Strategic Finance Manager, Operations

About CookUnity: Food has lost its soul to modern convenience. And with it, it has lost the power to nourish, inspire, and connect us. So in 2018, CookUnity was founded as the first-of-its-kind platform that connects the world with the source of truly great food: chefs. Today, CookUnity delivers 50 million meals a year from the industry’s best chefs to homes all over the country. Fresh. Ready-to-eat. And crafted with the passion that nourishes body and soul. Unwilling to stop there, CookUnity is expanding beyond delivery to become an ever-innovating marketplace focused on our singular mission: empower Chefs to nourish the world. If that mission has you hungry in more ways than one, you’ve found the right job posting. About the Team: The Finance team partners with Operations to turn business priorities into disciplined investment decisions and stronger operating performance. Working closely with leaders across our kitchens, fulfillment, supply chain, and expansion initiatives, we connect financial planning with the realities of running and scaling CookUnity’s operations. The role: As our Strategic Finance Manager, Operations you will combine rigorous financial analysis with hands-on partnership across our operations. You will help teams identify where performance can improve, determine which investments are worth making, and translate those decisions into measurable results. Expansion and automation will be important areas of focus, alongside opportunities to improve efficiency across the business. You will spend time with operators to understand how work gets done, challenge assumptions, and build practical business cases. You will also bring financial discipline to planning and performance reviews, ensuring that insights lead to clear decisions and follow-through. This role suits a finance professional who is comfortable building a model from scratch, working directly with operating teams, and influencing decisions in a fast-moving environment. Responsibilities: - Partner directly with operating teams to understand workflows, investigate performance gaps, and translate drivers such as labor productivity, throughput, and capacity utilization into practical improvement opportunities. - Build financial models and business cases for expansion, automation, and other operational investments, comparing scenarios and evaluating expected returns, cash requirements, implementation risks, and key assumptions. - Help leaders prioritize initiatives and allocate resources, translating operational plans into financial targets and forecasts. - Partner with initiative owners to establish baselines and success measures, compare results with the approved business case, and recommend corrective actions when outcomes differ from expectations. - Lead financial performance reviews for your areas of responsibility, explaining the drivers behind results and recommending actions to address risks and opportunities. - Develop clear reporting and decision tools that connect operational metrics with financial outcomes and make performance visible to stakeholders. - Partner across Finance and Operations to improve planning processes, data quality, and accountability as the business scales. Qualifications: - At least 6 years of experience in operations finance, FP&A, or a closely related analytical role, with a track record of influencing operational or investment decisions. - Advanced financial modeling skills, including building models from the ground up and translating operational drivers into financial outcomes. - Ability to work with imperfect operational data, validate assumptions with business partners, and turn analysis into clear, actionable recommendations. - Strong business partnering skills, with the confidence to challenge assumptions constructively and work effectively with both operators and senior leaders. - A hands-on approach to understanding operations, solving ambiguous problems, and building processes in a growing business. - Working knowledge of accounting principles and financial controls, with strong attention to detail and sound commercial judgment. - Willingness to travel to operating sites and work directly with local teams. - Ability to leverage generative AI to increase output quality and speed. Preferred requirements: - Experience in a business with complex physical operations, such as food production, fulfillment, logistics, retail, or manufacturing. - Exposure to expansion, automation, or capital investment projects, including evaluation of results after implementation. - Experience using FP&A or business intelligence tools to improve planning and performance analysis. Learn More About CookUnity We believe great leadership starts with alignment on vision, values, and ways of working. To give you deeper insight into who we are and what we’re looking for, we invite you to explore: CookUnity's Leadership Principles – The values and behaviors that guide how we operate, collaborate, and scale. We hope this provides valuable insight into our culture and product vision. If this excites you, we’d love to connect! Benefits 🩺  Health Insurance coverage 🌅 401k Plan 📈 We grow, you grow: Stock Options Plan granted on Day 1 🌟 Eligible for a bi-annual performance bonus ⛱ Unlimited PTO 🗓️ 5- year Sabbatical: After 5 years with CookUnity, you get a 4-week paid sabbatical 🐣 Paid Family leave 🕯 Compassionate Leave: 3-5 days each time the need arises 🤖 AI-forward workplace: enterprise access to ChatGPT and Claude to help you work smarter and grow faster. 🥘 A generous amount of CookUnity credits to enjoy our amazing meals, added to your account, monthly 🧘🏽‍♀️ Wellness perks: access to fitness subsidies to build a healthy lifestyle 👩🏾‍🏫 Personalized Spanish coach 🚀 Awesome opportunity to join a company that is looking to change how we eat and how chefs work! Compensation All final pay rates will be determined by candidates experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities of the applicant, internal equity, and alignment with market data. Pay Range for this position $160,000—$175,000 USD If you’re interested in this role, please submit your application, and if we think you might be a fit, we'll get in touch with you. Thank you for your time! CookUnity is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are dedicated to creating a community of inclusion and an environment free from discrimination or harassment. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, citizenship status, protected veteran status, genetic information, or physical or mental disability. A quick note for all candidates We’ve recently seen an increase in recruitment scams across the industry, and we want to make sure you (and your data) stay safe while applying to CookUnity. We also want you to know that we take this seriously — sometimes, as part of our process, we may ask for a brief “proof of humanity” to confirm that we’re connecting with a real person, not an impersonator. Here are a few tips to help you protect yourself and know what to expect from us: - Apply only through our official channels. All open roles are listed on our official careers page: careers.cookunity.com - Our recruiters are real people — and easy to verify. You can always find them on LinkedIn with verified profiles. If you’re unsure, feel free to reach out to us on our official LinkedIn Company Page. - We only communicate through official CookUnity channels. That means emails ending in @cookunity.com and interviews held through official company platforms (Google Meet or Zoom) — never WhatsApp, Telegram, or SMS. - We’ll never ask for payment or personal financial details. If anyone does, please don’t share any information and let us know right away. If something ever feels off or you’re unsure about a message, we’d much rather you double-check with us. You can always contact us directly through any of our social media channels. We appreciate your interest in joining CookUnity — and we care about keeping your experience (and safety) as genuine as possible.