ITHAKA’s mission is to expand access to knowledge and education around the world. Our services — JSTOR, Portico, and Ithaka S+R — enable people everywhere to learn, to grow, and to overcome barriers to education. In carrying out our mission, as employees we feel a deep responsibility to members of our community and to each other, and we are committed to building and sustaining a culture where everyone can thrive.

The Role

ITHAKA is seeking a Senior Financial Analyst to serve as a strategic finance partner for cost support and analysis in our product and shared services areas of JSTOR, JSTOR Stewardship, Portico, and Ithaka S+R.

This is a high-impact individual contributor role for a systems-oriented finance professional who thrives in a SaaS and hybrid revenue environment. The Senior Financial Analyst operates independently across complex, multiproduct analysis, and plays a central role in forecasting, long-range planning, and financial systems optimization.

This role goes beyond reporting. It is about designing clear financial narratives, strengthening planning infrastructure, and ensuring our financial systems—particularly Workday Adaptive Planning and Acumatica—generate reliable, scalable insights that support executive decision-making. This role reports directly to the Director of Financial Planning & Analysis and collaborates closely with Product leadership and key stakeholders across Enterprise Operations, including the Office of the COO, Finance, Legal, and Work Life & Culture.

Responsibilities

Strategic financial partnership

Serve as the primary finance partner to senior product and functional leaders.
Maintain our cost allocation model and lead the analysis of cost impacts from our product and functional areas to our four business units (JSTOR, JSTOR Stewardship, Portico, and Ithaka S+R). Translate cost structure analysis into actionable insights.
Identify financial risks, structural margin drivers, and resource tradeoffs.
Support evaluation of new initiatives, pricing changes, and portfolio investments.

Forecasting & Planning

Lead regular and rolling forecasts for complex, multientity areas.
Lead preparation of monthly and quarterly financial review materials for executive leadership, including variance analysis and forward-looking risk assessment.
Contribute to long-range planning and scenario modeling.
Design and maintain our cost allocation model, which includes working with budget owners on updating allocation drivers, updating the data and explaining variances to business unit leaders.
Ensure assumptions are documented, defensible, and aligned across the portfolio.
Manage the non-payroll cost budget, and maintain software, cloud, and other purchase order details in the planning system to ensure an accurate forecast.
Manage the headcount and payroll budget and maintain open positions for accurate forecasting.

Systems & Infrastructure

Serve as a power user of Workday Adaptive Planning, ensuring models, versions, allocations, and reporting structures are clean and scalable.
Serve as a power user of Databricks and Tableau ensuring ongoing support and enhancement of the allocated product line financial results dashboards.
Partner closely with Accounting to ensure integrity of data flows from Acumatica (ERP) into Adaptive.
Improve data architecture and dimensional consistency across systems.
Identify opportunities to automate manual processes and improve forecasting accuracy.
Strengthen reporting governance and system documentation.
Ensure forecast integrity through rigorous assumption validation, reconciliation to actuals, and alignment with accounting standards.
Elevate reporting from static output to decision-support tools.

Process Improvement & Innovation

Identify and drive enhancements to forecasting workflows, allocation methodologies, and reporting structures.
Leverage AI, automation and analytical tools to improve efficiency and scalability.
Contribute to modernization of FP&A practices, including integration of new technologies and AI in current processes.