Strategic Finance Senior Manager

As Marqeta’s Strategic Finance Senior Manager you will  join Marqeta's FP&A team. This role sits at the center of the most consequential financial questions the company is asking — cross-functional strategic initiatives, long-range planning, resource allocation, investment trade-offs, and product profitability — and partners directly with FP&A leadership to answer them.

This is a Strategic Finance role in the truest sense. The work isn't structured around the close calendar — that's the planning team's mandate. You'll certainly have recurring cadences: board-meeting analysis, leadership reviews, planning cycles. But most of your week looks like working through a portfolio of strategic projects that shape real decisions. One week you might be modeling marketing LTV to test whether a proposed budget increase actually pencils out. Next, you're partnering with the credit team on a build-versus-partner analysis for a new product. The week after, you're stress-testing a long-range scenario for an upcoming board meeting. Some projects span months; others resolve in a few days. The throughline is that good financial thinking shapes the decision.

You'll also work closely with the VP, FP&A as a trusted partner — running projects independently, representing FP&A in rooms when needed, and absorbing scope as the function grows. This is a player-coach role from day one: while it starts as an individual contributor, you'll set the bar for analytical quality across the broader team, mentor analysts informally, and grow into formal people management as the team scales.

You'll partner directly with Sales, Marketing, Product, and Operations leadership — embedded enough to understand what each team is actually trying to do, financial enough to translate that into models and recommendations, and senior enough to push back when the numbers don't support the narrative. The work spans the full P&L: topline modeling (revenue, gross profit, unit economics) and operating expense (headcount, marketing investment, T&E, vendor spend, capex). Most Strategic Finance roles skew one way or the other — this one expects fluency across both.

The pace at Marqeta is fast, the executive visibility is high, and the work is genuinely interesting. The right person is energized by ambiguity, takes pride in a clean model, and gets excited about helping operators make better decisions.

We work Flexible First. This role can be performed remotely anywhere within the U.S. or from our local Oakland office. We'd love for you to join us!

The Impact You'll Have

• Lead cross-functional strategic projects end-to-end — from problem framing through analysis to executive recommendation. Some projects run for months, others land and resolve in two weeks
• Build the financial models that underpin the company's biggest decisions — long-range plans, investment cases, product P&L architecture, scenario analyses for executive and board conversations
• Partner with Sales leadership on topline strategy: bookings models, customer cohort economics, segment profitability, productivity assumptions — bringing financial rigor to the GTM conversation
• Partner with Marketing on demand generation ROI, channel investment trade-offs, and how marketing spend connects to pipeline and bookings outcomes
• Partner with Product and Operations leaders on opex management — building visibility into headcount investment, vendor spend, T&E, and capex against the financial plan
• Drive deep-dive analyses that surface what the numbers are actually telling us — and translate those findings into recommendations that operators can act on
• Build ROI frameworks the company can use to evaluate investment trade-offs consistently — across hires, programs, products, and initiatives
• Prepare executive and board-level materials that distill complex analyses into clear narratives on company performance, strategic options, and trade-offs
• Act as a trusted deputy to the VP of FP&A — running projects independently, representing the function in cross-functional conversations, and absorbing scope as the function grows
• Set the bar for analytical quality across the team — mentoring analysts informally from day one, and growing into formal people management as the team expands
• Experiment with AI to make Strategic Finance work faster and better — building modeling tools, automating recurring analyses, and finding leverage that scales judgment across more projects

Who You Are

• Bachelor's degree in a quantitative field — Finance, Accounting, Economics, Engineering, Math, or any discipline that built your numerical fluency
• 7-10 years of progressive experience in Strategic Finance, FP&A, or related roles — ideally at a fintech, SaaS, or other high-growth operating company
• An exceptional financial modeler. Mastery of Excel and Google Sheets, with comfort in SQL (or willingness to deepen those skills quickly). You build models that are clean, defensible, and actually usable by other people — not just impressive-looking to a reviewer
• Fluent across the full P&L. You're equally comfortable modeling topline (revenue, gross profit, unit economics) and operating expense (headcount, marketing, T&E, capex). You understand how the two connect and how to make trade-offs between them
• A track record of operating autonomously. You define problems, structure analyses, and drive to outcomes without clear precedent or a defined playbook
• A proven cross-functional project leader. Experience leading projects with multiple cross-functional partners in fast-paced environments. You can hold several workstreams in your head at once, prioritize ruthlessly, and deliver against commitments
• A genuine business partner. You've worked hand-in-hand with Sales and Marketing leaders before. You ask sharp questions, you bring solutions and not just problems, and you build trust by being useful — not by being agreeable
• Proven ability to influence senior stakeholders through crisp storytelling and data-driven recommendations. You leave executives with a clearer view of the question than they walked in with
• A leadership mindset with the ability to balance strategic vision with hands-on execution. You're excited to do the work yourself AND set the bar for analysts around you. You're hungry to grow into formal leadership as the team scales
• AI-curious and hungry to experiment. You already use AI tools in your day-to-day work, you have opinions about what's overhyped and what's actually useful, and you see AI as leverage to do more — not a threat or a checkbox

Nice-To-Haves

• Experience in payments, fintech, or scaled SaaS
• Prior experience as a trusted deputy or right-hand to a finance leader
• Background that includes investment banking, management consulting, or equity research before moving into an operating role
• Hands-on experience with financial planning systems (Adaptive, Anaplan, Pigment) and ERP systems (NetSuite, Workday)
• Hands-on experience building workflows or tools with AI (custom GPTs, agents, automations, prompt engineering for finance use cases)

Your Manager

• Monica Gras, VP FP&A

Typical Process

• Application Submission
• Recruiter video call
• Hiring manager video call
• Virtual “Onsite” consisting of 4-5, 45 min calls
• Offer!

Compensation and Benefits

Marqeta is a Flex First company which allows you to choose your best working environment, whether that be from home or at a company office. To support Flex First, we calibrate pay to a competitive value according to working location. Compensation is aligned according to three tiers within the United States:

• National: A baseline tier that applies to most of the geographic territory of the United States.
• Premium: Slightly elevated from the National tier, and oriented toward a narrower set of higher cost-of-living areas, such as Los Angeles CA and Seattle WA
• Premium Plus: A tier for the most expensive working areas, like the San Francisco Bay area and New York City.

Visit this page or consult with a Recruiter to determine which tier would be applicable to you.

When determining salaries, we consider several factors including, but not limited to, skills, prior experience, and work location. The new-hire base salary range for this position is:

• National: $156,000 - $195,000 
• Premium: $165,500 - $206,900
• Premium Plus: 175,000 - $218,800

We also believe in recognizing the contributions of our people. That's why we award annual bonuses to eligible employees, rewarding both individual performance and the success of the entire company.

Along with monetary compensation, Marqeta offers

• Multiple health insurance options
• Flexible time off – take what you need
• Retirement savings program with company contribution and after tax contributions
• Equity in a publicly-traded company and an Employee Stock Purchase Program
• Family-forming benefits, fertility support, and up to 20 weeks of Parental Leave
• Free therapy sessions, financial and professional coaching, and legal advice
• Monthly stipend to support our remote work model
• Annual “development dollars” to support our people growth and development
• Through Flex First, the freedom to live and work wherever you and your family thrive