Vice President of Finance

About the business

Etude operates in insurance, commercial real estate, and industrials. Our insurance business covers more than 5,000 properties with billions of dollars in insured value. Our real estate business owns approximately $1B of commercial property alongside the Kinder Family Office. Our industrial business is developing a multibillion-dollar, 40-acre steelworks to secure the domestic supply chain for electrical infrastructure.

About the team

We are roughly a 100-person team. We hire high-agency people and give them autonomy, responsibility, and diverse problems to work on. We operate with the intensity of a small company where every person's work is visible and believe responsiveness is a form of respect. If you're looking for a place to sharpen your craft alongside people who take their work seriously, you'll fit right in.

About the Role

You will own the financial performance of Etude's investment portfolio: budgeting, forecasting, investor and lender relations, and analysis of property- and investment-level results. You will work directly with our CEO, CFO, and senior leadership; oversee institutional third-party operators and in-house teams; and have direct influence on acquisitions, financing, dispositions, and our growth strategy.

You will build the systems to see the portfolio from 10,000 feet, then get directly involved in major transactions, including negotiating with counterparties, understanding legal contracts and structuring deals to maximize return on equity. Our data and accounting teams build the pipelines and run the close; you set the standards and drive the decisions (while financial controls/audit experience is a plus, this is an operating and decision-making seat, not a reporting one.)

Etude uses AI tools, agents, and automated workflows across every aspect of our business; are looking for someone energized what is newly possible and with experience using LLM tools to drive business outcomes, so the team spends its time on decisions rather than spreadsheets.

We are looking for a hands-on executive who can walk into ambiguity, self-direct, design process where none exists and deliver measurable results in the first 3–6 months.

The Problem You'll Solve

Every month we receive a large volume of financial and operating data from third-party property managers (P&Ls, rent rolls, occupancy, rate, delinquency and marketing, each in its own format) and from Etude's other companies and investments. We need a finance leader who turns that data into a finance dashboard spanning every Etude division, a disciplined plan, a reliable forecast and a credible investor story by answering four questions for every store, investment, division and the portfolio:

1. Are we on budget, and will we stay there? What does the current forecast say about the rest of the year, and how confident are we in it?

2. Is this property, investment or division healthy, or are the numbers hiding a problem? What does a critical read of the P&L, rent roll and balance sheet actually tell us?

3. Why? Is the variance driven by occupancy, street rate, concessions, delinquency, payroll, marketing, taxes or something else, and is it the operator, the market or the plan?

4. What do we tell our investors, and what are we doing about it? A clear, accurate narrative backed by data and an owned, time-bound action plan.

What You'll Do

1. Budgeting

• Own the annual operating and capital budget for the entire portfolio and rolled up by store, operator, market and investment vehicle (joint venture and wholly owned), and the cash flow plan for the equity and credit investments.

• Challenge operator submissions until every line is defensible.

• Build budgets for new acquisitions and lease-ups that tie back to underwriting, and integrate them into the portfolio plan on day one.

• Work with asset management team on the capital expenditure budget, sized by NOI impact and return on investment.

• Present the annual budget to the CEO and capital partners, and own budget attainment throughout the year.

2. Forecasting

• Own the monthly and quarterly reforecast process, producing a rolling full-year and multi-year view of revenue, NOI, capex and cash flow by store and for the portfolio.

• Build and maintain the consolidated financial model across real estate and the equity and credit investments: cash flow, liquidity, debt service, covenant compliance and distributions.

• Run scenario and sensitivity analysis (rate, occupancy, interest rate, acquisition pace, disposition timing) to inform capital allocation, financing and hold/sell decisions.

• Track forecast accuracy over time and continually tighten the drivers and assumptions behind it.

• Partner with acquisitions on underwriting assumptions and run post-acquisition look-backs against the original underwriting.

3. Investor and counterparty relations

• Serve as the primary finance point of contact for the CEO, capital partners and lenders on portfolio performance, including quarterly reviews with our joint venture partners and ongoing work with bulge-bracket lenders.

• Own the monthly and quarterly investor reporting package: portfolio summary, fund- and store-level performance, budget and forecast variance commentary, watch list, capital projects, acquisition and development updates, and the equity and credit investments.

