What are the responsibilities and job description for the Senior Financial Analyst position at Montana Knife Company?
About Montana Knife Company (MKC)
Montana Knife Company is building more than premium American-made knifes. We are building a brand around craftsmanship, grit, quality, and bringing American manufacturing back one knife at a time. In addition to manufacturing, we are a direct-to-consumer business, and every financial decision must drive measurable results, protect margin, and support long-term brand growth.
The Role
The Senior Financial Analyst owns budgeting, forecasting, and demand planning. You will build the annual budget, run the monthly variance process, forecast demand down to the SKU-level, and analyze the manufacturing costs that go into making a knife. You will work directly with operations, production, supply chain, and marketing, and help all teams manage their budgets. Our finance function is young, and much of the reporting, costing, and planning infrastructure is still being built. You will help build it, then run it. The role is on-site in Missoula. This work depends on being able to walk the shop floor, see the inventory, and sit down with the teams you support.
What You’ll Do
Budgeting and Variance Analysis
- Develop the annual budget alongside department owners, challenging assumptions, and translating their plans into numbers
- Consolidate department budgets into a company-wide plan
- Run the monthly budget-vs-actual cycle, including variance meetings with department owners
- Translate variances into plain-language and provide specific corrective recommendations
Forecasting and Pro Formas
- Maintain a rolling forecast across P&L, balance sheet, and cash flow
- Build pro formas for new products, capital equipment, hiring plans, business expansions, and facility decisions, including modeling working capital and cash implications
Demand Planning
- Build demand forecasts by SKU and translate them into purchase and production order recommendations
- Balance service levels against inventory investment, and own the analysis behind stock-out and overstock outcomes
- Partner with operations and supply chain on production planning while considering manufacturing capacity, lead times, and cash implications
Manufacturing Cost Analysis
- Analyze material, labor, and overhead variances, including purchase price variances, usage, rate/efficiency, and overhead absorption
- Maintain and audit standard costs and BOMs: investigate drift between standard and actual
- Quantify margin by product, category, and channel, and identify where cost is leaking
Business Partnering
- Build reporting and dashboards that people outside of finance actually use
- Support NetSuite go-live and help shape reporting, costing, and segmentation
- Bring forward the analysis nobody asked for when the numbers say someone should have
What We’re Looking For
Required
- 5 years of progressive FP&A experience, with clear growth in scope and ownership
- Advanced financial modeling: three-statement models, driver-based forecasts, and scenario analysis built from scratch
- Expert-level Excel: comfort working with large, messy data sets
- Strong grounding in accounting fundamentals- you can read a P&L and a balance sheet and know when something is wrong
- Ability to explain financial results to people who don’t work in finance
- Self-directed. You can take an ambiguous question and come back with a structured answer
Preferred
- Experience in manufacturing or direct-to-consumer
- Manufacturing cost accounting exposure: standard costing, BOMs, absorption, and variance analysis
- Demand planning or inventory planning experience, especially with SKU-level color and size breakouts
- NetSuite experience, particularly with saved searches, reporting, and manufacturing or inventory modules
- Genuine interest in what we make. Hunters, outdoorsmen, cooks, and gear people tend to do well here.
Why This Role
- Real ownership of the budget, forecasting, and demand planning
- A chance to build financial infrastructure at a company that’s growing fast
- Work you can see. The forecasts you build turn into steel on the shop floor next quarter
Benefits
- Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance
- Generous paid time off and holiday schedule
- 401k match
- Employee discounts on MKC products
- A high-impact, entrepreneurial environment where your work directly shapes our growth trajectory