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Director of Finance

El Segundo, CA

About Us

At Arbor Energy & Resources Corporation ("Arbor Energy"), we’re creating technology to power our lives while protecting the planet that sustains them.  Our advanced power systems deliver clean, reliable baseload electricity with zero operating emissions—modular, fuel-flexible, and engineered for the realities of today’s energy demand. At the core is a supercritical CO₂ turbine with integrated carbon capture, designed to bring carbon-neutral power online quickly at meaningful scale. 

Our team includes aerospace engineers, combustion experts, and systems thinkers with a shared goal: to build technology worthy of the world we want to live in. While many of us began our journeys looking to the stars, we’re applying that expertise here at home to deliver dependable, emission-free baseload power and a future of lasting abundance.  

If you share our values and are drawn to rigorous work with lasting impact, we’d love to learn more about you. Come build what the future will run on.

Steward our planet: We build for tomorrow, ensuring every bolt we tighten and every hand we lend leaves our environment stronger than we found it.

Lead with Love: We champion the success of our people, partners, and planet, nurturing excellence through camaraderie and rigor.

Explore the Uncharted: We embrace the unknown with curiosity, using courage and discipline to transform uncertainty into opportunity.

Role Overview

We are seeking a Director of Finance to own FP&A and build the financial operating system that enables Arbor to scale from Series A through commercialization and manufacturing scale-up. You'll own all forward-looking financial planning, modeling, and analysis — translating complex technical programs into financial clarity and ensuring leadership has a credible, real-time view of resource needs, cash runway, and strategic trade-offs.

You'll operate as a trusted thought partner to executive leadership and cross-functional teams, answering the question: "Where are we going?" This role requires exceptional modeling skills, comfort with technical complexity and imperfect data, and a bias towards rigor, transparency, and speed.

The Director of Finance is forward-looking and strategic, working closely with the Controller (who owns historical accounting and systems) to ensure forecasts and models are grounded in accurate actuals.

Responsibilities

FP&A Ownership (CORE FUNCTION)

  • Own all forward-looking financial planning and analysis across the company
  • Build and maintain three-statement corporate models (income statement, balance sheet, cash flow)
  • Develop and maintain long-range operating plans (3-5 year) that connect strategic goals to resource requirements
  • Own monthly and quarterly rolling forecasts, updating assumptions based on operational performance and strategic shifts
  • Build and maintain 13-week cash flow models for short-term liquidity management alongside long-range cash projections
  • Conduct scenario and sensitivity analyses for all major strategic decisions: capital raises, financing strategy, hiring pace, first-of-a-kind project deployment, manufacturing scale-up
  • Serve as the "source of truth" for financial assumptions, key drivers, risks, and trade-offs across the business
  • Own cash burn, runway, and liquidity analysis — always maintaining current view of months of cash remaining and bridge to next milestone

R&D Program Budgeting & Resource Planning (CRITICAL ARBOR PARTNERSHIP)

  • Partner deeply with Engineering leadership to translate complex technical programs into financial requirements and cash burn timelines
  • Build program-level budgets that connect engineering milestones and deliverables to labor, materials, testing, and equipment needs
  • Model R&D cash flow requirements by program, phase, and milestone — ensuring leadership understands burn rate implications of technical decisions
  • Model test campaign costs including failure scenarios, iteration cycles, and contingency planning
  • Develop resource planning models: headcount needs by function (engineers, technicians), hiring timing, and organizational scaling implications
  • Plan and prioritize CapEx requirements: equipment, facilities, tooling, test infrastructure
  • Model vendor spend forecasts for multi-year contracts and long-lead-time commitments

Factory & Manufacturing Line Modeling (OWNS THE MACRO MODEL)

  • Build and own the comprehensive factory financial model that drives manufacturing scale-up decisions, including:
    • Production line capacity and throughput analysis
    • Equipment requirements and timing for each scale-up phase
    • Labor requirements by production volume (direct labor, technicians, engineers)
    • Facility costs: lease, utilities, maintenance as production scales
    •   Working capital requirements: inventory levels, receivables, payables at different production volumes
  • Own unit economics modeling: cost per unit at different production volumes, identifying key cost drivers
  • Build learning curve and cost-down analysis: project how costs decrease with volume, experience, and design improvements
  • Conduct make-vs-buy financial analysis for manufacturing decisions: compare in-house production vs. outsourcing economics
  • Model production scale-up scenarios: financial implications of ramping from pilot to commercial production, including capital requirements and cash needs
  • Develop capacity planning models: when additional lines, shifts, or facilities are needed based on demand forecasts
  • Build CapEx prioritization framework: ROI analysis on competing equipment and facility investments

System Cost Modeling & BOM Economics

  • Partner with Engineering on bill of materials (BOM) cost modeling and cost stack analysis
  • Break down system costs by component and subsystem to identify optimization opportunities
  • Build cost reduction roadmaps: model financial impact of design changes, value engineering, and supplier negotiations
  • Model supplier pricing at different volume tiers and negotiate economics
  • Develop supply chain financial planning: payment terms, minimum order quantities, lead time impacts on cash and inventory