• Own lender reporting and covenant compliance across the CMBS and bridge financing, and lead financings, acquisitions and dispositions with counterparties, knowing the loan, purchase and joint venture documents and shaping structure to maximize return on equity.

4. Property- and investment-level financial analysis and operator accountability

• Critically analyze every store's P&L, balance sheet and rent roll, and every other investment's reporting, each month, looking past headline NOI to test revenue quality, expense classification, accruals and one-time items.

• Diagnose variances to budget and forecast at the line-item level and attribute revenue variance to its drivers: occupancy, concessions, fees and bad debt.

• Build an early-warning framework that flags struggling stores from leading indicators, not just after NOI has already missed.

• Benchmark stores against budget, prior year, underwriting, peer stores in the portfolio and local market comps (rental comps, REIT market data).

• Lead monthly and quarterly financial performance reviews with third-party operators (including CubeSmart and Extra Space Storage): challenge results, agree on corrective actions with a named owner and target date, and track them to resolution.

• Identify and size revenue enhancements (rate, occupancy, fees, ancillary income) and cost reductions (payroll, marketing, R&M, utilities, vendors, property tax), prioritized by NOI impact.

5. Reporting system, team and AI

• Design and build Etude's financial reporting and analytics system: one source of truth for budget, actuals, forecast and KPIs across every Etude company, vehicle and store, with the data team building the pipelines and the accounting team owning the close.

• Run the monthly business review with the CEO and CFO: one view of the health of every division that drives decisions, not just discussion.

• Build and lead the finance team, hiring and developing analysts and managers as the portfolio grows.

• With the accounting team, standardize every operator's chart of accounts and set the controls, close calendar and validation checks that catch errors before anything reaches investors.

• Champion AI across the function: direct and build AI skills, agents and automated workflows that ingest operator files, run variance diagnostics and draft reporting, with review controls so every number is traceable and correct.

Why This Role

• Direct CEO Access: Work alongside the CFO with direct exposure to the CEO and real influence on acquisitions, financing, dispositions and capital allocation.

• Prominent Partners: Direct, ongoing work with institutional operators, joint venture partners and bulge-bracket lenders.

• Build the Function: An AI-first operating seat where you design the systems, processes, tools and team from the ground up.

Who You Are

Required

• 12+ years in finance, FP&A, asset management or investment management, including 5+ years in self storage or commercial real estate at an institutional owner, REIT, operator or fund.

• Prior senior finance leadership (VP, Director of Finance or Head of FP&A) with ownership of an annual budget and forecast for a multi-asset portfolio of comparable scale.

• Deep, hands-on budgeting and forecasting expertise: building driver-based budgets and rolling forecasts, and explaining variances in a way that leads to action.

• Direct investor relations experience: owning reporting and relationships with family offices, LPs, institutional capital partners and/or lenders, and presenting to them with confidence.

• A sharp, skeptical eye: able to read a store P&L, balance sheet and rent roll and quickly find what is wrong, what is missing and what is driving NOI.

• Advanced financial modeling and Excel; fluency with CRE financing (CMBS, lender reporting, covenant compliance) and with loan, purchase and joint venture documents.

• Track record of replacing manual processes with scalable reporting systems, using AI and automation (Claude, Claude Code) and BI tools (Power BI, Tableau or similar).

• Proven people leader who can build a team and lead through data, accounting and legal partners.

• High agency and high urgency: comfortable in a lean, founder-led environment with broad responsibility and limited bureaucracy.

• Clear, concise writer and communicator who can turn numbers into a story and a plan.

• Bachelor's degree in finance, accounting, economics, real estate or a related field.

Preferred

• CPA, CFA or MBA.

• Experience in debt capital markets, capital raising or equity and credit investing beyond real estate.

• Exposure to acquisitions underwriting, lease-up and development tracking, and dispositions.

• Exposure to public markets or REIT reporting standards.

• Experience with Python, SQL and/or Claude.

• Hands-on knowledge of self storage economics: revenue management, ECRI programs, occupancy and rate dynamics, delinquency and auctions, and the drivers of store-level NOI.

If you don't have all the qualifications listed, don't worry! We understand everyone's career path is unique and still encourage you to apply if you feel this role is aligned with your career trajectory.

Employment at Etude is contingent upon a satisfactory verification of a general and criminal background check.