Manager, Budget, Planning and Operations

As Manager, Budget Planning and Operations, you are a primary driver in critical internal and external budget production and reporting. You serve as budget liaison to administrative/Vice President (“VP”) units as assigned, supporting chief business officers through ASU’s internal annual budgeting, quarterly forecasting, and mid-year CFO financial review processes. You take ownership of key deliverables for the Arizona Board of Regents (ABOR), Joint Legislative Budget Committee (JLBC), and Governor’s Office of Strategic Planning and Budgeting (OSPB) throughout the fiscal year. You contribute to development of OPB policies, processes, and best practices, and you offer meaningful perspective to OPB management for the purposes of decision making, goal setting, and strategic planning.

This position reports to the Senior Director, Budget Planning and Operations (BPO) and provides an opportunity for a hybrid work schedule, currently set at 60% in-office and 40% remote.

Essential duties

Supervising and other areas of responsibility

You will have the opportunity to share your experience and skills as a supervisor to one or more full-time staff, student employees and fellowship program scholars.  You set the agenda for your team - identifying, prioritizing, and executing on goals and deliverables in your areas of responsibility.  You use effective interpersonal, oral, and written communication skills, including the ability to speak and write with clarity and precision, to obtain and convey information related to your assigned budget units. You demonstrate a degree of comfort and professionalism in regular interactions with mid- and senior-level administrators of the university. You take initiative, demonstrate resourcefulness, and display a sense of urgency in fulfilling commitments. You build trust and effective working relationships by communicating in an open manner and following through on commitments. You handle conflict and difficult situations in a professional way, working towards consensus.

Serving as internal budget liaison

As a leader within OPB’s Liaison group, you manage your team’s portfolio of budget units, developing clear and consistent practices for OPB to best support the ASU enterprise. In particular, you are the primary relationship manager and point of contact in OPB for your assigned administrative/VP area budget units, which are highly complex and sensitive in nature. In support of both your team’s budget units and the CFO, you perform work to support central resource planning, annual budgeting, mid-year forecasting, and mid-year CFO financial review processes. Your team prepares cost and budget unit variance analyses, develops revenue and expense forecasts, analyzes trends, and compiles commitment analyses. As needed, you perform financial account reconciliations, financial statement analysis, and transaction research to support unit planning efforts and executive decision-making. To facilitate the allocation of central university resources to ASU administrative/VP area budget units, you are responsible for budgeting, forecasting, and processing financial transactions from your assigned central university accounts, which are complex and detailed in nature. You employ technical knowledgeof Adaptive Planning and Workday FMS to develop data-driven solutions to the financial,operational, or strategicissues facing your assigned budget units. 

Supporting external budget reporting

You have process ownership of the development and presentation of ASU’s annual operating budget and tuition proposal submissions to ABOR as well as ASU’s legislative budget request submission to the State of Arizona. You develop a familiarity with, and understanding of, Board and legislative policies, practices, terminology, and allocation methodologies to ensure financial compliance with University/Board policies and procedures and applicable legal rules and regulations. As needed, you draw insight from budget, planning, and financial data from a variety of sources to assist with ad hoc reports, memoranda, and analyses as requested by ABOR, JLBC, and OSPB. You demonstrate knowledge and application of strategic and financial planning/modeling principles, methods, and practices into your work to best support OPB’s external budget reporting and production. You collaborate with your counterparts in other departments and units as needed to facilitate the collection of unit financial estimates, budgets, forecasts, or other information for use in external processes.