About the business

Etude operates in insurance, commercial real estate, and industrials. Our insurance business covers more than 5,000 properties with billions of dollars in insured value. Our real estate business owns approximately $1B of commercial property alongside the Kinder Family Office. Our industrial business is developing a multibillion-dollar, 40-acre steelworks to secure the domestic supply chain for electrical infrastructure.

About the team

We are roughly a 100-person team. We hire high-agency people and give them autonomy, responsibility, and diverse problems to work on. We operate with the intensity of a small company where every person's work is visible and believe responsiveness is a form of respect. If you're looking for a place to sharpen your craft alongside people who take their work seriously, you'll fit right in.

About the Role

We are the direct self-storage real estate investment arm of a single high-net-worth investor / family office that has built — and continues to aggressively grow — a national self storage portfolio. Unlike an institutional fund, we operate with patient capital, long hold horizons, and the freedom to make pragmatic decisions without committee red tape.

We are in a rapid growth phase and are building the institutional-grade processes, reporting and analytics needed to scale the platform from 70+ stores to several hundred. Our stores are operated by a mix of third-party property managers, and our capital partners expect institutional-quality transparency into how every asset is performing.

The FP&A function is central to everything we do. The person in this seat will not inherit a playbook — they will help write it.

The Opportunity

This is a high-ownership role for a mid-career FP&A professional who wants more scope, faster. You will own the financial performance of the portfolio end to end: revenue, expenses, capital, budget, operator accountability and investor reporting. You will work directly with the Principal and senior leadership, partner with third-party operators and in-house teams, and have real influence over acquisitions, dispositions and how the platform scales.

What makes this seat different is the toolkit. We want someone who treats AI as a core part of the job — building AI skills, agents and automated workflows that ingest operator data, flag problems and compose institutional reporting, so the team spends its time on decisions rather than spreadsheets.

We are looking for a builder — someone who can walk into ambiguity, self-direct, design process where none exists, and deliver measurable results in the first 3–6 months.

The Problem You'll Solve

Every month we receive a large volume of financial and operating data from multiple third-party property managers — P&Ls, rent rolls, occupancy and rate reports, delinquency, move-in/move-out activity and marketing spend — each in its own format. Today, too much of that data stops at "received." We need it to answer three questions, quickly and consistently, for every store:

• Is this property on track or struggling? Which numbers are telling us, and how early can we see it?
• Why? Is the variance to budget driven by occupancy, street rate, ECRI, concessions, delinquency, payroll, marketing, taxes or something else — and is it the operator, the market or the plan?
• What's the fix, and how fast can it land? A specific, owned, time-bound action plan, tracked to resolution.

Then we need that story told to our investors in a clear, institutional-quality reporting package. You will build the system — data pipeline, diagnostics, playbooks and AI-assisted reporting — that does this every month, for every store, as the portfolio grows.

