What are the responsibilities and job description for the Director, Financial Planning and Analysis position at Celanese?
Overview
The Director of Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) plays a critical leadership role in driving financial insight, strategic decision-making, and performance management across the business. This role partners closely with senior business leaders to translate strategy into actionable financial plans, deliver forward-looking analysis, and ensure sustained value creation. The Director leads planning, forecasting, and reporting processes while mentoring a high-performing FP&A team.
Responsibilities
Financial Planning, Forecasting & Analysis
Education
The Director of Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) plays a critical leadership role in driving financial insight, strategic decision-making, and performance management across the business. This role partners closely with senior business leaders to translate strategy into actionable financial plans, deliver forward-looking analysis, and ensure sustained value creation. The Director leads planning, forecasting, and reporting processes while mentoring a high-performing FP&A team.
Responsibilities
Financial Planning, Forecasting & Analysis
- Lead the annual budgeting, rolling forecast, and long-range planning processes, translating business strategy into financial plans and scenario analyses to assess risks and opportunities.
- Validate monthly business actual financial results, partnering closely with Accounting and Controllership to ensure accuracy, completeness, and consistency of reported financials
- Deliver timely and insightful variance analysis against forecast, identifying key performance drivers and recommending corrective actions.
- Drive continuous improvement in forecasting accuracy, reporting efficiency, and analytical rigor.
- Act as a trusted finance partner to senior business and functional leaders, providing data-driven insights to support strategic initiatives, investments, and resource allocation.
- Develop and maintain robust financial models to support business cases, pricing decisions, and profitability analysis.
- Support M&A, capital investment, and other strategic initiatives through financial modeling, valuation, and post-investment performance tracking.
- Enhance FP&A processes, tools, and systems to improve scalability, automation, and insight generation.
- Partner with IT and finance transformation teams on planning system enhancements and data model improvements.
- Ensure strong governance, controls, and documentation across planning and reporting processes.
Education
- Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, or a related field required
- MBA, CPA, CFA, or equivalent advanced qualification preferred
- 10 years of progressive experience in FP&A, corporate finance, or related roles, with demonstrated business partnership at a senior level
- Prior experience leading and developing high-performing teams
- Industry experience in a complex, matrixed, or global organization preferred
- Strong strategic and analytical capabilities with the ability to simplify complex financial information
- Excellent communication and influencing skills, including executive-level financial storytelling
- Advanced financial modeling and scenario analysis expertise
- Strong systems aptitude to ERP and financial reporting system (SAP and BPC) and high proficiency in Excel
- Proven ability to manage multiple priorities, ambiguity, and tight deadlines
- Business-oriented, proactive, and results-driven
- Collaborative partner with strong commercial acumen
- Comfortable challenging assumptions and driving change
- High integrity and commitment to sound financial governance