Director, Marketing & Innovation Finance

About this role

Company Description
Simple Mills is on a mission to transform the way food is made, creating nourishing products with astounding ingredients and amazing taste. Founded in 2012 by Katlin Smith, our brand has redefined center-aisle grocery by delivering better-for-you products made with unique, nutrient-dense ingredients. Today, we’re a category leader and the #1 natural brand in multiple segments, with distribution in over 30,000 stores nationwide.
Now, as part of Flowers Foods, we’re entering an exciting new phase of growth—expanding our reach, accelerating innovation, and amplifying brand awareness, all while preserving the integrity of what makes Simple Mills special. Our commitment to using simple, high-quality ingredients ensures that every bite is both delicious and nutritious. Whether it’s watermelon seed flour in our cookies or butternut squash in our crackers, we craft our products with innovative, wholesome ingredients that deliver extraordinary taste.
Our work has been recognized by Fast Company as a Brand That Matters and a Most Innovative Company, and has been featured in Vogue, Forbes, Women’s Health, and NPR’s How I Built This. In 2024, Inc. named us one of its Best Workplaces, reflecting our dedication to fostering an inspiring and inclusive environment where passionate individuals can make a difference.
Join us as we shape the future of food. Learn more at www.simplemills.com.
Requirements
Role Description
The Director, Marketing & Innovation Finance is a critical finance leadership role responsible for driving profitable growth, shaping investment strategy, and improving business performance across the company’s brand, category, and innovation agenda.
Serving as the lead finance partner to Marketing, Innovation, and R&D, this individual will influence key decisions related to portfolio strategy, marketing investment, innovation prioritization, and long-range growth planning. The role requires a commercially minded finance leader with strong strategic judgment, analytical rigor, and executive presence.
As the organization continues to scale, this leader will help strengthen planning rigor, elevate decision quality, and bring structure and financial discipline to an increasingly complex business environment. The ideal candidate is agile, collaborative, and comfortable operating through ambiguity while balancing strategic leadership with hands-on execution. The position will report to the VP, Finance and responsibilities will include:

Strategic Finance Leadership & Cross Functional Influence

• Lead category and brand planning processes, including forecast development, annual operating plan, and long-range planning (LRP), ensuring assumptions, risks, and growth expectations are financially grounded and aligned to business objectives.

• Drive financial analysis that generates actionable insights on key business performance drivers (revenue, profitability, pricing, mix, marketing effectiveness, and innovation performance) to inform business decisions.

• Build and leverage financial models to evaluate growth opportunities, pricing actions, innovation launches, and resource allocation decisions, including sensitivity analysis tied to volume, margin, spend, and profitability assumptions.

• Challenge and validate business assumptions by partnering with cross-functional leaders to identify risks, gaps, and performance dependencies before decisions are finalized.

• Translate analysis into clear recommendations that guide prioritization, trade-offs, and improved business outcomes

• Drive financial discipline and performance management by strengthening planning rigor, accountability, forecast accuracy, and timely risk identification in a dynamic environment

• Operate effectively within a fast-moving environment, balancing strategic thinking with hands-on execution and responsiveness to evolving business needs.

Brand & Category Finance

• Lead category and brand performance reviews, analyzing drivers of variances across revenue, gross margin, pricing, mix, promotional activity, and profitability versus forecast, plan, and prior year.

• Diagnose business performance trends and translate findings into actionable recommendations to improve profitability, strengthen brand performance, and address emerging risks.

• Evaluate pricing strategies, promotional plans, and growth initiatives to quantify financial impact, margin implications, and expected return prior to execution.

• Identify opportunities to optimize spend, improve resource allocation, and increase return across category, marketing, and growth initiatives.

• Develop reporting and business insights that help leadership teams identify performance gaps, understand underlying business drivers, and make informed operating decisions tied to growth and profitability objectives.

• Perform scenario analysis tied to category strategy, portfolio changes, and growth initiatives to support prioritization, resource allocation, and business planning decisions.

• Analyze marketing spend effectiveness to identify opportunities to improve return on investment, optimize allocation across initiatives, and increase efficiency of brand and promotional spending.

• Lead budgeting, forecasting, accrual management, and ongoing financial oversight of marketing spend across brands, campaigns, and growth initiatives.

Innovation Finance

• Lead financial evaluation of innovation initiatives, including business case development, pricing assumptions, launch forecasts, commercialization economics, and post-launch performance analysis.

• Assess innovation pipeline opportunities through financial modeling focused on volume expectations, margin contribution, launch investment requirements, and long-term profitability potential.

• Monitor innovation and growth initiative performance against financial assumptions, identify drivers of underperformance, and recommend actions needed to improve outcomes, mitigate risk, or adjust expectations.

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