Overview
Financial Planning and Analysis Analyst Jobs in United States at HireTalent – Staffing & Recruiting Firm
Title: Financial Planning and Analysis Analyst
Company: HireTalent – Staffing & Recruiting Firm
Location: United States
Job Description:
The Cocoa FP&A Analyst supports the cocoa procurement organization by providing accurate financial analysis, reporting, and forecasting related to cocoa raw materials. This role acts as a key bridge between Procurement, Finance, Supply Chain, and Accounting, ensuring transparency and financial integrity across cocoa contracts, pricing, hedging, and inventory flows.
The analyst plays a critical role in understanding how cocoa physical contracts, futures hedging, and operational execution translate into financial results, including P&L, PPV, inventory valuation, and accruals.
Key Responsibilities:
Financial Analysis & Reporting
- Analyze cocoa raw material costs, including futures, differentials, premiums, freight, sustainability premiums, and other cost components.
- Prepare and explain cocoa PPV, purchase price evolution, and cost variances versus forecast, budget, and standard cost.
- Support monthly close activities related to cocoa, including accruals, and reconciliations.
Forecasting & Planning
- Support short- and mid-term cocoa cost forecasts.
- Maintain and update cocoa forecast assumptions.
- Assist in standard cost setting and annual planning processes for cocoa raw materials.
Systems, Data & Controls:
- Work with data from systems such as S/4, iRely, and reporting tools to ensure data accuracy and consistency.
- Support SOX and internal control activities, including documentation, reconciliations, and audit requests related to cocoa.
- Identify data gaps or process inefficiencies and support continuous improvement initiatives.
Cross-Functional Collaboration:
- Act as a finance partner to Cocoa Procurement, Supply Chain, and Accounting teams.
- Support ad-hoc analysis and management requests related to cocoa costs, contracts, and performance drivers.
- Contribute to process harmonization and standardization initiatives across regions.
Qualifications & Experience:
- Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, Business, or a related field.
- 2–5 years of experience in finance, procurement finance, commodities, or supply chain finance.
- Experience with commodity-based businesses (e.g., cocoa, agricultural commodities, ingredients) is strongly preferred.
- Exposure to hedging concepts and futures markets is an advantage.
Skills & Competencies:
- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with high attention to detail.
- Ability to translate complex commodity and contract data into clear financial insights.
- Solid Excel and financial modeling skills; experience with SAP S/4 and/or commodity systems is a plus.
Must Have Skills:
- Strong FP&A foundation (typically ~5 years of experience suggested)
- Advanced Excel & financial modeling
- SAP S/4 experience (required)
- Comfort with large datasets and variance analysis
Nice-to-haves:
- Power BI
- Commodity finance or procurement finance
- Exposure to hedging and futures markets
- Food manufacturing or agricultural commodities (cocoa is a strong plus)
Industry Experience:
- Experience in the food manufacturing industry, ideally within Procurement, would be highly desirable.
- Experience working with commodities would be an additional advantage.
- Direct experience with cocoa would be a strong plus.
- What do you foresee as being the biggest challenge in this position?
- The individual must enjoy investigating issues, identifying root causes, and driving solutions.
- Given the current reporting gaps at HSY, the role will require the ability to build ad‑hoc or standalone reports independently and, where appropriate, push for scalable reporting solutions to be developed by IT—with my support.
