Strategic Finance Jobs: An Upgrade Over Corporate Finance, or a Smoke Screen for Standard FP&A Work?

Whenever I write about Corporate Finance jobs on this site, there’s always a fair amount of criticism in the comments.

People seem to think that I’m too harsh in explaining why I “don’t like” these jobs and do not recommend them for most university and MBA students.

But many corporations also realized that Corporate Finance has a branding problem, because they created “Strategic Finance” roles.

This trend began with Dropbox in 2012, and following some very aggressive marketing, seemingly every other tech company – and many non-tech companies – copied them and created their own Strategic Finance jobs.

But does Strategic Finance improve upon the standard roles in FP&A, Controllership, and Treasury?

Are there real differences in the work, the compensation, and the exit opportunities?

Or is it just a “lipstick on the pig” move to lure bankers over to the corporate side?

The Short Version of Strategic Finance Jobs

• Strategic finance jobs are a mix of Financial Planning & Analysis, Strategy, and Corporate Development work, with a focus on growth and ad-hoc projects rather than the usual end-of-period reporting, variance analysis, and cash-flow management tasks.
• Common projects might include forecasting revenue from a new product or an existing product’s entrance into a new market; these tend to operate on longer time horizons with more cross-company collaboration.
• At early-stage companies, the role often involves investor relations and debt/equity fundraising as well, since there may not be separate teams for these.
• The most common recruits include ex-bankers, Big 4 professionals, and internal candidates from related departments at the same company; it’s rare for recent university graduates to win these roles.
• Salaries/total compensation, the career path, and the hierarchy are quite similar to corporate finance, but in some industries/groups, there may be potential for notably higher compensation (though still less than in IB, PE, etc.).
• The biggest problem is that companies often market standard FP&A roles as “Strategic Finance,” even when there’s nothing strategic about them, so you need to be very thorough in assessing any job openings.
• Strategic finance can be an upgrade over standard corporate finance jobs, but even when it is, it won’t necessarily provide a huge boost to your exit opportunities, compensation, or promotion potential.

Strategic Finance vs. Corporate Finance

An easy way to summarize the difference between SF and CF is as follows:

• FP&A: Please give me excruciating detail on all the line items this quarter and how each one compares to our forecasts.
• SF: Can you project revenue growth from this new product over the next 3 – 5 years? It’s fine if your forecast includes only 10 line items.

In something like FP&A, you’ll spend a lot of time working on a multi-year budget / P&L for your department and letting the rest of the team know how it’s trending over time.

When the month or quarter closes, you’ll do a variance analysis that explains why certain revenue, expense, and cash flow line items differ from your forecasts.

Meanwhile, in Accounting/Controllership, you might spend a lot of time reviewing receivables and payables and determining whether certain spending should be capitalized or expensed.

Your goal is to present the financial statements in a favorable light while also complying with standard legal, tax, and accounting practices.

You might work on similar tasks in certain Strategic Finance roles, but examples of unique/different projects include:

• “We want to launch a new chain of resorts in the Middle East. Can you figure out the revenue, expenses, CapEx, and licensing fees required and then determine whether this project is viable?”
• “We want to take our current software targeted at architecture automation and expand it to urban planning and interior design as well. Can you research a go-to-market strategy, run the numbers on the sales, marketing, and development work required, and calculate the payback period and IRR under different scenarios?”
• “We’re thinking of putting more sales reps on our top 10 client accounts in North America. Can you investigate their businesses, come up with potential up-sell ideas, and see what type of headcount and sales rep productivity we’d need to make this work?”
• “We’re spending too much on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and want to build our own data centers instead. Can you research the requirements and build a model that includes the steady-state financials and the costs required for the transition period?”

In short, it’s much more interesting work that requires more collaboration with other departments, and there’s far less “routine” in terms of end-of-month reporting, variance analysis, and line-item classifications.

Depending on the company, though, Strategic Finance could still be within FP&A or Corporate Finance or report to them.

You tend to gain more real-world ownership of projects, and you also witness their implementations as the company advances with its growth strategies.

Initially, it’s more of an Excel, research, and number-crunching role, but it shifts to presentations and communications as you move up.

