Financial Planning Director – Business Services Bureau – SFPUC (0933) (166843)

This is a Position-Based Test conducted in accordance with CSC Rule 111A. 

Application Opening: Monday, August 3, 2026
Application Deadline: Monday, August 10, 2026, at 11:59 p.m. (PDT)
Recruitment ID: PBT-0933-166843 / RTF0166842-01099695

WHO ARE WE?
San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC)
Headquartered in San Francisco, we have 2,300 employees operating across eight counties serving more than 2.7 million customers in the San Francisco Bay Area – 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Our Mission: To provide our customers with high quality, efficient, and reliable water, power, and wastewater services in a manner that values environmental and community interests and sustains the resources entrusted to our care.

Our Vision: We are an innovative utility leader, recognized for excellent results in service, safety, stewardship, and inclusiveness.

We are an award-winning and industry-leading utilities organization committed to our customers, community interests, and the environment. To learn more about our organization, please visit our website at https://www.sfpuc.gov.

We are proud of our infrastructure and programs, but most importantly, we value our highly qualified and dedicated workforce, which ensures that this vision becomes a reality.

To learn more about working at the SFPUC, visit our career site at https://www.sfpuc.gov/about-us/careers-sfpuc.

About the Financial Strategy Division
The Financial Strategy Division as part of the Business Services Bureau encompasses Financial Planning and Rate Setting, Budgets and Capital Finance. The group leads the forward planning for the SFPUC’s finances and ensures financial sustainability.

About the Position
Under general direction of the Deputy Chief Financial Officer, the Financial Planning Director will assist in the day-to-day operations of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission Financial Strategy Division with responsibility for agency rate administration, and financial planning activities.

This position provides advice to the Deputy Chief Financial Officer and other senior management at the SFPUC on wide range of financial matters. This position manages the development and evaluation of rate schedules; assures that departmental rates and regulations are consistent with local, state and federal regulations; presents and defends rate proposals/structures, cost of services and other financial policies before the board, commissions, other agencies and the general public.

Additionally, this position coordinates, integrates and provides leadership for both standing and ad hoc teams engaged in organized financial problem solving, policy development or service delivery across functional, department and or jurisdictional lines.

The Financial Planning Director is a senior manager who leads a team of six professionals in complex financial work. This critical leadership role is a key member of the SFPUC’s Financial Strategy team and a key advisor to leaders throughout the agency. The role requires both technical proficiency, excellent communication skills and political savvy to be successful.

Essential duties include but are not limited to:

1. Plans, monitors, evaluates, and supervises the operation of the Financial Strategy Division with responsibility for the SFPUC's rate administration and financial planning activities.
2. Provides financial oversight, coordination, and support on the SFPUC's water sales contract with suburban wholesale customers, including calculation of the revenue requirement, rate determination, and related audits.
3. Directs staff in the development of utility rates, fees, cost of service studies, revenue forecasting, and utility cost of service studies.
4. Ensures utility rates meet all applicable laws and regulations (California specific) as well as SFPUC financial policies.
5. Develops and monitors all enterprise revenue budgets throughout the year, including the drivers for variance including utility sales volumes.
6. Plans, organizes, directs, and participates in the preparation of the department's annual financial plans, utility rates, fees and charges development studies while making recommendations as appropriate.
7. Prepares and makes presentation to the board, commissions, other agencies and the general public on rate proposals, structures, cost of services and other financial policies.
8. Leads a team of professionals at the agency, serving as a mentor, coach and problem solver in a highly technically proficient work area.
9. Serves as a leader within Financial Strategy to assist with critical decision making.

The Financial Planning Director also performs other duties as assigned to Class 0933 Manager V.

The Ideal Candidate
The Leadership Competency Model illustrates what it means to be successful for any leader at the SFPUC, supporting our commitment to organizational excellence. The ideal candidate will have a demonstrated track record and ability to exercise the following competencies which are the most critical to the Financial Planning Director role:

• Accountability: Acts with integrity, honestly, and fairness; inspires trust. Clearly defines roles and responsibilities for self and others. Holds self and others to their roles and responsibilities. Complies with legal and ethical guidelines. Acts as a responsible steward of the resources entrusted to the SFPUC. 
• Decision Making and Problem Solving: Takes ownership of problems and makes timely, responsible, transparent, and clear decisions. involves others in addressing problems and seeking solutions. Gathers relevant information and conducts appropriate analyses. Understands the impact of decisions. 
• Strategic Planning: Formulates objectives and priorities, implements plans, and allocates resources to achieve the long-term goals of the organization.  
• Risk Management: Understands personal responsibility for managing risks and takes precaution in avoiding preventable risks. Identifies, assesses, and mitigates risks seen as impacting the organization's achievement of strategic goals and objectives. Ensures self and others are following procedures that prevent avoidable operational, financial, legal, or health and safety risks. 

