[Hiring] Director of Finance in Growing EdTech SaaS (Controllership Focus) @Acuity Insights

Imagine a world where colleges and universities look to truly understand applicants’ full potential beyond their grades, creating fairer opportunities for education.

Now, picture these schools equipped with tools to better nurture students throughout their academic journey, leading to the successful graduation of well-trained professionals.

Think about these professionals – doctors, nurses, teachers, engineers, and more – reflecting the diverse makeup of our communities, bringing qualities like empathy, integrity, and cultural understanding into their new careers.

Our mission is to bring that world to life through our Admission Assessments and Program Experience products.

Acuity Insights is an EdTech company with a strong sense of purpose. We’re at a new stage of growth, with a clear vision and focus. Our roots are firmly planted in health and medical education, and we’re branching out to provide our solutions to more markets, including schools that will train and graduate the world’s future business leaders, lawyers, psychologists, and data & computer scientists.

You now have a chance to join Acuity Insights as Director of Finance to help further build out our finance and accounting function and support the financial health and integrity of our company as we scale.

This opportunity is ideal for a CPA experienced in managing and controlling expenses and overseeing the accounting cycle within growing tech companies. You look to add and deepen FP&A skills, lead a team, and become a well-rounded finance leader. You thrive in collaborative environments, uphold high ethical standards, and want to be part of a company making a social impact.

Opportunity & Impact

As Director of Finance at Acuity Insights, you’ll have a key part in helping us manage and grow our business, and helping shape the growth of our finance function. You will do this in a financially sustainable, responsible and ethical way, alongside Puneet Arora, our VP of Finance.

In your role, you’ll lead our accounting cycle from start to finish, closing the books and reporting results with analytical commentary at the end of each month. You’ll compare budgets and actuals, diving into historical financial data and performance to identify and flag trends and discrepancies.

Joining our company now means you’ll have the opportunity to create expense control processes from scratch. This involves determining payment cycles, approval criteria, flagging procedures and responses to out-of-budget expenses, and consolidating or introducing new software(s) as needed, all while ensuring our spending aligns with our business needs.

As Director of Finance, you’ll help us maintain the necessary liquidity for day-to-day operations, managing bank accounts, line of credit, accounts payable and accounts receivable. Additionally, you’ll supervise monthly and annual tax compliance, including sales tax filings, and work closely with our external accountants to manage and complete our annual audit.

Nurturing key external partnerships is also part of your work. That includes relationships with our bank and our SR&ED consulting firm, and delivering quarterly updates to the NRC to ensure ongoing IRAP grant funding. You’ll provide essential information for investor-reporting to our CEO and VP of Finance.

In a nurturing work environment supported by a dedicated Finance leader, you’ll have the chance to enhance your FP&A skills. Your role will involve refining our budgeting process, aiding in budget creation, and supporting various functions in enabling budget management. This includes taking ownership of specific aspects of the budgeting process, such as expense budgeting for some teams, and eventually monthly forecasts and updates for leadership. Additionally, you’ll have the opportunity to tackle ad hoc analytical projects, which will contribute to your growth as a finance business partner.

You’ll become a trusted advisor to leaders throughout our organization, focusing on budget and spending decisions. For example, you’ll work closely with our VP of Revenue to develop commission plans for our revenue-generating teams, and take on responsibilities such as overseeing commission calculations and payments. Additionally, you’ll collaborate with the Sales and Revenue Operations teams to analyze our sales pipeline data and assist the VP of Revenue and VP of Finance in sales forecasting and planning. You also will partner with our Marketing team to address their spending requirements, enabling them to reallocate budgets when strategic pivots are necessary.

You’ll also lead and enable the professional growth of a small team of Finance professionals, with an opportunity to further build out your team as the business grows and the finance and accounting function scales alongside that growth.

The Director of Finance position is a remote role with people management responsibilities. It is part of the Finance & Operations team and reports to the VP of Finance and Operations, Puneet Arora.

To thrive in the role, you:

• Earned a CPA designation and built your foundational skills providing accounting advisory with a well-established consultancy or a mid-sized accounting firm.
• Spent multiple years as a Controller in small and / or midsized tech companies, where you’ve helped establish and maintain systems and processes for financial controls
• Led accounting cycles from start to finish for a business earning $15M or more in annual revenues, closing books, reporting numbers and conducting month-over-month analysis.
• Managed processes like accounts payable and accounts receivable, tracking and managing cash flow, and ensuring monthly sales tax compliance.
• Have audit experience to draw from, equipped with knowledge & wisdom from serving as project lead on an audit, contributing to one or more audits as part of a team.
• Built a meaningful understanding of business principles and operations to understand what a business is spending money on and why.
• Owned and cultivated healthy relationships with external partners, including banks, auditors and tax advisors.
• Enjoy adopting modern technologies that enable your best work and have helped put in place and leverage a finance tech stack to streamline processes, like Xero for bookkeeping, Dext for expense management, Stripe for customer payments, and others.

