Throughline

Business and finance

Financial Manager in the United States

136 postings read · sampled 2026-10-01 · source ats · 74 employers · largest 9% of it

What employers actually ask for

Credentials named in the 136 postings we read, ranked by how many mentioned each one.

What it costs

Exam and application fees plus typical self-study hours. Almost nobody needs every credential on this list — start with the top line.

Most-asked-for, on its own
$1,500CPA · ~400 hrs
asked for in 30 of 136 postings — 22%
If you earned all 2 of them
$2,790
fees checked 2026-08
700 hrs
700 hours — over a year at 10 hrs/wk

Not in the total: Bachelor's Degree — cost varies by institution; Master's Degree — cost varies by institution.

Lower signal for this role

Credentials that barely appeared in this sample. That is not a claim they are worthless — plenty are valuable for a different job, a different city, or a promotion later. It is a claim that employers here mostly did not ask.

What the official taxonomy says

O*NET surveys people already doing this job. That describes who got hired over a long window, not what employers are asking for now — where it disagrees with the counts above, the counts are the more current answer.

Education reported by people doing this job
56%reported bachelor’s degree
  • Bachelor’s degree56%
  • Post-baccalaureate certificate21%
  • High school diploma or equivalent14%

Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed. Most of these occupations require a four-year bachelor's degree, but some do not.

O*NET 11-3031.00 · pulled 2026-10-01 · percentages are of surveyed workers, each rounded separately, so they need not total 100

What it pays

BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. A different survey from the postings above, so the two do not share a sample.

$94,310
10th percentile
$166,570
median
$323,270
90th percentile

Every credential above costs $2,790 — about 4 days' pay at the median.

Who was hiring

Employers with at least one matching posting in this sample.

Anduril Industries · Stripe · Databricks · Murgado Automotive Group · Anthropic · OpenAI · Coinbase · Affirm · Intuitive Surgical · Pinterest · Tomra · Checkr · Current · Elastic · Harbinger Motors · Headway · HelloFresh · Latitude Inc · McWane Inc · Mercer Advisors · MongoDB · Robinhood · Scale AI · SpaceX · Twilio · Vercel · Verkada · Advanced Technology Group · Agility Robotics · Antora Energy · Attentive · Boyd Gaming · City of New York · Collabera · Crestwood Behavioral Health · Decagon · Faire · Fanatics Commerce · Flexport · Focus Financial Partners · GitLab · Instacart · Integrated Resources Inc · J&J Snack Foods · Kodiak Robotics · Lucid Motors · Lyft · Mercury · Monzo · NielsenIQ · Notion · Oura · Parent Network · Pearce Services · Peloton · Premier Truck Group · PSI CRO · Ramp · Reddit · Redwood Materials · Relativity Space · Rocket Money · Samsara · SBT Global · Sierra · SoFi · Stem Xpert · System Canada Technologies · Traeger Grills · Turing · Ursa Major Technologies · Westgate Resorts · Zinnia · Zoox

Next

  • Roast and Resolve — Now aim your résumé at this target. Free roast, paid rewrite.
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