Minimum Qualifications:

1. Education: Possession of a bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university; AND
2. Experience: Eight (8) years of progressively responsible professional experience in financial planning and rate setting for large municipal or governmental organizations, including strategic long-range (10+ years) financial planning, forecasting, and cost-of-service retail rate development for California water, power, and/or sewer utilities with annual budgets exceeding $1 billion, of which three (3) years must include supervising professionals performing similar work.

Education Substitution: Additional qualifying professional experience in financial planning and rate setting for large municipal or governmental organizations, including strategic long-range (10+ years) financial planning, forecasting, and cost-of-service retail rate development for California water, power, and/or sewer utilities with annual budgets exceeding $1 billion may be substituted for the required degree on a year-for-year basis up to a maximum of two (2) years. One (1) year is equivalent to thirty (30) semester units/forty-five (45) quarter units.

Note: One (1) year of full-time employment is considered equivalent to two thousand (2,000) hours. Any overtime hours that you work above forty (40) hours per week are not included in the calculation to determine full-time employment.

Applicants must meet the minimum qualifications requirement by the final filing date unless otherwise noted.

Desirable Qualifications: The stated desirable qualifications may be considered at the end of the selection process when candidates are referred for hiring:

• A master’s degree in business administration, finance, public administration, economics or related field.
• Experience with PeopleSoft.
• Experience in water, power and wastewater utility rates.

Verification of Experience and/or Education:
Every application is reviewed to ensure that you meet the minimum qualifications as listed in the job ad. Please review Employment Application and Minimum Qualifications and Verification of Experience and/or Education for considerations taken when reviewing applications. 

Applicants may be required to submit verification of qualifying education and experience at any point during the recruitment and selection process.

Failure to provide the required verification may result in rejection of the application and/or removal from eligibility for referral and appointment in this class.

Note: Falsifying one’s education, training, or work experience or attempted deception on the application may result in disqualification for this and future job opportunities with the City and County of San Francisco.

All work experience, education, training and other information substantiating how you meet the minimum qualifications must be included on your application by the filing deadline. Information submitted after the filing deadline will not be considered in determining whether you meet the minimum qualifications.

Resumes will not be accepted in lieu of a completed City and County of San Francisco application. Applications completed improperly may be cause for ineligibility, disqualification or may lead to lower scores. 

Selection Procedures:
After application submission, candidates deemed qualified must complete all subsequent steps to advance in this selection process, which includes the following:

1. Minimum Qualification Supplemental Questionnaire (MQSQ) (Weight: Qualifying):
Candidates will be required to complete a MQSQ as part of the employment application at a later time. This MQSQ is designed to obtain specific information regarding an applicant's experience in relation to the Minimum Qualifications (MQ) for this position. The MQSQ will be used to evaluate if the applicant possesses the required minimum qualifications.

2. Supplemental Questionnaire Examination (Weight:100%): Applicants who meet the minimum qualifications will be sent a Supplemental Questionnaire Examination via a separate email after the closing of the application filing period. The Supplemental Questionnaire Examination is designed to measure the knowledge, skills and/or abilities in job-related areas required for the position which may include, but are not limited to the following:

• Knowledge of California laws, rules and regulations that govern utility rate setting.
• Knowledge of financial systems, including data entry, extraction and reporting functionality.
• Ability to interpret and analyze complex financial data, develop and oversee complex financial modelling and forecasting.
• Ability to direct, manage, and train staff with complex financial analysis responsibilities.
• Ability to establish and maintain effective working relationships with other SFPUC's Enterprises and Bureaus, City's departments, other agencies, and the public.
• Ability to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, including the ability to communicate complex financial or policy matters in a clear and concise manner.
• Ability to make presentations to a wide variety of internal and external audiences.