To thrive at Acuity Insights, you are

• Caring toward people. You show up, take time to listen and understand, encourage and support, and don’t shy away from providing feedback, mentoring and teaching others to help them grow.
• Curious by nature and open to possibilities. You like exploring, asking questions, listening, experimenting, and learning.
• Driven to problem-solve independently and with collaborators, seek to continuously improve your skills, methods, and practices.
• Adaptable with a preference for an ever-evolving, startup-like work environment where you can explore ways to contribute and create value in the face of uncertainties.
• Proactively initiate and take ownership of your projects, and positively influence change.
• At your best when you can manage your work, time, and priorities independently and ask for help when you get stuck or seek feedback.
• Self-aware, with an understanding of your strengths and where you have growth opportunities.
• Motivated by meaningful work and the chance to contribute to creating a world powered by everyone’s full potential.

Selection Process

To ensure an equitable and inclusive process, all candidates will receive equal consideration for an interview, whether applying, introduced as a referral or contacting the manager or recruiter directly.

We look at every resume. Your application is evaluated based on the human attributes and professional skills, experiences & impact communicated in your application.

We do not offer sponsorship if you apply from abroad. You must reside in Canada and be eligible to work here to be considered for an interview.

Interview Process

Our interview process is designed to be a two-way discovery and create space for meaningful conversations. We want to learn who you are as a human & professional, understand your experiences, assess your skills, and ensure alignment with our mission, values and business needs.

We encourage you to be curious and ask insightful questions throughout our conversations.

Here are the steps you can expect:

• Application Review. A human, not an AI, reviews and assesses your application against the hiring criteria outlined in this job ad.
• Intro Conversation. If invited to an interview, you’ll have a 45-60 minute phone call to discuss your background and interests and learn more about the company, team, role, and compensation with a Recruiter (Tine).
• Meet The Manager. Have a 45-minute video call with your potential future manager (Puneet) to discuss your relevant experiences & skills and learn about the vision for the team and the role.
• Take-Home Project. Prepare a presentation that showcases your abilities relevant to the role.
• Present Project & Meet the Team. During a 2.5-3-hour video call, you’ll get the chance to showcase your project to a group of potential future colleagues and have one-on-one conversations with them to learn more about life at Acuity Insights.
• Wait For a Decision. Puneet consolidates and evaluates feedback from the interview team to make a hiring decision within 2-4 business days.
• Offer of Employment & Reference Check. If we’ve established a match, we’ll invite you to an offer conversation. The offer is contingent upon the completion of a reference check.

Your Benefits

• Fair Compensation. We offer salaries based on internal pay equity, market considerations, and responsible & sustainable financial practices.
• Investment In Your Growth. Access an annual budget of $3,000 for your professional and personal development.
• Remote Work & Flexible Hours. Enjoy the freedom to work from anywhere within Canada and the autonomy to set your own schedule.
• Self-Directed Vacation. Take charge of your vacation schedule and duration with unrestricted paid vacation days, supported and encouraged by your manager.
• Collective Time Off. Join the team in disconnecting from work for two weeks at the end of the year and enjoy extra Fridays off throughout the year.
• Other Paid Time Off. Take comfort in knowing you won’t feel a financial impact when you need time off due to a medical or family emergency, lose a loved one, or just need a day to nurture your mental health and well-being.
• Parental Leave. Bond with your new addition, whether you are a birthing parent, non-birthing parent, or expanding your family through surrogacy or adoption.
• Company Ownership. Get a piece of future profits with employee stock options granted on your start date.
• GRSP Matching Program. Save for your future with our Group Registered Savings Plan in partnership with Wealthsimple. We match contributions up to 2% of your salary.
• Comprehensive Health Coverage. Enroll yourself and your dependents in our health, dental, and life benefits plan through Equitable Life of Canada, starting from day one.
• Holistic Wellness Support. Receive personalized support for your physical, mental, social and financial well-being needs through our membership with Cyno.

Get to Know Us

Acuity Insights is a Canadian product and research company established in 2014. We were founded on 15 years of research by co-founders Kelly Dore (Ph.D.) and Harold Reiter (M.D MEd), who invented our first product, Casper, a higher education admissions assessment, at McMaster University in Ontario.

In 2021, we partnered with a private equity firm. It enabled us to acquire One45, a healthcare education software company, expanding our team and offerings beyond Admission Assessments (Casper & Duet) to Program Management and Insights (One45 & Analytics) for higher education institutions.

Behind Acuity Insights, you’ll find a diverse team of 120+ caring, curious, and driven individuals collaborating remotely across Canada and some international locations.

We are committed to creating a supportive & collaborative culture built on respect for all individuals. We prioritize transparency, equity, and inclusion in our programs, policies and business operations.

Diversity and inclusion fuel innovation, build better products and contribute to healthier business outcomes. It’s our company’s strength and priority. We encourage individuals from non-traditional backgrounds or historically marginalized and underrepresented groups to apply and join us in helping higher education institutions implement and practice holistic and fair admission processes.

Thank you for considering Acuity Insights as your next workplace!