Business Unit CFO

About The Role

As Kinder’s enters its next growth phase, the organization is moving to a General Manager-led model, with each General Manager (GM) fully accountable for the results of their Business Unit. The BU CFO will be the GM’s finance partner and a core member of the Business Unit leadership team, effectively the CFO of the Business Unit. This role co-owns the Business Unit's results with the GM: shaping strategic choices, setting financial targets, driving the actions that deliver them, and holding the team accountable for profitable growth, margin, and cash.

The BU CFO Lead operates within the GM-led organizational model, leveraging horizontal Finance teams that provide enterprise-wide expertise and capabilities (Sales Finance, Supply Chain Finance, Accounting) and working directly with enterprise functions such as Operations and R&D. The role is accountable for pulling those capabilities together into one plan and one set of decisions for the Business Unit, not for duplicating them.

The role also serves as the integrator of the Business Unit's financial and operating agenda. Beyond the P&L (revenue, trade, margin, COGS, operating expenses, working capital, and investment), the BU Finance Lead is expected to help steer the levers that drive results: operations and supply performance (cost, capacity, service, productivity), sales execution (distribution, velocity, pricing and promotional effectiveness, customer and channel performance), and the innovation agenda (pipeline prioritization, launch economics, post-launch performance). The goal is to give the GM one integrated view of how the business is performing, why, and what to do about it.

Key Responsibilities

Strategic Business Partnership to the General Manager

• Serve as the primary finance business partner and trusted advisor to the GM, with shared accountability for delivering the Business Unit's financial commitments.

• Turn financial results into decisions: bring the GM and leadership team clear recommendations and a point of view on what to do, not just what happened.

• Shape BU strategy as a core member of the Business Unit leadership team, bringing a fact-based point of view on where to play and how to win.

• Translate the BU strategy into financial targets, priorities, and resource allocation, and ensure resources follow the highest-return opportunities.

• Identify financial risks and opportunities early and drive the actions needed to close gaps or capture upside.

• Co-lead strategic choices with the GM involving growth, pricing, portfolio, customers, channels, innovation, capacity, organizational investments, and resource allocation.

• Frame the financial trade-offs between competing business priorities and make a clear recommendation.

• Challenge the business constructively, including saying “no” or “not yet” to investments that don’t earn their return.

Driving BU Performance & P&L Ownership

• Co-own the BU P&L with the GM (revenue, trade, gross margin, COGS, operating expenses, EBITDA, and cash flow) and be accountable for delivering the plan.

• Lead the monthly BU business review as a decision forum focused on gaps to plan, forecast, and prior year, their root causes, and the actions and owners needed to close them.

• Identify the few drivers that matter most and build the BU's action agenda around them (e.g., pricing, mix, trade efficiency, productivity, overhead).

• Establish clear financial targets and accountability for each member of the BU leadership team, and follow through on delivery.

• Surface issues early and drive gap-closing plans with clear ownership, timing, and quantified impact, tracking them through to results.

• Lead value-creation initiatives directly (margin improvement, cost productivity, trade optimization, SKU rationalization) from idea through measured P&L results.

• Hold the business to its commitments by tracking post-investment results for major decisions (launches, capex, trade programs) and feeding the lessons into future choices.

Integrated Planning & Forecasting

• Lead the Business Unit's annual operating plan, forecasting, and long-range planning processes, ensuring plans are ambitious, achievable, and aligned with corporate objectives and capital constraints.

• Establish a driver-based planning and forecasting process that connects commercial, operational, and financial assumptions.

• Provide the GM with a consolidated view of risks, opportunities, and scenarios, with response plans ready for each.
• Own forecast accuracy for the BU and use the forecast as an early-warning system that triggers action, not just a projection.

Revenue Growth & Sales Execution

• Partner with the Sales Finance organization to ensure the BU has a clear and integrated view of revenue performance and commercial economics by customer, channel, and item.

• Drive revenue growth management with Sales Finance and Sales/Marketing leadership: pricing, Price Pack Architecture, trade investment, promotion, mix, customer profitability, and channel economics.

