Lead Financial Analyst, Strategic Business Partner – Product & Technology - Wikimedia Foundation

Summary

Join the Wikimedia Foundation in our ambitious project to empower people to create and share the sum of all human knowledge. We are looking for a Lead Financial Analyst to serve as the strategic business partner to our Product & Technology department, one of the most dynamic and fastest-growing parts of the organization, with a combined budget of more than $100M. You will also support other key areas of our work and, as the most senior analyst on the Financial Business Partner team, be responsible for driving improvements in financial planning, analytics, and our business partnership practices.

This is a business partnering role first and an FP&A role second. You will sit alongside product and engineering leaders, help them weigh investment tradeoffs before decisions are made, and turn roadmaps into financial plans. You will work directly with the Chief of Product and Technology (CPTO), the Chief Financial Officer (CFO), and the broader executive team.

This role is remote and open to candidates between UTC-8 and UTC+1.

Why This Role

• Be the trusted finance advisor to Product & Technology leadership, with a real voice in how we invest more than $100M in people, infrastructure, and partners.
• Work on infrastructure that serves more than 20 billion views per month.
• Drive projects with impact and executive visibility, including our CPTO and CFO.
• Shape the future of our business partner function by leading projects, setting standards, and mentoring other analysts.
• Join a collaborative, globally distributed team that values knowledge sharing.

Responsibilities

Finance Partner to Product & Technology

• Act as the lead finance partner to department leaders and budget owners, providing analysis that informs prioritization and investment trade-offs.
• Join planning and roadmap conversations early as the voice of finance, raising tradeoffs and risks before commitments are made.
• Provide the financial voice in business strategy across our technical infrastructure and product development objectives.
• Translate roadmaps from teams like SRE, AI/ML, and Data Engineering into budgets, forecasts, and headcount and contractor plans.
• Lead annual budgeting, quarterly reforecasting, and multi-year planning for your departments.
• Facilitate vendor spend optimization across cloud, hosting, software, and contractor support.

Capital and Technical Accounting Planning

• Lead data center and infrastructure CAPEX planning, including capacity, hardware refresh, and depreciation impacts.
• Partner with Accounting on software capitalization, including project classification and capitalizable labor and contractor costs.
• Model total cost of ownership and build-versus-buy decisions, and communicate their financial impact clearly to non-finance leaders.

Insight and Reporting

• Lead month-end close, forecasting, and variance analysis, with clear commentary on drivers, risks, and opportunities.
• Present resource plans and financial performance to senior leaders, including our CPTO and CFO.
• Build and maintain dashboards that connect spend to technical and product outcomes.

Leadership and Mentorship

• Coach and mentor FP&A analysts on modeling, analysis, and stakeholder partnership, including reviewing work and building executive-ready communication.
• Help set the standard for financial business partnership and share best practices across the team.
• Lead projects that improve the function, from scoping through roll-out, including streamlining multi-year modeling and departmental reporting.
• Help manage our financial planning and reporting system, including documentation, process improvements, and new module roll-outs.

Qualifications

Required

• Bachelor's degree plus 7+ years of experience in FP&A, financial business partnering, or corporate finance, including experience supporting a technology, engineering, or product organization.
• Experience partnering with technical and product teams, and the curiosity to learn how they work.
• Experience working at a strategic level on business and organizational-wide goals.
• Strong financial modeling and analytical skills, with excellent written and verbal communication (including presenting to executives).
• Track record of building credibility with senior stakeholders and influencing without authority.
• Experience supporting multiple divisions, mentoring analysts, and leading process improvement projects.

Preferred

• Tech-specific planning experience, such as data center/infrastructure CAPEX, software capitalization (ASC 350-40), headcount planning, and vendor spend.
• Experience with Workday Adaptive Planning.
• Finance business intelligence and reporting experience.
• Experience in a nonprofit, open-source, or mission-driven organization.
• An understanding of the free culture, free software, or online rights movements.
• MBA or CPA credential.

Travel Expectations

• Frequency: 2–3 trips per year (international and domestic).
• Purpose: Annual department offsite, strategy alignment with Product & Tech leadership, and global community conferences.