Director - Strategic Finance & Value Creation

Reports to: Chief Financial Officer, kdc/one

Location: [Saddle Brook, NJ]

Position Summary

Reporting directly to the Chief Financial Officer, the Director of Strategic Finance & Value Creation serves as the CFO's analytical right hand — assisting the CFO in driving enterprise-wide analysis and projects that drive value creation. As a private equity–backed business, kdc/one operates with a clear mandate to grow earnings and improve cash generation. This role supports that mandate – bringing rigorous financial analysis to strategic and operational decisions and owning projects and initiatives that free up CFO capacity.

The successful candidate combines the analytical depth of a former investment banking, private equity, or consulting professional with the pragmatism required to operate inside a fast-moving, global manufacturing organization.

Key Responsibilities

Enterprise & Value-Creation Analysis

• Assist the CFO in driving enterprise-wide analysis of profitability, margin, and cash flow — identifying where value is created and eroded across business units, sites, customers, and product categories.
• Build and maintain the analytical framework that links operational drivers to financial outcomes, enabling the CFO to prioritize the highest-return value-creation initiatives.
• Quantify, track, and report on the value-creation initiatives, holding initiative owners accountable to committed targets.

Decision Support to the CFO

• Serve as the CFO's thought partner on strategic and operational decisions, delivering structured, data-driven recommendations under tight timelines.
• Translate complex analyses into clear, executive-ready narratives and recommendations.
• Support development of enterprise-wide financial methodologies for performance and help drive necessary change management.

Performance Management

• Develop enterprise KPIs and dashboards that provide a real-time view of enterprise performance against the value-creation plan.
• Develop enterprise methodologies for critical performance metrics allowing the CFO and LT to make fact-based decisions on operating performance and areas of focus to improve performance.

CFO Support

• Lead and support a range of cross-functional projects and initiatives on the CFO’s behalf (enterprise-wide finance training development, procurement spend including inflation and directed buy, margin improvement plan, global banking)
• Ad-hoc support

Qualifications

Experience & Education

• 8+ years of progressive experience in investment banking, private equity, management consulting, corporate development, or strategic finance/FP&A — ideally with exposure to PE-backed or industrial/manufacturing businesses.
• Bachelor's degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, or related field; MBA, CFA, or CPA strongly preferred.
• Demonstrated track record of analysis that drove measurable financial or operational improvement.

Skills & Attributes

• Elite financial modeling and analytical skills; fluent in building EBITDA bridges, value-creation models, and scenario analysis from the ground up.
• Strong command of the levers that drive enterprise value — margin, cash conversion, capital efficiency, and growth.
• Exceptional communication skills, with the ability to distill complexity into executive- and board-ready recommendations.
• Comfortable operating with ambiguity, autonomy, and urgency.
• High integrity, intellectual curiosity, and a bias toward action and ownership.