• Connect sales execution to the P&L (distribution, velocity, promotional lift, and customer joint business plans) and drive course-corrections when execution falls short of plan.

• Challenge the business case for major commercial investments, make a clear go/no-go recommendation, and hold the business accountable for delivering the return.

• Translate customer, channel, pricing, and mix dynamics into implications for the BU P&L.

Operations & Supply Chain Performance

• Partner with the Supply Chain Finance organization and Operations across manufacturing, sourcing, logistics, and inventory.

• Integrate supply chain financial performance into the overall BU P&L and business outlook.

• Drive the BU's cost and productivity agenda with Supply Chain Finance and Operations, identifying, prioritizing, and tracking savings through to the P&L.

• Ensure supply chain decisions balance cost, service, working capital, and growth, and that capacity investments are sized to the BU's growth plans.

• Provide the GM with a clear view of operational cost drivers and financial trade-offs, with recommended actions.

Working Capital & Investment

• Own BU working capital outcomes with Operations and Sales Finance, including inventory levels, aging and obsolescence, and customer terms, against clear targets.

• Build and challenge business cases for BU capital and organizational investments, and prioritize them against the BU’s returns and capacity needs.

Innovation & Portfolio

• Partner with Innovation/R&D and Marketing to shape the BU pipeline, advancing ideas based on margin, scale, and strategic fit.

• Build the financial case for launches (pricing, margin structure, volume, capacity needs, and incremental vs. cannibalized revenue) at the speed Kinder’s innovation model requires.

• Run post-launch reviews against the business case and recommend whether to scale, fix, or exit.

• Manage portfolio health, including SKU productivity, complexity cost, and tail rationalization.

Leadership & Finance Acumen

• Build financial acumen across the BU leadership team so every leader understands the P&L impact of their decisions.

• Lead and develop BU finance team members where applicable, and model Kinder’s values of integrity, humility, and results.

How Success Will Be Measured:

• The BU delivers its financial commitments (revenue, gross margin, EBITDA, and cash), with finance visibly part of the reason why.

• Gaps to plan are caught early and closed through actions finance shaped and drove.

• Forecasts are accurate and trusted by the GM, CFO, and corporate leadership.

• Initiatives finance led or co-led deliver measurable value (margin, productivity, trade efficiency, working capital).

• The GM and BU leaders treat finance as a decision-maker at the table, not a reporting function.

What You Bring to the Table

• 10+ years of progressive finance experience, including FP&A and commercial or business-unit finance in CPG, food & beverage, or a comparable consumer products company.

• Proven track record as the lead finance partner to a GM or P&L owner, with clear evidence of decisions shaped and results delivered, not only analysis produced.

• Deep fluency in CPG P&L economics: trade and promotional spend, revenue growth management, COGS and standard costing, and working capital.

• Experience with major retail customers and channels, ideally including club and mass (e.g., Walmart, Sam’s Club, Costco).

• Strong driver-based planning and modeling skills; experience with Anaplan, syndicated data (Circana/IRI), and SAP a plus.

• Confident communicator who can influence senior leaders, challenge constructively, and make a recommendation under ambiguity.

• Thrives in a fast-paced, founder-led, high-growth environment; values decision quality and speed over perfection.

• Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, or Economics; MBA and/or CPA preferred.

• Willing to have a regular in-office presence in the Walnut Creek office.

Location and Travel

The position will be based onsite in Walnut Creek, CA. We strongly believe in the power of culture and community and have a hybrid work structure with 4 days in the office on a weekly basis to encourage collaboration and personal connections that will allow us to better serve our customers and consumer and to have more fun. Fridays are flex days with employees having the opportunity to choose to be either in the office or to work from home based on what makes most sense for them.

Pay Transparency

The expected starting salary range for this role is $215,000- $265,000 per year. The salary range posted for this role reflects the good-faith base pay range Kinder’s reasonably expects to offer at the time of posting and may vary based on the location of the role. Individual compensation within the posted range will be determined based on factors such as relevant education, experience, qualifications, skills, and business needs.