory: Serve as the primary financial co-pilot to the Services and Value Engineering leadership
Margin Optimization: Own the Gross Margin modeling for the Services and Value Engineering organizations, identifying levers to optimize delivery costs without sacrificing customer satisfaction.
Investment ROI: Evaluate the financial impact and ROI of headcount additions, tools, and strategic initiatives (e.g., insourcing vs. subcontracting delivery capacity, or scaling the VE coverage model).

Planning, Forecasting & Capacity Modeling

Capacity Planning: Partner with Services and VE leadership to challenge and optimize their capacity and utilization models — stress-testing assumptions, identifying efficiency levers, and ensuring hiring and subcontractor use stay aligned with pipeline, bookings, and delivery backlog.
Budgeting: Lead the annual budgeting and monthly forecasting cycles for headcount, program spend, and variable compensation/bonuses for assigned departments.
Revenue Forecasting: Partner with Services leadership to forecast professional services revenue recognition based on project milestones, backlog, and book-to-burn ratios.

SaaS Metrics & Operational Analytics

Drive Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Define, track, and analyze critical operational and financial metrics

The qualifications you need:

Experience: 8+ years of experience in FP&A, corporate finance, or strategic finance, with at least 5 years specifically supporting Services organizations at a B2B SaaS or technology company.
Business Partnering: 5+ years experience working work executive leadership aligning operational execution with financial impacts
Education: Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, or a quantitative field. MBA or CFA is a plus.
SaaS Acumen: Deep understanding of SaaS unit economics, revenue recognition rules
Financial Modeling: Elite Excel/financial modeling skills; ability to build complex, dynamic capacity and utilization models from scratch.
Systems Familiarity: Experience with enterprise tools such as Pigment, Salesforce and Workday

Soft Skills & Competencies

"The Translator Effect" The ideal candidate must be able to translate complex financial data into actionable operational strategies for non-finance leaders, and conversely, translate operational realities into financial impacts for the CFO.

Influence without authority: Proven ability to challenge senior executives constructively and back up recommendations with data.
Agility: Comfortable navigating ambiguity in a fast-paced, high-growth enterprise environment.
Communication: Exceptional storytelling skills; ability to distill massive data sets into executive summaries.

What Success Looks Like in Year 1

First 90 days: Establish trust with GTM leaders, audit current capacity models for the customer organization, and take ownership of the monthly variance reporting.
First 6 months: Stand up a subcontractor spend and PO-governance model that gives Finance clear visibility into delivery cost and margin leakage, and establish a margin / utilization review cadence with Services and VE leadership using Ops's utilization data to challenge the plan and surface optimization levers.
First year: Successfully co-pilot the annual planning process, driving a measurable improvement in Services gross margins and optimizing headcount ratio.

What Celonis can offer you:

Pioneer Innovation: Work with the global leader in Process Mining and the Process Intelligence Graph to shape the future of AI-driven business operations.
Ownership from Day 1: Every full-time "Celonaut" is an owner, receiving Restricted Stock Units (RSUs) and merit-based refresh grants.
Unrivaled Family Support: Benefit from our inclusive parental leave policy—24 weeks of fully paid leave for primary carers and 12 weeks for supporting carers, available from your first day of employment.
Work-Life Integration: Enjoy Unlimited PTO (in applicable regions) and generous PTO globally, as well as a flexible hybrid work model that balances remote focus with vibrant office collaboration.
Continuous Growth: Elevate your skills through our 70-20-10 learning framework, mentorship programs, and access to a dedicated learning platform.
Holistic Well-being: Prioritize your health with subsidized Wellhub memberships, mental health counseling, and dedicated "Wellness Weeks" that prioritize work/life balance.
Drive Sustainability: Participate in annual Impact Days, where you receive paid time off to volunteer for community and environmental causes with your local office, or virtually.
Global Inclusion & Belonging: Find community through our Inclusion Think Tank and participate in our annual Inclusion Days, ensuring every voice is heard and valued.
Value-Driven Impact: Join a mission-led organization where our core values—Live for Customer Value, The Best Team Wins, We Own It, and Earth Is Our Future—drive every decision.

About Us:

Celonis is the trusted platform to industrialize Enterprise AI, empowering organizations to analyze, design, and operate AI-driven processes. The Celonis Platform is powered by the Celonis Context Model, which combines process data, business knowledge, and intelligence to create a living digital twin of the enterprise that AI can understand — turning AI’s operational blind spots into operational clarity. Industry-leading companies around the world trust Celonis and its global ecosystem of partners to make their AI agents, people, systems, and processes work together, achieving transformational outcomes. Celonis is headquartered in Munich, Germany, and New York City, USA, with more than 20 offices worldwide.

Get familiar with the Celonis Process Intelligence Platform by watching this video.

Celonis Inclusion Statement:

At Celonis, we believe our people make us who we are and that “The Best Team Wins”. We know that the best teams are made up of people who bring different perspectives to the table. And when everyone feels included, able to speak up and knows their voice is heard - that's when creativity and innovation happen.

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By submitting this application, you confirm that you agree to the storing and processing of your personal data by Celonis as described in our Privacy Notice for the Application and Hiring Process.

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The tool is only used for support in parts of the job application process, including to facilitate the identification of the relevant Celonis Jobs for candidates and recruiters. All final decisions are made by hiring managers and the Celonis talent acquisition team. Hiring managers and HR specialists use this tool responsibly, are aware of the risk of potential bias, and are equipped to mitigate it.

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