Director of Finance - Corporate Planning

Who We Are

Applied Materials is the global leader in materials science and engineering solutions that are at the foundation of virtually every new semiconductor chip and advanced display in the world. The equipment that we create and service is essential to advancing AI and accelerating the commercialization of next-generation semiconductor chips. Join us and push the boundaries of materials science and engineering in a company at the foundation of the electronics industry. The work we do together advances the world’s technology.

What We Offer

Salary:

$172,000.00 - $237,000.00

Location:

Santa Clara,CA

You’ll benefit from a supportive work culture that encourages you to learn, develop, and grow your career as you take on challenges and drive innovative solutions for our customers. We empower our team to push the boundaries of what is possible—while learning every day in a supportive leading global company. Visit our Careers website to learn more. 

At Applied Materials, we care about the health and wellbeing of our employees. We’re committed to providing programs and support that encourage personal and professional growth and care for you at work, at home, or wherever you may go. Learn more about our benefits. 

About the Role:

We are seeking a Director of Finance within Corporate FP&A to provide enterprise leadership across the company’s financial planning, forecasting, and reporting processes, while helping execute on the roadmap for the future of FP&A. This role will partner with senior finance and business leaders to drive alignment on financial outlook, risks and opportunities, and executive decision support, while advancing the processes, systems, data, and capabilities required for a more efficient, scalable, and integrated planning and reporting environment.

Responsibilities:

Financial Planning, Forecasting & Reporting Leadership (50% of role)

Drive the company's financial planning and reporting cadence by establishing requirements, timelines, assumptions, and governance across key forecasting and reporting cycles and by partnering closely with Segment and Business stakeholders. Ensure consistent execution, high-quality submissions, timely decision support, and alignment with executive planning and reporting needs.

• Planning Cadence: Set and govern the Corporate FP&A calendar, coordinating planning and reporting milestones, dependencies, and deliverables across multiple organizations.
• Forecasting and Reporting Requirements: Clearly communicate planning requirements, reporting guidelines, business assumptions, and milestone expectations to Segment, Business Unit, Tax, Treasury, and other finance teams to ensure consistent execution across the company.
• Consolidation and Analysis: Consolidate and analyze financial submissions across the company, identifying risks, opportunities, key business drivers, and drivers of forecast change. Ensure consistency and integrity across income statement, balance sheet, cash flow, and key operational metrics.
• Executive Reporting: Provide actionable financial insights and recommendations to senior finance leadership and executive stakeholders. Support executive, Audit Committee, Board of Directors, governmental reporting, and other strategic finance deliverables.
• Close Support: Partner closely with Accounting, Tax, Treasury, and Business Unit Finance organizations to drive resolution on reporting issues, complete financial tie-outs, and minimize surprises during close cycles.

Finance Systems, Process & Transformation Leadership (50% of role)

Help shape and advance the company's vision of building a more integrated, efficient, and scalable planning and reporting environment where financial forecasts, management reporting, close activities, and executive decision support are connected through streamlined processes, trusted data, and modern systems capabilities in partnership with Finance and IT teams.

• Planning and Reporting Transformation: Define and advance the capabilities, processes, and systems needed to create a more efficient, scalable, and integrated planning and reporting environment that improves reporting efficiency, reduces cycle times, enhances forecast accuracy, and increases transparency for business and executive stakeholders.
• Process, Data and Governance Coordination: Partner closely with the Finance Data Governance team and other finance stakeholders to standardize reporting and forecasting processes, common data definitions, governance practices, and reporting structures, improving consistency and reducing complexity across the organization.
• Continuous Finance Processes Improvements: Assess current reporting, forecasting, and close processes to identify bottlenecks, manual workarounds, data quality challenges, and opportunities for simplification and automation. Establish metrics and feedback mechanisms to continuously improve forecasting effectiveness, reporting quality, operational efficiency, and user experience. Develop a good understanding of how financial information flows within businesses and is used for decision-making to define efficient planning and reporting capabilities.
• Systems Requirements: Lead business requirements definition for future planning, consolidation, reporting, analytics, and workflow capabilities, ensuring solutions support both current operational needs and long-term strategic requirements.
• Cross Functional Partnership: Serve as the primary bridge between Corporate Finance, Financial Systems, IT, Data & Analytics teams, and external implementation partners, ensuring finance requirements are clearly translated into technical and operational solutions.

Experience supporting finance transformation initiatives and implementation of planning, reporting, consolidation, analytics, or ERP capabilities will be valuable in helping shape the company's future-state planning and reporting environment.

Skills, Knowledge, Experience & Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, Business, or a related discipline; MBA, CPA, CMA preferred.
• 10+ years of progressive finance experience. Demonstrated experience in planning, reporting, and performance management processes for a large, complex, global organization.
• Experience supporting senior executives and high-level strategic and operational decisions.
• Exceptional analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to synthesize complex information into clear recommendations for executive audiences.
• Strong leadership, communication, and interpersonal skills, and ability to manage across functions and organizational level relationships.
• Experience supporting large-scale finance transformation, process improvement, systems implementation, or analytics initiatives.
• Strong familiarity with enterprise ERP environments, particularly SAP (ECC and/or S/4HANA), including financial data structures, reporting hierarchies, and data extraction.
• Experience with one or more enterprise planning and performance management platforms such as Anaplan, OneStream, SAP Analytics Cloud, Oracle EPM, or equivalent, including model design, implementation, and adoption at scale.
• Working understanding of enterprise data warehouse and data governance concepts.

Additional Information

Time Type:

Full time

Employee Type:

Assignee / Regular

Travel:

Yes, 20% of the Time

Relocation Eligible:

Yes

The salary offered to a selected candidate will be based on multiple factors including location, hire grade, job-related knowledge, skills, experience, and with consideration of internal equity of our current team members. In addition to a comprehensive benefits package, candidates may be eligible for other forms of compensation such as participation in a bonus and a stock award program, as applicable.

For all sales roles, the posted salary range is the Target Total Cash (TTC) range for the role, which is the sum of base salary and target bonus amount at 100% goal achievement.

Applied Materials is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, national origin, citizenship, ancestry, religion, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, disability, veteran or military status, or any other basis prohibited by law.

In addition, Applied endeavors to make our careers site accessible to all users. If you would like to contact us regarding accessibility of our website or need assistance completing the application process, please contact us via e-mail at [email protected], or by calling our HR Direct Help Line at 877-612-7547, option 1, and following the prompts to speak to an HR Advisor. This contact is for accommodation requests only and cannot be used to inquire about the status of applications.