Career Spotlight - Bryan Bauer

Introduction:

Hello Pigmenteers! My name is Bryan Bauer (​@Bryan Bauer in the community). I am an FP&A Manager at Aurora, a self-driving technology company based in Pittsburgh. I support our product engineering organization as the finance business partner for Software Products and previously supported Hardware Products.

Tell us a bit about your career journey. How did you end up in FP&A and working with Pigment?

My path to finance has not been straightforward. I did not want to go to college, but I eventually went because I had to, and I chose math simply because it was the subject I disliked the least. I studied industrial mathematics for my bachelor’s degree.

I later discovered that while every job uses math, almost no one is hiring a pure mathematician. So I went back for a master’s in petroleum engineering, and worked in oil and gas as a drilling engineer for around seven years. Over time, the work started to feel repetitive and I found myself most interested in the financial aspects of my role.

That led me to pursue an MBA in the evenings and move into finance. I started in energy investment banking, leveraging my engineering background, then moved into a finance manager role at a renewable energy developer. Eventually I joined Aurora and moved into FP&A for autonomous trucking.

One piece of advice that stuck with me early on was “follow the money” if you want to understand and influence how a company operates. That idea, combined with my own interest in the financial side of things, is what pushed me into finance.