Vice President, Financial Planning & Analysis

Company description

Publicis Groupe is a global leader in communication and is positioned at every step of the value chain, from consulting to execution, combining marketing transformation and digital business transformation. Through a unified and fluid organization, Publicis Groupe partners with its clients across communication, media, data and technology to ensure access to the full breadth of capabilities in every market. Present in over 100 countries, Publicis Groupe employs around 103,000 professionals.

Overview

The Vice President, FP&A Pillar Lead is the Pillar CFO’s senior FP&A partner and leads the pillar-wide FP&A organization. The role translates financial and operating performance into foresight, decisions, and action, while ensuring the CFO receives one coherent view of the pillar across actuals, forecasts, business KPIs, risks, and opportunities. The VP leads Consolidation / HQ, Agency FP&A, and sub-pillar FP&A leads supporting Production, Creative, Health, and other businesses. Through these leaders, the role ensures strong execution, financial rigor, clear accountability, and forward-looking decision support across the pillar.

Responsibilities

1. Strategic Partner to the Pillar CFO

• Serve as the CFO’s primary FP&A partner, understanding their priorities, decision style, and likely questions and proactively developing the analysis and recommendations needed.
• Translate financial and operating data into a clear view of performance, direction, risks, opportunities, trade-offs, and recommended actions.
• Partner with the CFO on growth, margin, cost, workforce, investment, restructuring, and other strategic decisions.
• Act as a trusted extension of the CFO across the executive leadership team and drive follow-through on finance-supported decisions and commitments.

2. Pillar Financial View and Business Insight

• Own the pillar’s single FP&A point of view, applying independent judgment to integrate agency, sub-pillar, and consolidated perspectives into a cohesive story of performance and future outlook.
• Understand how the businesses operate and the key drivers behind revenue, pipeline, headcount, staff costs, utilization, overhead, margin, client profitability, and working capital.
• Identify patterns in forecast behavior and management assumptions, including recurring conservatism, overcommitment, inconsistent forecasting, or delayed recognition of risk.
• Shape business reviews, executive materials, and ad hoc analyses around a clear financial storyline that highlights the implications for leadership decisions.
• Ensure material risks and opportunities are quantified, monitored, and transparently reflected in the pillar’s financial outlook.

3. Forward-Looking Decision Support

• Anticipate scenarios that could affect the pillar and direct scenario analysis and evaluation of key business assumptions, including revenue, staffing, compensation, utilization, client activity, investment, and restructuring.
• Connect financial outcomes to commercial, operational, client, talent, and delivery drivers so leadership understands what changed, why it changed, and what actions are available.
• Bring the CFO recommendations and clearly articulated trade-offs that help move the business forward rather than only explain results after the fact.

4. Executive and Finance Partnerships

• Build strong relationships with agency Heads of Finance, earning the trust and respect required to obtain high-quality information, challenge constructively, and surface issues early.
• Partner across the CFO’s executive leadership team, particularly with Operations, Talent, Resource Management, Strategy, and New Business, when decisions require integrated action.
• Develop effective finance partnerships with Accounting, Job Management, Client Finance, Finance Systems, Treasury, Tax, and other specialist teams whose work affects pillar performance.
• Maintain the executive presence to resolve conflicting views, hold partners accountable, and preserve productive relationships.

5. Leadership of the Pillar FP&A Organization

• Create an integrated leadership model across Consolidation / HQ, Agency FP&A, and the Production, Creative, and Health sub-pillar leads, with clear accountability for how each team contributes to the pillar-wide view and supports its respective businesses.
• Set team priorities, deadlines, deliverables, operating procedures, workflows, analytical approaches, workload allocation, and standards, aligning major commitments and organizational changes with the CFO and US Lead.
• Ensure the organization delivers accurate and timely actuals analysis, forecasts, budgets, management reporting, and executive materials.
• Build leadership depth and succession while developing teams beyond report production toward business partnership, analytical judgment, and clear communication.
• Assess team strengths, development needs, capacity, and role clarity, and place work at the appropriate level across the organization.

6. Financial Rigor and Governance

• Maintain command of the end-to-end financial process and systems landscape, understanding how information moves from source data through forecasting, consolidation, analysis, and executive reporting.
• Maintain a strong understanding of accounting principles and financial reporting, including the ability to assess complex or unusual items, evaluate results, identify risks, challenge assumptions, and support decision-making.
• Ensure forecasts and submissions are reconciled, supported, and aligned across agencies, sub-pillars, source systems, consolidation tools, and management views.
• Build quality, accuracy, and accountability throughout the organization so the role can focus on insight, decision support, and leadership rather than routine preparation or checking of every deliverable.
• Own the analysis and creation of pillar-level working capital reporting and ensure the workforce planning process is effectively coordinated across the pillar.

7. Future-Ready FP&A

• Identify opportunities to standardize, simplify, automate, or eliminate work and redirect capacity toward analysis and business partnership.
• Use AI and automation responsibly for repeatable analysis, commentary, data validation, workflow support, agent-based solutions, and insight generation, with appropriate review and controls.
• Drive adoption and effective use of planning, consolidation, reporting, analytics, CRM, and ERP platforms, and provide practical input on enhancements needed to support the CFO and teams.
• Own transformation ideas and delivery within the pillar, aligning material investments, operating-model changes, and cross-pillar implications with the CFO and US Lead.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of progressive FP&A, commercial finance, operational finance, or related experience in a complex, multi-business environment.
• Demonstrated experience as a strategic partner to a CFO or comparable senior finance leader and experience influencing executive leadership teams.
• Experience leading leaders and sizable teams across centralized, sub-pillar, and business-embedded finance roles.
• Strong command of planning, forecasting, performance management, workforce planning, financial reporting, scenario analysis, and executive decision support.
• Advanced capability in Excel and practical experience with Hyperion / HFM, Essbase, SmartView, SAP, Salesforce, and Power BI; experience with enterprise planning platforms such as Pigment or similar tools is preferred.
• Demonstrated use of AI and automation, including prompt building, agent building, AI-assisted analysis, workflow automation, data visualization, and low-code or vibe-coding approaches.
• Advertising, media, marketing services, professional services, or another people-based and project-based industry is strongly preferred.
• Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, Business, or a related field; an advanced degree or relevant professional certification is a plus.

Additional information

Our Publicis Groupe motto “Viva La Différence” means we’re better together, and we believe that our differences make us stronger. It means we honor and celebrate all identities, across all facets of intersectionality, and it underpins all that we do as an organization. We are focused on fostering belonging and creating equitable & inclusive experiences for all talent.

Publicis Groupe provides robust and inclusive benefit programs and policies to support the evolving and diverse needs of our talent and enable every person to grow and thrive. Our benefits package includes medical coverage, dental, vision, disability, 401K, as well as parental and family care leave, family forming assistance, tuition reimbursement, and flexible time off.

If you require accommodation or assistance with the application or onboarding process specifically, please contact [email protected].

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.

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Compensation Range: USD $149,340.00 - USD $239,148.00/Annually. This is the pay range the Company believes it will pay for this position at the time of this posting. This role may also be eligible for bonus or incentive compensation. Consistent with applicable law, compensation will be determined based on the skills, qualifications, and experience of the applicant along with the requirements of the position, and the Company reserves the right to modify this pay range at any time. Temporary roles may be eligible to participate in our freelancer/temporary employee medical plan through a third-party benefits administration system once certain criteria have been met. For regular roles, the Company will offer medical coverage, dental, vision, disability, 401k, and paid time off. The Company anticipates the application deadline for this job posting will be 2/1/2027.