Project Finance & Commercial Economics

  • Develop project finance models for commercial team: individual project financials including capex, opex, revenue, returns
  • Build project-level ROI analysis: IRR, NPV, payback period, and sensitivity analyses for customer deals
  • Model deployment scenarios: financial analysis of different project deployment strategies and their impact on corporate cash flow
  • Support commercial team on deal structuring and financial terms, ensuring project economics align with corporate objectives
  • Develop margin and pricing analysis for customer contracts
  • Build revenue forecasting models as commercial contracts scale (2027+)

Capital Strategy & Fundraising Support

  • Translate strategic roadmap into operational resource plans and capital needs
  • Provide financial analysis to inform capital raise timing and amount
  • Lead fundraising diligence preparation: build models, scenarios, and data room materials for investors
  • Develop capital structure scenarios: evaluate equity, debt, project finance, and structured financing options
  • Build business cases for M&A opportunities or corporate development initiatives
  • Prepare financial content for board decks: forward-looking analysis, scenarios, strategic narrative

Budget Development & Strategic Analysis

  • Build the annual budget MODEL using driver-based, scenario-based approach
  • Determine appropriate budget granularity and structure to support decision-making
  • Work with Engineering to translate R&D programs into financial budgets
  • Analyze budget variances for strategic implications: understand why over/under, what it means for runway, and recommend resource reallocation
  • Connect budget to cash burn and runway projections
  • Partner with Controller who owns the budget process (timeline, consolidation, variance reporting)

Cross-Functional Financial Partnership

  • Partner with Engineering, Commercial, and Operations to ensure financial plans reflect operational reality and technical constraints
  • Provide financial guidance and decision support on strategic initiatives
  • Build financial literacy across the organization, helping non-finance leaders understand financial implications of their decisions
  • Translate complex financial outcomes into clear, decision-ready insights for executives, board, and cross-functional stakeholders

Systems & Tools

  • Own the financial modeling environment: Excel-first, systems-enabled approach with rigorous standards and documentation
  • Partner with Controller on ERP implementation to ensure system supports FP&A needs and provides clean data flows
  • Implement and scale FP&A tools as needed (Adaptive, Anaplan, Mosaic, Pigment, or similar)
  • Build dashboards and reporting for real-time visibility into key metrics and performance drivers
  • Establish modeling standards, documentation, version control, and quality controls to ensure models are auditable, defensible, and scalable

Requirements

  • Bachelor's degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, Engineering, or related field
  • 10+ years of progressive experience in analytical finance roles including investment banking, private equity, infrastructure or project finance, strategic finance, or FP&A
  • Experience working in (or with) venture-backed, growth-stage companies in capital-intensive environments such as manufacturing, hardware, energy, infrastructure, or industrial operations
  • Exceptional financial modeling skills including three-statement models, cash flow and liquidity analysis, scenario and sensitivity analysis, and driver-based planning
  • Deep experience supporting decision-making in capital-intensive businesses with long development timelines, technical complexity, uncertainty, and incomplete data
  • Demonstrated ability to partner with technical teams (Engineering, Operations) and translate complex technical programs into financial requirements
  • Expert proficiency in Excel with comfort building and maintaining complex, multi-scenario models
  • Strong business judgment and ability to act as "source of truth" for financial assumptions, drivers, risks, and trade-offs
  • Excellent communication skills with ability to distill complexity into clear, actionable insights for diverse audiences
  • Proven ability to thrive in ambiguity, build from first principles, and operate with both speed and rigor

Preferred Qualifications

  • MBA from top-tier program
  • CPA or CFA certification
  • Prior experience in manufacturing finance, including unit economics modeling, cost-down curves, and factory economics
  • Experience in power generation, energy technology, aerospace, or advanced manufacturing sectors
  • Prior exposure to fundraising processes, investor diligence, and board-level financial presentations
  • Experience with project finance or infrastructure development financial modeling
  • Engineering or technical undergraduate degree
  • Experience building and scaling FP&A functions in high-growth environments

Compensation & Benefits

  • Pre-IPO stock options
  • Medical, dental, and vision insurance (Arbor covers 90% for employees)
  • Basic life insurance fully covered
  • Health savings account (HSA) with matching
  • Flexible savings account (FSA)
  • Unlimited PTO  
  • 12+ company holidays, including Earth Day!  
  • 401(k)
  • Commuter benefits
  • Annual learning and development stipend
  • And more!

Base Pay: $160,000 - $190,000 USD/year. The salary is subject to the applicant's skills, qualifications, experience, and geographic location.

Our Commitment

Arbor Energy is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to race, religion, national origin, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, marital or veteran status, disability, or any other protected characteristic under applicable law. Solving global energy challenges requires a wide range of perspectives and experiences, and we are committed to building a team that reflects the world we serve.

Our hiring process is designed to be accessible, fair, and focused on the work that matters most for this role. Reasonable accommodations are available throughout the hiring process and employment—please let us know if you need one.

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