All of this might sound great, but there are some downsides.

First, it tends to be more stressful than standard CF roles, with potentially longer hours as well (especially if you do anything M&A or partnership-related – see below).

Also, you must be good at creative problem solving and comfortable with not having a routine or process for everything.

Some people like that, but it’s not necessarily appealing if you’re in it for the work-life balance.

Finally, many roles are falsely marketed as “Strategic Finance,” even when they’re just normal FP&A.

Does Strategic Finance Include Corporate Development (M&A and Partnership) Work?

The short answer is “Maybe, sometimes, but don’t hold your breath.”

At most large companies, a dedicated Corporate Development team handles M&A deals and partnership development.

The Strategic Finance team may still contribute to preliminary work, such as screening add-on acquisition candidates, but they’re unlikely to work on entire deal processes.

These activities might represent maybe 5 – 10% of the job at mid-sized-to-large firms.

At mid-sized and smaller firms, though, there will be more variety.

In some cases, the “Strategic Finance” team might be a combined Corporate Finance, Strategy, and Corporate Development team that does a bit of everything (and maybe add Investor Relations as well if the company is in fundraising mode).

But be careful because actual early-stage startups are almost always too small to execute true M&A deals.

You want to find the “sweet spot,” where companies are big enough to consider M&A deals and partnerships, but not so big that they have separate, dedicated teams quite yet.

For example, look for Series B-to-C tech startups with at least $50 to $100 million in VC funding and at least 100 – 200 employees.

A company in that size range probably won’t have a dedicated Corp Dev team yet, but it will have FP&A and strategy needs, so a “Strategic Finance” role there might end up doing a bit of everything.

Recruiting: Who Wins Strategic Finance Jobs?

Ex-bankers, Big 4 / valuation professionals in related roles, and internal candidates from related teams (corporate finance, strategy, IR, etc.) end up in these roles.

Occasionally, candidates from corporate finance teams at other companies will move into SF, especially if they were at a competitive / highly desirable company (Big Tech, etc.).

Management consultants are strong candidates for corporate strategy roles but are less competitive here unless they’ve done a lot of finance-related work, such as due diligence and integration projects for M&A deals.

It doesn’t help much to stay in IB past your Analyst years because SF interviewers don’t care that much about “deal experience” – since you don’t work on actual deals.

They want you to have solid Excel, accounting, and forecasting skills, but you can gain those from a few years as an IB Analyst.

Some private equity, venture capital, and startup professionals also make their way into Strategic Finance, but it depends heavily on the industry and company stage.

It is very rare for SF teams to hire undergrads right out of university with no full-time work experience because the role demands skills that you can only learn in real life.

If you see a company advertising a role like this to fresh graduates, you should be very skeptical and dig in to make sure it is actually “Strategic Finance” and not just FP&A or Accounting.

The recruiting process tends to be off-cycle and based on a lot of networking, but some traditional PE/HF headhunters have occasionally offered SF roles; examples include Henkel and Amity.

In interviews, expect a mix of traditional CF-style questions (e.g., a heavy focus on accounting concepts) and IB-style technical questions, especially around forecasting and valuation.

While SF professionals don’t necessarily care about your “deal experience,” they do want to see that you’ve made a meaningful impact on revenue or expenses in your previous roles.

So, with IB experience, it helps if you can point to things like:

• Finding a mistake in a client’s financials that impacted its valuation.
• Finding new potential buyers that resulted in a better outcome.
• Changing something in the deal marketing that produced better responses.

You will almost always get a case study as part of the interview process, which usually involves reviewing a company’s products, pricing, or go-to-market strategy and suggesting changes.

One of the articles linked to at the bottom here has a great example of a “pricing recommendation” slide you might present (the author used it in his interview with the Dropbox Strategic Finance team).

Salaries and Career Paths in Strategic Finance

Unfortunately, Strategic Finance offers nearly the same compensation and career path as normal Corporate Finance roles.

So, if you join after a few years in investment banking, expect something in the $100 – $150K USD total compensation range.

As you move up to the Manager, Director, and eventually the VP levels, this climbs to the $200K – $300K range if you count base salary, bonus, and equity compensation (RSUs, options, etc.).

