Business Unit Controller

Salary Range: CA$ To CA$ Annually

Westport in Cambridge, Ont. designs and manufactures a comprehensive product mix of alternative fuel components for applications in the light and heavy‑duty vehicle and industrial segments globally. This product mix includes Hydrogen (H2) and Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) components such as pressure regulators, tank valves, PRD's, PRV’s, shutoff valves and integrated systems for a wide range of applications, including Fuel Cell vehicles.
This position leads the finance function for an operations‑focused business unit. The role serves as the primary finance partner to the Business Unit Leader and to Operations, Supply Chain, and Quality teams, linking operational drivers to financial outcomes. The role turns plant and operational data into clear financial insight, improves business performance, and ensures strong financial discipline across planning, execution, and control.

The role owns the business unit budgeting process, rolling forecast, and performance analysis, integrating sales, production, inventory, labour, and overhead assumptions into robust financial models. The position also owns the business unit Power BI reporting environment, from requirements gathering through dashboard and data model deployment, ensuring consistent definitions, reliable data, and actionable reporting for frontline leaders. The position supports the business unit leader in their executive management reporting on a periodic and ad‑hoc basis.

This position drives operational performance improvement through detailed manufacturing variance analysis and through product and customer profitability analysis. Insights from this work support pricing decisions, product mix optimization, sourcing strategies, and make‑or‑buy decisions. The successful candidate must also be able and willing to travel internationally on a quarterly basis to support cross‑site operations and leadership alignment.

Position Responsibilities

Lead the business unit financial planning cycle, including annual budget, quarterly forecasts, and long‑range planning.

Own the monthly business unit financial results process. Prepare and present revenue, margin, overhead, operating expense, inventory, and cash flow analysis to business and finance leadership.

Partner with Operations, Supply Chain, and Quality leaders on weekly and monthly performance reviews. Quantify the financial impact of safety, quality, delivery, and cost performance and drive accountability for gap closure.

Perform detailed manufacturing variance analysis, including purchase price, material usage, labour rate and efficiency, overhead absorption, yield, scrap, and inventory valuation. Identify root causes and track corrective actions with Operations.

Develop, maintain, and monitor key operational and financial KPIs. Ensure KPIs are clearly defined and consistently measured.

Own the business unit's Power BI reporting environment. Define data requirements, build and maintain datasets and data models, manage refresh schedules, and ensure data accuracy, consistency, and proper access controls.

Design and deploy standardized dashboards and reports for frontline and plant leaders. Ensure reporting supports fast, fact‑based decision‑making on the shop floor and in leadership reviews.

Lead product and customer profitability analysis, including standard versus actual cost, mix and margin bridge analysis, and trend reviews. Provide insights to support pricing, sourcing, and make‑or‑buy decisions.

Support inventory management through analysis of inventory levels, turns, excess and obsolete exposure, and absorption of fixed costs. Work with Operations to improve inventory health and working capital performance.

Provide financial modelling and scenario analysis to support capacity planning, capital investments, cost reduction initiatives, and operational improvement projects.

Prepare financial inputs and analysis for leadership presentations, including monthly business reviews and strategic planning discussions.

Drive continuous improvement in financial processes, models, and reporting tools to improve accuracy, speed, and usefulness of financial information for the business.

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