Strategic Finance Lead

We're looking for a sharp, proactive Strategic Finance Lead to be the beating heart of financial planning and analysis on our Strategy & Finance team. This is a rare build-it role: you'll be our sole dedicated FP&A partner, owning the models, forecasts, and insights that guide decision-making across the company — and reporting directly to the VP of Strategy & Finance.

What makes this seat different is how we expect the work to get done. We're not looking for someone to rebuild the same static spreadsheets faster. We want a finance operator who treats AI as a core part of their toolkit — using it to sharpen forecasts, pressure-test assumptions, automate the manual, and surface the insights that move the business. If you're energized by the idea of shaping both the numbers and the way modern finance gets done, this is your role.

You'll join a fast-paced, mission-driven Series B environment where your analysis directly informs how leadership allocates capital, sets targets, and places bets. You'll partner across every function, develop a deep understanding of the business, and see your work reflected in the decisions that shape our trajectory.

• →Own forecasting, budgeting, and long-range planning — build and maintain the financial models that drive the annual budget, quarterly and monthly forecasts, and multi-year strategic plans.
• →Run the planning cycles end to end — partner with department heads to build plans that are both realistic and ambitious, and hold the process together as the single owner of FP&A.
• →Turn results into insight — analyze actuals against budget and forecast, explain the variances, and translate what happened into what we should do next.
• →Define and track the metrics that matter — develop KPIs and build clear, trustworthy dashboards and reporting that tell leadership the truth about performance quickly.
• →Be a true business partner — embed with Sales, Marketing, Product, Engineering, and Operations to support strategic initiatives with financial analysis and a point of view.
• →Inform the big decisions — prepare board-quality analysis and presentations for the executive team on financial performance, unit economics, and key business drivers.
• →Support strategic and ad-hoc work — model scenarios for fundraising, new product launches, pricing, and market expansion, and stand up analysis on whatever question is most important that week.
• →Raise the bar on how finance operates — drive process improvements across the FP&A function to make it faster, more accurate, and more scalable as the company grows.

We believe AI is reshaping what a lean finance team can accomplish, and we want someone who is already leaning into it — or hungry to. This isn't a buzzword on the JD; it's a real expectation of how you'll work day to day. In this role, you'll:

• Sharpen forecasting and modeling with AI — use AI tools and techniques to improve forecast accuracy, test assumptions, run scenarios faster, and stress-test the models behind key decisions.
• Automate the manual — apply AI to streamline data gathering, reconciliation, reporting, and the repetitive parts of the close and planning cycles, so your time goes to analysis instead of assembly.
• Generate insight, not just outputs — use AI to interrogate large and messy datasets, surface patterns and anomalies, and pull out the business insights that drive decisions.
• Help set the standard — experiment with new AI-enabled finance tools and workflows, and help establish how our finance function uses AI responsibly and effectively as we scale.

Salary Band in U.S.: $160,000-$220,000 + meaningful early-stage equity + benefits

Founded in 2017, Afresh is using AI to tackle the #1 solution to curb climate change: reducing food waste. By building AI specifically for the intricacies of grocery—from the fresh perimeter to the center store—we help grocers minimize waste and maximize sales.

Afresh sits at an incredible intersection of positive social impact, rocket ship financial growth, and cutting-edge technology. Our best-in-class AI research has been published in top journals, including ICML, and our investors include Al Gore’s Just Climate, former Whole Foods Market CEO Walter Robb, and Eric Schmidt's Innovation Endeavors.

Grocery is the past, present, and future of our food system – the waste we create today will impact our planet for years to come. Join us as we continue to build a vibrant, diverse, and inclusive team that embodies our company’s values of proactivity, kindness, candor, and humility.

Here at Afresh, many of our employees work remotely provided that they reside in one of the following states: AL, AR, CA, CO, FL, GA, IL, KY, MA, MI, MT, MO, NV, NJ, NY, NC, OR, PA, TX, WA, UT, VA, WI.