However, some companies seem to pay quite a bit more than this; I found several data points indicating that Senior Managers could potentially earn in the $200K+ range at large energy and tech companies (for example).

Some startups and growth-stage companies might also offer generous stock-based compensation that takes total compensation to a higher level, but this is very speculative if these companies are private.

As always, discount these numbers for much smaller companies and anything outside the U.S. because compensation is lower almost everywhere else (perhaps a 30 – 50% difference).

If you want more, you can find salary surveys for different roles on sites like Levels.FYI.

The career path is also quite similar and goes from Analyst at the bottom up through Associate, Manager, Senior Manager, Director, and VP.

However, the hierarchy is often “flatter” because team sizes tend to be small, so you may not even see Analysts.

Some teams might consist of just a single VP or “Head of Strategic Finance” with Associates or Managers organized by area.

Do the Exit Opportunities Deliver?

The best answer I can give is: “They are better, but still not amazing.”

The main advantage is that Strategic Finance makes it easier to move into Corporate Development, which would normally be difficult coming from a pure Corporate Finance role.

Corporate Development careers do open more options (even potential routes back into IB/PE), so that is worth something.

However, you’re still unlikely to transition directly from SF into fields such as private equity, hedge funds, investment banking, or even venture capital.

You can return if you’ve worked in one of those before moving into SF, but if you started on the corporate side and have no deal experience, it’s unlikely.

VC is probably the most feasible one, at least if you’ve worked at a startup or growth company before.

You could also join a PE/GE/VC portfolio company and then move to the investment firm from there, but this requires a lot of luck and sets you up more for Operating Partner roles than investing ones.

If you’d prefer to stay on the corporate side rather than pursuing a deal-based role, your main options are to move around internally and join a finance, sales, product, or marketing team.

Why Strategic Finance Jobs Can Be Misleading

One of the biggest problems in this field is that companies often label standard, non-strategic roles “Strategic Finance” to make them look more appealing.

You can blame Dropbox for starting this trend, hyping up the role, and encouraging other companies to copy their strategy… but only on the surface.

As a result, it’s 100% possible for a “Strategic Finance” role to consist of standard FP&A and accounting work, such as monthly and quarterly closes and variance analysis.

If you want to find teams that do “real” strategic work:

• Look for groups with many ex-bankers and private equity professionals.
• During the interview process, ask for details about the work, such as the time they spend on recurring tasks vs. custom projects.
• Find companies without separate corporate/business development teams and firms that lack IR/fundraising functions (see the “sweet spot” guidelines above).

Do Strategic Finance Jobs Beat Corporate Finance Jobs?

Yes, on average, I think Strategic Finance jobs beat Corporate Finance jobs.

The work is more interesting, you gain more exposure to senior management, the pay might be higher in some cases, and the exit opportunities are at least slightly better.

But this is the wrong question to ask because the roles are not directly comparable.

Corporate Finance is more of an “entry-level” field that’s open to a wide range of candidates from different universities, business schools, and careers.

Strategic Finance is more of an “exit opportunity” from finance-related jobs, and teams usually require very specific experience.

And if you compare Strategic Finance to the traditional investment banking exit opportunities, I don’t think it fares well against most of them.

PE, GE, and HF roles have much higher pay ceilings, CD roles have higher pay than SF and offer similarly improved hours, and even areas like real estate and private credit offer some combination of “higher pay ceiling + equally/more interesting work.”

I do think SF beats CF if you consider CF roles to be an “exit opportunity,” and you could make the case that SF beats or equals many VC careers…

…but let’s be real: Most bankers probably do not have Corporate Finance or Venture Capital at the top of their “most desired exit opportunity” list.

So, Strategic Finance is an improvement in some ways, but it’s still more of a work-life balance play than a “maximize compensation” one.

If your goal is a much higher pay ceiling or faster advancement, you should be more strategic about your next career decision.

For Further Learning

I recommend these articles if you want to learn more about the field:

• The Strategic Finance Revolution – This one reads a bit too much like a glossy brochure to me, but it contains some useful information.
• Redefining Finance: The Rise of StratFin – Written by an early hire in the Dropbox Strategic Finance team.