Director, Client Finance

 

Director, Client Finance

Location: New York, NY (Remote)
Department: Business Intelligence & Strategy 

 

Director, Client Finance Job Description 

Strategic Finance Leadership Role 

Position Overview 

The Director, Client Finance is a strategic leadership position tasked with ensuring financial integrity, operational governance, and strong economic performance throughout the entire client lifecycle—from RFP initiation to project closeout. This role collaborates closely with Client Services, Finance, Delivery, and Leadership teams to create scalable financial operating models that foster profitable growth, enhance forecasting accuracy, and enable informed business decisions. 

The Director is responsible for monitoring, analyzing, and optimizing client financial outcomes. This includes tracking revenue, margins, and profitability to ensure alignment with organizational goals and supporting continuous improvement initiatives. 
 
This is not a transactional accounting or billing role. Instead, the Director, Client Finance serves as the organization’s financial and commercial strategist for client operations — translating delivery realities, staffing dynamics, and client economics into actionable insight, governance, and decision support. 
 
The ideal candidate brings deep experience building and operationalizing client finance functions within a professional services, agency, consulting, or project-based organization. This role will help stand up and mature the client finance capability across the agency. 

 

Key Responsibilities 

Enterprise Planning & Forecasting 

• Partner closely with Finance while avoiding duplication of accounting or close ownership responsibilities 

• Own revenue and margin forecasting methodologies, assumptions, and forecast accuracy 

• Establish governance models, escalation thresholds, and operating cadences to proactively manage financial risk 

• Forecast demand, staffing pressure, and margin exposure across the business 

• Build scalable reporting and decision frameworks that improve visibility and accountability 

Client Financial Performance 

• Lead interpretation of client-level financial performance, including pacing, burn, margin health, and delivery efficiency 

• Translate project management inputs, scope signals, staffing realities, and delivery risks into clear financial insight 

• Identify early warning signs related to margin erosion, scope creep, delivery inefficiencies, or commercial risk 

• Develop clear financial narratives and decision tradeoffs for leadership and account teams — not just reporting data 

• Distinguish between timing shifts, scope changes, estimation gaps, and operational inefficiencies 

• Surface recurring trends and lessons learned to improve pricing strategy, forecasting accuracy, and delivery systems 

• Provide leadership teams with actionable insights that support timely intervention and stronger business outcomes 

Contract Compliance & Commercial Oversight 

• Oversee development and financial governance of MSAs and SOWs to ensure consistency, clarity, and reduced commercial risk 

• Partner with Client Services and leadership teams during SOW development and client presentations 

• Ensure commercial assumptions align with operational realities, staffing plans, and delivery expectations 

• Help establish standards, guardrails, and governance processes across client contracts and commercial engagements 

Pricing Strategy & Commercial Modeling  

• Support and evolve, in collaboration with Client Services, the agency’s master pricing model, including scope-to-hours, cost, margin, and pricing methodologies 

• Maintain and refine economic assumptions tied to staffing structures, utilization, delivery models, and service mix 

• Analyze pricing effectiveness relative to realized delivery outcomes and profitability 

• Define margin guardrails, discounting logic, and commercial risk thresholds 

• Partner with Client Services on pricing builds, scope changes, contract expansions, and commercial negotiations 

• Support client procurement conversations alongside Client Services, New Business, and Leadership when needed 

Capacity Planning & Delivery System Design 

• Develop scalable capacity planning frameworks across roles, skillsets, and planning horizons 

• Partner with business unit leaders to create staffing models and workforce plans aligned to business demand 

• Establish utilization and throughput expectations grounded in operational realities 

• Identify systemic delivery constraints, inefficiencies, and operational bottlenecks 

• Recommend improvements to staffing structures, delivery models, and scope assumptions 

• Build staffing and scenario models tied to pipeline activity and future business growth 

Qualifications 

• 8–12+ years of experience in progressive client finance roles 

• Experience within an agency, consulting, marketing services, media, technology services, or project-based environment strongly preferred 

• Proven experience building financial governance processes and scalable operating models 

• Strong understanding of pricing strategy, resource planning, margin management, and delivery economics 

• Ability to synthesize financial, operational, and delivery data into strategic recommendations 

• Strong executive communication skills with the ability to influence senior stakeholders and cross-functional teams 

• Experience partnering with Client Services, Delivery, Finance, and Leadership teams in fast-paced environments 

• Advanced Excel/modeling capabilities and comfort working within data-heavy environments 

• Strong analytical mindset balanced with operational pragmatism and business judgment 

• Knowledge of Wrike 

Success in This Role Looks Like 

• Improved forecast accuracy and financial visibility across client engagements 

• Earlier identification and mitigation of margin and delivery risk 

• More disciplined pricing, scoping, and commercial decision-making 

• Stronger alignment between staffing models, delivery realities, and client economics 

• Increased accountability and consistency in financial governance practices 

• Clear executive-level insight that supports profitable, scalable growth 

Why This Role Matters 

As the agency continues to scale, the Director, Client Finance will play a critical role in helping the organization operate with greater rigor, predictability, and commercial discipline. This role will help bridge the gap between Finance, Client Services, and Delivery — ensuring strategic decisions are grounded in operational and financial reality while enabling the business to grow profitably and sustainably.

 

 

Interested?

Apply by submitting your resume.

 

Underscore Marketing is a woman-owned, independent agency specializing in life sciences. Since 2002, we've helped clients gain a competitive edge through bold, data-driven promotional strategies that deliver measurable results.  

Our team comprises media, strategy, and omnichannel analytics experts who thrive on collaboration, innovation, and results. When you join Underscore, you become part of a dynamic environment where your ideas matter, your growth is supported, and your work helps elevate brands in a competitive healthcare landscape.   

If you're passionate about making a difference and want to be part of a team that values integrity, creativity, and results, if that sounds like you, we invite you to share.   

 

Equal Employment Opportunity Statement  
Underscore is committed to creating a diverse and inclusive workplace. We provide equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic under applicable law. We believe that diversity drives innovation and success, and we welcome candidates from all backgrounds to apply.