Applicants will be given a deadline to return the Supplemental Questionnaire Examination. Those who do not respond by the established deadline will not be eligible to continue in the examination process and will not be added to eligibility list resulting from this process. All applicants’ responses to the Supplemental Questionnaire Examination are subject to verification.

A passing score must be achieved on the Supplemental Questionnaire Examination in order to continue in the selection process and be placed on the eligible list/score report.

Candidates will be placed on the eligible list/score report in rank order according to their final score. Candidate scores on this examination may also be applied to other announcements involving other job titles, when directed by the Human Resources Director.

The department may administer additional position-specific selection procedures to make the final hiring decision.

NOTE: Applicants who meet the minimum qualifications are not guaranteed to advance through all of the steps in the selection process.

Eligible List/Score Report: A confidential eligible list of applicant names that have passed the civil service examination process will be created, and used for certification purposes only. An examination score report will be established, so applicants can view the ranks, final scores and number of eligible candidates. Applicant information, including names of applicants on the eligible list, shall not be made public unless required by law. However, an eligible list shall be made available for public inspection, upon request, once the eligible list is exhausted or expired and referrals resolved. The eligible list/score report resulting from this civil service examination process is subject to change after adoption (e.g., as a result of appeals), as directed by the Human Resources Director or the Civil Service Commission.

The duration of the eligible list resulting from this examination process will be of twelve (12) months, and may be extended with the approval of the Human Resources Director.

Certification: The certification rule for the eligible list resulting from this examination will be Rule of the List.

Terms of Announcement and Appeal Rights: Applicants must be guided solely by the provisions of this announcement, including requirements, time periods and other particulars, except when superseded by federal, state or local laws, rules or regulations. Clerical errors may be corrected by the posting the correction on the Department of Human Resources website at Careers with purpose | City and County of San Francisco.

The terms of this announcement may be appealed under Civil Service Rule 111A.35.1. The standard for the review of such appeals is ‘abuse of discretion’ or ‘no rational basis’ for establishing the position description, the minimum qualifications and/or the certification rule. Appeals must include a written statement of the item(s) being contested and the specific reason(s) why the cited item(s) constitute(s) abuse of discretion by the Human Resources Director. Appeals must be submitted directly to the Executive Officer of the Civil Service Commission within five business days of the announcement issuance date. Information concerning other Civil Service Commission Rules involving announcements, applications and examination policies, including applicant appeal rights, can be found on the Civil Service Commission website at https://sf.gov/departments/civil-service-commission.

Additional Information Regarding Employment with the City and County of San Francisco:

• Information About the Hiring Process
• Conviction History
• Employee Benefits Overview  
• Equal Employment Opportunity 
• Disaster Service Worker
• ADA Accommodation
• Veterans Preference
• Seniority Credit in Promotional Exams
• Right to Work
• Copies of Application Documents
• Diversity Statement

HOW TO APPLY
Applications for City and County of San Francisco jobs are only accepted through an online process. Visit https://careers.sf.gov and begin the application process. 

•    Select the “Apply Now” button and follow instructions on the screen 

Applicants may be contacted by email about this recruitment and, therefore, it is their responsibility to ensure that their registered email address is accurate and kept up-to-date. Also, applicants must ensure that email from CCSF is not blocked on their computer by a spam filter. To prevent blocking, applicants should set up their email to accept CCSF mail from the following addresses (@sfgov.org, @sfdpw.org, @sfport.com, @flysfo.com, @sfwater.org, @sfdph.org, @asianart.org, @sfmta.com, @sfpl.org, @dcyf.org, @first5sf.org, @famsf.org, @ccsf.edu, @smartalerts.info, and @smartrecruiters.com). 

Applicants will receive a confirmation email that their online application has been received in response to every announcement for which they file. Applicants should retain this confirmation email for their records.

Failure to receive this email means that the online application was not submitted or received.

If you have any questions regarding this recruitment or application process, please contact the analyst, Vivian Yeung at [email protected].    

The City and County of San Francisco encourages women, minorities and persons with disabilities to apply. Applicants will be considered regardless of their sex, race, age, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition (associated with cancer, a history of cancer, or genetic characteristics), HIV/AIDS status, genetic information, marital status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, military and veteran status, or other protected category under the law.