What You'll Own

1. Data intake and normalization
   • Ingest monthly and weekly operator packages (P&L, balance sheet, rent roll, occupancy, rate, delinquency, activity and marketing reports) from multiple third-party managers.
   • Map every operator's chart of accounts and report formats to a single Etude standard so stores can be compared like-for-like.
   • Build automated validation checks that catch missing data, misclassified expenses and reconciliation breaks before anything reaches leadership.
2. Performance diagnostics
   • Track standard self storage KPIs by store, operator, market and fund.
   • Build an early-warning framework that flags struggling stores from leading indicators — not just after NOI has already missed.
   • Benchmark stores against budget, prior year, underwriting, peer stores in the portfolio and local market comps (rental comps, REIT market data).
3. Budget, variance and operator performance management
   • Own the annual budget process with operators, plus monthly reforecasts.
   • Diagnose variances to budget at the line-item level and attribute revenue variance to its drivers: occupancy, street rate, in-place rate/ECRI, concessions, fees and bad debt.
   • Turn each material variance into a fix plan with a named owner, specific actions (rate, ECRI, marketing, staffing, collections, expense control) and a target date — then track it to resolution with the operator.
   • Proactively identify revenue enhancements (rate and ECRI optimization, occupancy and conversion gains, fees, tenant insurance and other ancillary income) and cost reductions where appropriate (payroll, marketing efficiency, R&M, utilities, vendor contracts, property tax appeals), sized and prioritized by NOI impact.
   • Own the financial performance conversations with third-party operators: lead monthly and quarterly performance reviews, challenge results against budget, agree on corrective actions, and hold operators accountable for delivering them.
4. Institutional reporting
   • Produce the monthly and quarterly investor reporting package: portfolio summary, fund- and store-level performance, budget variance commentary, watch list, capital projects and acquisition/development updates.
   • Write clear, concise variance commentary that explains what happened, why and what we're doing about it.
   • Support ad hoc analysis for the Principal, lenders, partners and the acquisitions team, including underwriting look-backs on recent deals.
5. AI and automation
   • Design and build AI skills, agents and automated workflows that ingest operator files, normalize data, run variance diagnostics and draft reporting and commentary.
   • Build reusable templates and prompts so a 70-store process scales to several hundred stores with little disruption.
   • Own data quality and review controls on AI-generated output so every number in an investor package is traceable and correct.
   • Stay current on AI tooling and identify where it can remove manual work across asset management, acquisitions and finance.

What Success Looks Like

First 30 days

• Every operator's monthly package mapped to one standard chart of accounts and KPI set.
• A portfolio KPI dashboard and store watch list in place, refreshed each month.
• First AI-assisted monthly reporting cycle delivered, with documented review controls.

By month 3

• Operator data intake, validation and variance diagnostics largely automated.
• Every watch-list store has a written fix plan with an owner and target date, reviewed monthly with its operator.
• Investor reporting package delivered on a fixed calendar, with clear variance commentary.

By month 12

• Monthly close-to-investor-report cycle measurably faster, with fewer manual touches.
• Watch-list stores showing measurable NOI recovery against their fix plans.
• Next annual budget built bottom-up with operators on the new framework.
• A reporting and analytics platform ready to absorb new acquisitions without rebuilding the process.

Qualifications

Required

• 5–8 years in FP&A, asset management, or investment/portfolio analysis, with at least 3 years in self storage at an institutional owner, REIT, operator or fund.
• Hands-on knowledge of self storage operations and economics: revenue management, ECRI programs, occupancy and rate dynamics, delinquency and auctions, and the drivers of store-level NOI.
• Track record of owning budgets and reforecasts and explaining variances in a way that leads to action.
• Experience working with third-party property managers and their reporting (e.g., SiteLink/storEDGE, Yardi or similar), and normalizing data across operators.
• Demonstrated experience building with AI — Claude preferred — including AI skills, agents or prompt-driven workflows that automate recurring financial processes end to end, plus BI tools (Power BI, Tableau or similar). Please be ready to show examples.
• Advanced Excel and financial modeling; comfort working with large, messy data sets.
• Experience producing institutional-quality reporting for investors, lenders or an investment committee.
• Clear, concise writer who can turn numbers into a story and a plan.
• Bachelor's degree in finance, accounting, economics, real estate or a related field.

Preferred

• Experience with Python or SQL.
• Exposure to acquisitions underwriting, lease-up/development tracking, or lender reporting and covenant compliance.
• Experience standing up a reporting or FP&A process at a fast-growing platform.
• MBA, CFA or CPA (or progress toward one).

Why Join

• Real ownership: You will design the FP&A and reporting function, not maintain someone else's.
• Direct access: Work day to day with the Principal and senior leadership; your analysis drives real decisions.
• Growth: A platform scaling from 70+ stores to several hundred, with the scope of the role growing alongside it.
• Modern toolkit: Mandate and budget to build with AI from day one.
• Aligned pay: Bonus tied to NOI growth, portfolio KPIs and individual objectives.

If you don't have all the qualifications listed, don't worry! We understand everyone's career path is unique and still encourage you to apply if you feel this role is aligned with your career trajectory.

Employment at Etude is contingent upon a satisfactory verification of a general and criminal background check.