VP of Strategy & Finance - Duel

VP of Strategy & Finance 

Location: New York, USA - Hybrid – (in-person 3 days per week)
Salary: $200,000 - $250,000 + equity
Employment Type: Full-time

Have you taken a SaaS business through meaningful growth in the early days? Are you the kind of person that drives order to carnage in an environment that is constantly changing and evolving? Are you a builder at your core, reveling in building teams & strategies to bring a huge vision to life?

Duel is rapidly scaling, driven by ambitious growth plans and a thriving international team across multiple functions. We are seeking a finance first, strategic, data obsessed VP of Strategy & Finance to drive operational excellence, scale our team, and guide our US expansion throughout 2025 & beyond. Duel will be growing from 45 to over 100 people in the next 12 months, then doubling again, which means we will be undergoing all the exciting, vital changes as everything breaks on the way. It'll be your job to make this as smooth as possible.

You've seen this movie before, you’ll be the operational architect, shaping processes and strategies, our finance virtuoso fuelling our longterm success and ensuring we complete our mission to make Brand Advocacy the industry standard playbook for building brands. This role demands detailed leadership, crossfunctional collaboration and financial ownership, to ensure that all aspects of our strategy align with our growth objectives & vision.

The Business:
Duel is a SaaS company on a mission to make Brand Advocacy the industry standard playbook for building brilliant retail brands. It was founded by world record breaking adventurer and former brand ambassador Paul Archer, alongside viral games developer Naio Tsarouchis, and we exist to show there’s a better way to build businesses, to build a better future, proving that caring for people builds brand, which builds long term and exponential profit returns.

The Duel Brand Advocacy Platform allows enterprise brands to do just that, scaling how they manage their relationships with thousands of advocates, customers, creators and brand ambassadors. We’re proud today that brands such as Abercrombie & Fitch, Charlotte Tilbury, Spanx, Victoria’s Secret and Elemis (to name a few, but not to name some household names that we can’t talk about yet) are doing just that. The Duel team comprises psychologists, brand experts and community builders, combining cutting edge brand expertise, with seasoned SaaS experience..

The Role

Strategic Leadership: You’ll take a three-year plan and strategically drive it with foresight, adaptability, and precision. You’ll be more interested in the solutions to problems, than you are the problem itself. You’ll design actionable strategies that align with long-term goals while addressing immediate initiatives, using frameworks to translate the vision into measurable milestones, owning the responsibility and accountability across teams. You’ll balance high-impact priorities, while empowering teams to achieve your strategy.

Financial Ownership: You’ll run finance and the finance team, ensuring resources are allocated effectively to maximise impact while maintaining a granular view on budgeting processes with FP&A in mind. You’ll ensure Duel remains agile and financially resilient, empowering senior leadership to make informed decisions that drive long term success. Effectively, you will be acting as the company CFO for the foreseeable.

Leadership & Collaboration: You’ll support the CEO in driving performance and results through accountability within our Senior Leadership Team, empowering leaders to build their departments and deliver against their individual responsibilities, embodying the operational heartbeat of Duel. You’ll ensure seamless cross-functional collaboration while maintaining cultural and operational continuity. You’re the bridge between vision and execution, aligning diverse teams and driving cohesion as Duel scales globally, supporting cross-functional operations while maintaining cultural and operational continuity across the company.

The Person

A True Partner: This isn’t just a leadership role; it’s a partnership. The VP of Strategy & Finance will be a true partner to Paul, our CEO and the rest of the Senior Leadership Team, combining data and strategic thinking, to elevate Duel to new heights. You’ll bring balance, the yin to Paul’s yang. You’re a person who will not only complement (and occasionally ground) visionary energy but will also bring the vision to life with meticulous detail, an innate ability to see the bigger picture, and a focus on driving actionable results. You’re strategic at your core, able to weave together bold ideas with grounded operational plans

Execution and Articulation: You’re at your best when driving results in the CEO’s vision. You’ll collaborate to build the strategic plan, and turn it into clear actionable steps, ensuring that day-to-day operations are aligned with our growth goals. You’re articulate, and seamlessly articulate complex ideas in a way that inspires confidence across teams to deliver for scaling effectively.

Details, details, detials: You’re disciplined, you see the world in black and white with clear boundaries and the confidence to say it as you see it. You’re uncompromising when it comes to quality and delivering on expectations. You’re all about metrics. How are things working? How are we measuring it? If you could marry a spreadsheet or a dashboard, you probably would. And you’ll have spotted what's wrong in this paragraph's title (and it will be driving you crazy!).

Business Engineer: You'll approach building this business as a master engineer would build a beautiful machine. Every team member is a part, perfectly selected, positioned for execution, connected and operating in perfect harmony toward a singular goal.

The Experience

• Proven experience in leading operations in a scaling SaaS business

• Background in finance, strategy or consulting - you’ll have done your time seeing the world through a model and spreadsheet

• Experience leading operational processes, company cadence, OKRs and company-wide meetings (board experience especially).

• Experience communicating strategic vision and company direction to board and investors

• Expertise in overseeing workforce planning,

• Strong financial acumen, with experience in cash flow management, budgeting, and financial modeling.

• Experience running revenue and GTM operations desired

• Proven ability to work and communicate with Senior Leadership Teams, providing multilayered cross-functional support across operations, finance, and people management.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to present facts and outcomes to influence decision-making at a senior level.

What We Offer
We want to build a remarkable company with remarkable people and a remarkable culture that you will want to shout from the rooftops about. In a relaxed, flexible, and fun environment, the team is driven to making the business a success while enjoying what we do and who we do it with.

• Flexible working hours - if you need to fit around childcare or life, we understand.

• 25 PTO Days + 11 Statutory Holidays + End-of-year break (3-4 additional days depending on dates)

• Options scheme for all fulltime employees - it’s important to us that everyone shares in what we build.

• US Healthcare Options - More to come on this

• 401K Match Plan

• A growing benefits package, including;

  • Company Macbook to work from

  • $440 WFH Set-Up

  • Headspace Contributions

  • Personal Development budget and support

  • 2 additional days leave for volunteering

• Salary: $200,000 - $250,000 + equity