Finance Transformation & Cost Analytics Intern
Location: Wood Dale, IL / Hybrid
Reporting to: CFO
Employment type: Paid internship, full-time or part-time
Duration: 10–16 weeks, with potential extension based on project needs
Compensation: Hourly, $35-$40 per hour
Position summary
We are seeking a highly analytical, detail-oriented graduate student to support the development of various financial analyses focused on product pricing and costing, aid in process improvement and AI enabled automation, and assist with other special projects as sponsored by the CFO and or CEO. The ideal candidate is comfortable with ambiguity and can use generative AI and other analytical tools productively in a business environment. This role requires both big-picture thinking and hands-on involvement, which may mean shifting between projects and tasks emphasizing the former or the latter on a regular basis.
Interns at OPTO are not observers, they are contributors. This intern will work directlywith the CFO and will also partner with Operations, Engineering and Accounting and will provide a front row seat for several high-visibility initiatives of a growing manufacturing company in the Illinois area.
About OPTO
OPTO is a designer and manufacturer of retail fixtures for the retail industry in both domestic and international markets. We believe in relentless communication, we have a passion for growth and are obsessively focused on helping our clients be successful. At our core, we are a design driven retail fixture manufacturing company. We apply that creative thought process to our customer proposals, product development, and internal operations. The excitement, innovation, and passion from all of our team members allows us to curate the best solutions for any retail environment.
Key responsibilities (subject to change depending on the candidate’s time commitment and skillset)
- Analyze inventory balances, movements, adjustments, aging, turns, excess/obsolete, and other inventory-related trends.
- Support product-costing by gathering source data, documenting costing methodologies, reconciling data between various systems and sources and producing insights that drive action
- Research and analyze actual inventory cost drivers, material-usage, freight, labor, and overhead.
- Prepare and or support development of recurring financial and operational reports, dashboards, and management-ready summaries using Excel and BI/reporting tools.
- Build and improve Excel models, data-validation checks, templates, and process documentation to make analysis more repeatable and auditable.
- Help identify data-quality issues, inconsistent item/master-data attributes, missing cost inputs, or process gaps that affect inventory valuation and reporting.
- Partner with Accounting, Engineering, Procurement, Operations, Warehouse/Inventory Control, and Supply Chain teams to understand cost and inventory drivers.
- Provide support for various special projects as sponsored by the CFO and or CEO
- Help identify practical, controlled opportunities to improve Finance workflows through automation and AI, including recurring reporting, variance analysis, data cleansing, and management-report preparation.
Required qualifications
Education: Completed bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, Supply Chain, Business Analytics, Operations, or a related analytical field
Experience:Prior professional work experience, internship, analyst role, or substantive project experience involving data analysis
Financial skills:Familiarity with standard costing, inventory valuation, cost of goods sold, purchase-price variance, or inventory reserves
Technical skills: Advanced Excel: pivot tables, VLOOKUP, SUMIFS, data cleaning, charts, error checking, and structured models
Working style: Strong attention to detail, ability to manage confidential information, clear written communication
Preferred qualifications
Education: Currently pursuing a master’s degree such as an MBA, MS Finance, MS Accounting, MS Business Analytics, or MS Supply Chain, or related master’s degree
Experience: Previous experience in manufacturing, distribution, logistics, procurement, cost accounting, or inventory-intensive operations
Financial skills: The requirements as noted as well as strong grounding in financial statements, accounting basics, budgeting, forecasting, or variance analysis
Technical skills: Power BI, Tableau, SQL, Python, Alteryx, ERP reporting or other related reporting and dashboarding systems
Working style: Experience translating complex analysis into decision-ready recommendations, comfort working on unstructured projects, self-driven, intensely inquisitive