Finance & AI Analyst - AI/Automation

The Role

At Cognitiv, we're building the next generation of finance. As our first Finance & AI Analyst, you'll combine financial expertise with hands-on technical skills to transform how Finance accesses data, builds reporting, and makes business decisions. 

With a next gen ERP platform, a new order management system, and an evolving data stack, you'll build the automation, reporting, and analytical capabilities that enable Finance to move faster and make smarter decisions. You'll use SQL and Python to pull, transform, and structure data, work directly with APIs and technical documentation to connect platforms, and leverage AI to accelerate development and scale what you build.

Alongside building these capabilities, you'll own core financial planning and analysis responsibilities, including budgeting, forecasting, cash flow management, and executive reporting. You'll have the opportunity to shape how Finance operates at a growing technology company, with significant ownership over both the financial analysis and the systems that support it.

This is an ideal opportunity for someone who enjoys building systems from the ground up, is excited by automation workflows, and wants to redefine how Finance operates and strategizes inside a fast-growing technology company.

This position will be located in New York City with a hybrid work schedule of 3 days in office (Monday–Wednesday) and 2 optional remote days (Thursday–Friday).

What You'll Do

• Build and Automate Finance Data Workflows: Use SQL and Python to query, transform, and validate data across our data warehouse, ERP, order management system, and advertising platforms. Work directly with API documentation to understand how systems expose data and build workflows that connect platforms, automate recurring processes, and make reporting reliable, repeatable, and scalable. Leverage AI to accelerate development and reduce manual work across the Finance function.

• Decision Support & Reporting: Develop on-demand reporting and analytical tools that provide real-time visibility into company performance. Produce board and executive reporting packages and forward-looking analyses that support strategic decision-making, including product mix and profitability.

• Planning & Forecasting: Lead the annual budgeting process and maintain the company's three-year financial model. Partner closely with HR on headcount planning, compensation forecasting, and workforce modeling, while conducting scenario analyses to support strategic business decisions.

• Cash Flow & Corporate Finance: Own weekly cash positioning, liquidity planning, and cash flow forecasting to support corporate finance activities and ensure proactive cash management.

Who You Are

• The Foundation: Bachelor's degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, or a related field.
• Finance First: 3 to 5 years of experience in FP&A, corporate finance, strategic finance, or another highly analytical finance function.
• Strong SQL Skills: Comfortable independently querying a data warehouse and working with complex datasets. You can join data across multiple tables, transform and aggregate data, investigate discrepancies, and build the queries needed to answer business questions without relying on a data team for every request.
• Comfortable Working with APIs and Technical Documentation: Able to read API documentation, understand how systems expose and structure data, and use that information to retrieve data or connect workflows across platforms. You're comfortable figuring out how an unfamiliar system works rather than waiting for someone else to provide the answer.
• AI as a Force Multiplier: Actively use AI tools to accelerate technical work, from drafting and debugging code to exploring automation opportunities. You understand that AI can help you build faster, but you can independently evaluate its output, identify errors, and validate that the underlying logic is correct.
• Relentlessly curious: You are not satisfied reporting that a number moved; you want to know why it moved, and you surface the metrics leadership did not know to ask for.
• Decision-minded: You frame the question leadership should be asking, design the scenarios, tell the story, and act as the human check on the AI before its output reaches the team.
• Planning for What's Next: Strong understanding of budgeting, forecasting, financial planning, and financial modeling.
• Numbers into Narratives: Exceptional analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to translate complex financial data into actionable business insights and recommendations.
• Influence Through Insight: Strong written and verbal communication skills, with experience presenting to both finance and cross-functional stakeholders.
• Builder's Mentality: A proactive, self-directed individual who enjoys creating new processes, driving automation, and thriving in environments with significant ownership and ambiguity.

Bonus Points If You Have

• CPA or CFA designation (or working toward one).
• Experience implementing or optimizing ERP or financial planning systems.
• Experience at a high-growth AdTech company.