Director, Finance Operations

About Spark Advisors We're building healthcare tech for a system that desperately needs it. Each year, millions of Americans deal with confusing changes to their Medicare plans that impact their prescriptions, access to care, and pocketbooks. These aren’t just inconveniences – they are potentially life-altering changes that leave seniors medically and financially vulnerable. Independent Medicare advisors play a crucial role in guiding seniors through this complexity and helping them find the right coverage for their needs. But their ability to be effective healthcare advocates has long been hamstrung by broken tools and outdated systems. Spark is fixing that. We’re the fastest-growing Medicare platform in the country, combining AI, an industry-leading CRM, and client services to transform how 10,000+ brokers acquire, enroll, and support clients in their local communities. Join a talent-dense team from Square, Ramp, Yext, Oscar, and Cedar — backed by Primary Ventures and Viewpoint Ventures — that is serious about building technology to expand access to quality healthcare. We offer remote work, sabbaticals, company retreats, and other generous benefits that earned us recognition as one of Inc. Magazine’s Best Workplaces of 2025 Healthcare is overdue for innovation. Let’s redefine what its future looks like — together. Summary We're hiring an owner for Spark's finance operating system end to end — the systems, standards, and controls behind accurate commissions and agency-finance, and increasingly, the accounting and controllership built on top of them. The role starts as a systems-and-standards owner, re-architecting brittle, spreadsheet-based processes into scalable, auditable systems for commissions, marketing co-op, and reconciliation — with authority to set and enforce the standards behind them. It's explicitly a step toward bringing more accounting and controllership in-house over time, including sharper ownership of AR, AP, and payroll standards. Today, agency-finance owns day-to-day payment execution, Data builds the commissions tooling to this role's spec, and an outsourced firm runs the GAAP close, which this role directs and reviews. As the function matures, expect that outsourced relationship to shrink and this role's in-house scope to grow. This is a hybrid role based at our Broadway office in NYC, with in-office days expected Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday. What You'll Own Design & build the finance operating system (the re-architecture): turn brittle, manual, spreadsheet/Airtable-based processes into scalable, auditable systems for commissions, marketing co-op, rate/override source-of-truth, and reconciliation. Set the finance requirements for the Data team's commissions database/calculator, and own build-vs-buy decisions. Own financial accuracy end to end: set and enforce the standards, controls, and reconciliation framework that make payments — and the financials built on them — correct, from upstream data through reconciliation to accounting and reporting. Own accounting & controllership more directly than a pure systems role, including AR, AP, and payroll standards and outcomes. Standards and accuracy accountability start day one, with direct execution of AR/AP/payroll potentially following as the function matures. Own and evolve the outsourced controllership relationship: direct, review, and accept the external accounting firm's monthly close and statements today, and help build the internal capability to bring close/controllership in-house over time, with the outsourced firm's role shrinking accordingly. Own reporting integrity: keep financials and reporting trustworthy and on time, and own recurring and bespoke deliverables like lender/debt-facility reporting, diligence data rooms, and leadership requests. Hands-on commission processing, disbursement (Tipalti), and banking runs stay with the existing agency-finance team — this role gives their work an owned, well-designed system rather than replacing them.…