Senior Manager, Operations Finance - Military Veterans

TITLE: Senior Manager, Operations Finance

DEPARTMENT: Finance

REPORTS TO: Head of Operations Finance

Lactalis Heritage Dairy is currently seeking candidates to join our team Chicago.

Lactalis Group, the world leader in dairy, is a family-owned business with more than 85,000 pragmatic and ambitious professionals worldwide, committed to providing healthy and delicious dairy products that bring people together every day. At Lactalis, our core values of AMBITION, ENGAGEMENT, and SIMPLICITY are at the heart of everything we do.

If you’re looking for a unique experience with a company that offers strong brands, professional expertise, and a dynamic work environment that champions entrepreneurial spirit, hands-on responsibility, and real opportunity for career development, we want to hear from you!

Lactalis Heritage Dairy: inviting you to share with us your STORY, your PASSION, and your EXPERTISE.

From your PASSION to ours

The Senior Manager of Operations Finance is responsible for monitoring, challenging, and analyzing the operations P&L (manufacturing, procurement, and logistics) for Lactalis Heritage Dairy, a $1.4Bn subsidiary of Groupe Lactalis. They will drive technical performance & analysis in key areas such as raw material, packaging, ingredients, and overheads to provide primary explanations to help the key stakeholders achieve their targets. This role develops forecasts for the operations and makes recommendations to improve profitability. The Senior Manager of Operations Finance also develops, produces, and improves weekly monthly, and annual reporting.

From your EXPERTISE to ours

Key responsibilities for this position include:

Technical Performance Management

• Lead and challenge plant controllers on technical KPI’s and financial performance during weekly and monthly reporting cycles
• Challenge and monitor P&L indicators, which include:
• Raw material variances (fat & protein losses), packaging variances (price, usage, volume), ingredients variances (price, usage, volume), overheads variances (labor, utilities, chemicals, etc.)
• Own performance tracking against budget, prior year, and forecast on a weekly, monthly, and full year basis
• Analyze and partner with plant leadership to provide insights in understanding financial results across three manufacturing facilities
• Support financial analysis of external manufacturing and co-manufacturing agreements
• Prepare monthly financial and technical KPI package to be provided and communicated to the Director of Finance, VP manufacturing, CEO, and CFO
• Identify and communicate risk and opportunities to all the stakeholders
• Coordinate and implement strategic company initiatives with three manufacturing facilities and external manufacturers (ERP, reporting, TSA exit)

Budget construction

• Challenge and support plant controllers and plant managers during yearly budget construction, acting as a key stakeholder during the budget meetings
• Oversee the budget construction and ensure accurate assumptions and application of them
• Lead the CAPEX budget process and ensure that each investment is being appropriately modeled in the budgeted plant results
• Own budget consolidation and coordination, including the presentation of the budget to the Lactalis VP of Operations, CFO and CEO

Ad Hoc analysis

• Support adhoc analysis for industrial and milk collection departments including SKU costing, new product development, SKU profitability analysis, financial system implementations, and other analysis/projects needed to support the business