Principal Consultant, Cost of Service & Financial Analysis

Guidacent is seeking a Principal Consultant, Cost of Service & Financial Analysis  who will serve as the primary engagement lead and principal analyst for our public sector client's agency-wide Cost of Service Study. This fully dedicated role combines day-to-day consulting leadership with hands-on financial analysis, including stakeholder facilitation, cost allocation methodology development, cost modeling, rate adequacy analysis, forecasting, sensitivity analysis, executive reporting, recommendations, and presentation delivery. The consultant will work closely with our client’s leadership, business owners, finance teams, and project stakeholders to ensure all findings are accurate, transparent, defensible, and aligned with public-sector financial management best practices.

• Serve as our client's primary point of contact throughout the engagement.
• Lead project execution from initiation through final presentation and knowledge transfer.
• Facilitate stakeholder interviews, discovery sessions, workshops, and review meetings.
• Coordinate activities across project team members, subject matter experts, and agency stakeholders.
• Manage project assumptions, dependencies, risks, issues, and resolution paths.

• Design and document cost allocation methodologies for agency review and approval.
• Develop fully burdened service-cost models incorporating labor, vendor, consulting, licensing, infrastructure, maintenance, and overhead costs.
• Identify and validate cost drivers, allocation bases, and units of measure.
• Analyze direct, indirect, shared-service, and administrative cost allocations.
• Ensure all methodologies are transparent, traceable, defensible, and supported by documented assumptions.

• Evaluate current rates, allocations, and cost recovery mechanisms.
• Compare revenue collected against fully loaded service costs.
• Identify cost recovery gaps, surpluses, and funding risks.
• Assess root causes of material variance between costs and revenues.
• Develop recommendations for rate optimization and financial sustainability.

• Develop multi-year financial forecasting models.
• Perform sensitivity and scenario analyses to evaluate future financial conditions.
• Assess the impact of compensation changes, budget adjustments, licensing increases, cloud expenditures, and operational risks.
• Develop financial risk assessments and cost stability evaluations.

• Prepare executive summaries, findings, recommendations, and decision-support materials.
• Present study results to agency leadership and oversight stakeholders.
• Translate complex financial analyses into actionable business recommendations.
• Support executive decision-making related to budgeting, rate setting, and service portfolio management.

• Bachelor's degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, Public Administration, Business Administration, or a related discipline.
• Ten or more years of experience in financial consulting, financial management, cost accounting, or strategic advisory services.
• Demonstrated experience leading cost-of-service studies, cost allocation initiatives, rate studies, or cost recovery assessments.
• Strong expertise in financial modeling, forecasting, and scenario analysis.
• Experience developing and documenting cost allocation methodologies.
• Advanced proficiency with Microsoft Excel and financial analysis tools.
• Proven experience facilitating executive and stakeholder workshops.
• Exceptional written, verbal, and presentation communication skills.

• Public-sector or government financial management experience.
• Experience supporting shared-service organizations, internal service funds, or chargeback-based operating models.
• MBA, CPA, CGFM, CMA, or equivalent professional credential.
• Experience supporting rate-setting, budgeting, and financial sustainability initiatives.