Job Summary

The Senior Manager, Financial Planning - Engineering is responsible for planning, implementing, managing and controlling financial activities within the Engineering envelope. The incumbent drives accountability by promoting the understanding of budget and forecast issues as well as supports the functional leadership team with key financial insights and operational analytics. The position is critical in fostering a culture of cost consciousness, control, simplification and continuous improvement, as well as documenting improvement opportunities in Engineering systems and coordinating collaborative resolution. Furthermore, the incumbent plays a key role in developing, monitoring and evaluating the implementation of Corporate Strategy with Engineering leaders and their respective teams with emphasis on bottom-line performance and sound investments.

Main Responsibilities

Management Reporting and Financial Management Processes

• Ensure management reporting and financial management processes are dynamic and relevant to business and drive business performance
• Provide Senior Leaders and their respective teams with guidance and advice on their Operating and Capital expenditures, trends and metrics
• Identify gaps and provide recommendations to strategically enhance financial performance and business opportunities, and provide a full range of financial solutions
• Ensure dashboards are dynamic, appropriate and result in management actions
• Recommend regional benchmark exercises for measuring financial performance
• Develop meaningful Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for the stakeholder and drive change as a result
• Actively pursue opportunities to deliver cost savings and efficiency gains
• Effectively deploy Capital to maximize returns
• Direct the development and analysis of business cases for the function's Capital investment proposals
• Provide appropriate oversight on Capital spend versus project advancement

Budgeting and Planning Process

• Handle Operating and Capital budgeting and planning processes while ensuring they are dynamic and aligned with business needs
• Direct and translate the corporate business plan into Operating expense budgets and Capital plan investments
• Ensure buy-in by key stakeholders on budgets by making them understand the assumptions and key elements used to establish the budget
• Monitor, analyze and explain monthly Operating results against budget
• Direct and validate the preparation and distribution of weekly, monthly, quarterly reports on expenditures and key performance metrics, including various analysis as required
• Handle the preparation and distribution of financial reports, outlooks and forecasts
• Handle changes and transfers within the Operating and Capital budgets
• Take a hands-on position of developing, implementing and maintaining comprehensive financial forecasting systems
• Advise and inform senior management teams on the opportunities and risks associated with the outlooks and keep Financial Planning abreast of the changes to the Year End Outlook
• Drill down on unexpected variances to provide explanations to key stakeholders and establish corrective actions through discussions with Engineering Senior Management

Continue to Improve Processes, Controls and Day-to-Day Support

• Ensure that effective controls are in place to ensure compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) and Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) including monitoring and reporting
• Proactively review and implement new processes triggered by new accounting pronouncements, new systems or other
• Provide recommendations and procedural improvements for financial audit issues and controls
• Direct and sign-off on balance sheet account reconciliations
• Ensure the integrity of financial transactions created by the department
• Respond to questions, provide day-to-day support to Engineering staff pertaining to financial systems, and provide them with basic financial insights in order to perform the administrative portion of their duties adequately

Talent Development

• Lead, coach and develop a team of Finance professionals
• Help foster collaboration and best practice within the team and beyond
• Monitor progress and performance of the team
• Provide direction, accountability, coaching and mentoring to the team
• Coordinate responses where needed on questions from external auditors

Working Conditions

The role has standard working conditions in an office environment with a regular workweek from Monday to Friday. The role requires minimal travel (10%) to carry out field visits within each territory across Canada and the United States (U.S.). The role requires being available on-call 24/7 to respond to critical incidences. Due to the nature of the role, the incumbent must be able to meet tight deadlines, handle pressure and stress.

Requirements

Experience

Financial Leadership or Operational Role
• Minimum 10 years of experience in progressively responsible financial leadership or operational roles
o Experience in project management, system or software development and managing data
o Experience in back-end and front-end development (e.g., Microsoft Structured Query Language (SQL) Server, Vistal Basics.net (VB.net), Active Server Pages (ASP), Java, HTML, Cold Fusion)

Education/Certification/Designation

• Bachelor's Degree with a concentration in Finance or Accounting
• Master's Degree in Business Administration (MBA)
• Chartered/Certified Professional Accountant (CPA) designation

*Any designation for these above would be considered as an asset

Competencies

• Know the business and stay current with industry needs
• Apply critical thinking
• Sets direction and inspires others
• Communicates with impact
• Innovate
• Collaborates with others and shares information
• Delegates and empowers others to create accountability
• Develops self and others
• Identifies needs and finds solutions to create value for all stakeholders

Technical Skills/Knowledge

• Deep knowledge of Engineering business processes and metrics
• Knowledge of finance, accounting, budgeting and cost control principles
• Extensive knowledge of CN's financial and accounting reporting system, including Systems, Applications and Products (SAP) Financial Accounting (FI), Project System (PS), Plant Maintenance (PM), Material Management (MM) modules, Business Warehouse, Essbase
• Extensive knowledge of CN's spend channels including Fieldglass, SAP Purchase Order (PO), Ariba, My CN Voucher, TradeShift
• Knowledge of Authorization for Expenditure (AFE360), Enterprise Capital Project System (ECPS) and Project Management Application (PMA) applications
• Knowledge of business intelligence (BI) and data visualization tools such as Power BI or Tableau
• Strong Microsoft Office computer skills (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Access)

About CN

CN is a world-class transportation leader and trade-enabler. Essential to the economy, to the customers, and to the communities it serves, CN safely transports more than 300 million tons of natural resources, manufactured products, and finished goods throughout North America every year. As the only railroad connecting Canada's Eastern and Western coasts with the Southern tip of the U.S. through a 19,500 mile rail network, CN and its affiliates have been contributing to community prosperity and sustainable trade since 1919. CN is committed to programs supporting social responsibility and environmental stewardship. At CN, we work as ONE TEAM, focused on safety, sustainability and our customers, providing operational and supply chain excellence to deliver results.