Senior Cost and Profitability Analyst

ABOUT MACHINE SCIENCES

Machine Sciences is a precision manufacturing platform serving aerospace, defense, and space. Founded in 2001 and headquartered in Tualatin, Oregon, the platform has grown by acquisition to more than 400 people across precision machining, metal finishing, metal spinning, and hot isostatic pressing, with operations in Oregon, California, Illinois, and Florida. The platform is ITAR-registered and builds mission-critical components for the most demanding programs in the country. Machine Sciences is a portfolio company of Viking Global Investors.

WHO WE WANT

A platform this size, assembled this fast, outruns a cost model built for a single shop. That is where the Senior Cost & Profitability Analyst comes in. We want someone energized by making change happen, and intrinsically motivated to build the systems, calculations, and processes that make actual cost the ground truth: accurate, current, and traceable. Then to use them to answer the profitability question at all three points in a job’s life:

• Before we take it on. Will this quote make money at what the work will really cost?
• While it runs. Are we on plan, milestone by milestone, while there is still time to act?
• After it ships. Where exactly did we win and lose, answered fast enough and completely enough to change the next quote.

We need a cross-functional, autonomous operator. You will move between Sales, Estimating, Operations, and Planning without waiting to be handed the question, and you will have to communicate what you find well enough that people act on it. Mindset decides who succeeds in this role, not tenure.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Cost Ground Truth in ProShop

• Own how cost is captured in ProShop: routings, work centers, time tracking, burden and labor rates, material and outside processing, plus the integrity of the data behind all of it.
• Work directly with the ProShop team on substantive changes to the system so the ERP mirrors operational reality instead of approximating it.
• Set the data discipline the floor lives by: clock accuracy, operation-level reporting, scrap and rework capture.
• Make cost traceable on demand by job, part, customer, program, work cell, and machine.
• Treat every recurring spreadsheet fix as a defect in the system. Find the root cause and close it at the source.

Before the Work: Quoting & Estimating

• Quantify quote-to-actual variance on every job that matters, and name the driver: cycle time, setup, scrap, routing, outside processing, material, or price.
• Feed demonstrated cost back into estimating: standard hours, setup times, material and outside processing assumptions, and margin floors that reflect what the work takes.
• Be the finance partner in the quote, before the number goes out.

During the Work: Planning & Production

• Track cost against plan through production milestones, and raise the flag while there is still time to act.
• Give Planning and Scheduling the cost truth they need: realistic cycle times, the true cost of the constraint, and the economics of expediting and batching.
• Chase the drivers when a job goes sideways: scrap, rework, downtime, utilization, throughput.

After the Work: Win/Loss Analysis

• Report where we won and lost by customer, part, program, and work cell, fast enough and completely enough to change the next quote. Then drive the fix, not just the finding.
• Flag the parts, customers, and programs where price no longer covers cost, and bring the recommendation with the analysis.
• Build the daily and weekly reporting the business runs on, automated from ProShop and trusted enough to kill the shadow copies.

Standard Costing & Close Support

• Partner with the Corporate Controller on inventory valuation, WIP integrity, absorption, and the close.
• Own manufacturing variance analysis: purchase price, material usage, labor efficiency, and overhead. Explain the why, not just the what.
• Run the annual standard cost roll, and keep standards current enough to be useful between rolls.

Systems, AI & Platform

• Use AI as production infrastructure, building analyses, models, and automation with it rather than asking it questions. Manual effort should fall every quarter, not rise.
• Command SQL, Python, the ProShop API, and BI tooling, and document what you build so it survives you.
• Support the platform’s other operating companies as they scale, on cost definitions common enough that a margin at one site means what it means at another.

HOW THIS ROLE IS MEASURED

• Cost accuracy in ProShop, measured against the floor rather than against last month’s report.
• Quote-to-actual variance, and how quickly it narrows.
• Share of revenue covered by a cost model we trust without a manual adjustment.
• Margin latency: how long after a job runs before we know what it made.
• Pricing, routing, and capacity decisions changed by your analysis, and what those changes were worth.

THE FIRST SIX MONTHS

First 60 days

• Learn the plant. Walk the floor, sit with estimators, planners, and cell leads, and follow a job end to end.
• Map how cost flows through ProShop today, and say plainly where it diverges from reality.
• Put a prioritized fix plan in front of leadership, sequenced by margin impact rather than by ease.

By three months

• Corrected burden and rate structure live in production, with the reasoning documented.
• Job-level margin reporting running automatically across the majority of revenue.
• First round of estimating standards updated from demonstrated cost.

By six months

• A working loop between cost, quoting, planning, and scheduling that runs on a cadence, not on your reminders.
• The Machine Sciences cost model documented well enough to serve as the platform reference.
• You are who Sales and Operations call before a price, a routing, or a capacity decision, not after.

QUALIFICATIONS

• Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, Finance, Industrial Engineering, Operations, or a related field.
• 3 years in cost accounting, manufacturing finance, or operations analysis. Ability over tenure.
• Command of the fundamentals: job costing, standard costing, WIP, inventory, absorption, and variance.
• Demonstrated ownership of an ERP or MES system, not just using one but changing it.
• Advanced Excel, plus real fluency in at least one of SQL, Python, or a modern BI tool.
• Real AI fluency. We build analyses, models, and automation with it every day, not as a novelty.
• Comfortable on a shop floor. This role is not run from a conference room.
• On-site in Tualatin, Oregon, full time.

BONUS POINTS

• ProShop experience. Rare, and worth a great deal to us.
• CPA, CMA, or CPIM. A plus, not a requirement.
• Aerospace, defense, or precision machining background.
• Lean, Six Sigma, or Theory of Constraints fluency.
• Cost structure work in a multi-entity or private equity-backed environment.

SKILLS & COMPETENCIES

• Systems thinker. Sees the whole path from quote to cash and fixes the mechanism, not the symptom.
• Financially and operationally bilingual. Talks margin with the CFO and cycle time with a machinist.
• Tugs on the thread. Curious about anomalies and unwilling to let an unexplained number stand.
• Builder, not a reporter. Judges the work by what changed, not by what was published.
• Urgent and durable. Fixes it this week, then builds the process so it stays fixed.
• Direct communicator. Brings the number, the driver, and the recommendation, then defends all three.
• Builds with AI. Production tooling, not a search engine. Come ready to show what you have built.
• Hungry. Wants a bigger job in three years and intends to earn it.

CORE VALUES

Taken very seriously. We hire, review, and fire by these standards: Hungry, Humble, Smart, Collaborative.