How to Classify Mixed Finance and IT Job Titles: A Practical Framework for US Employers

This guide shows HR teams, compensation analysts, recruiters, finance leaders, and IT managers in the United States how to classify mixed finance and IT job titles in a way that is consistent, defensible, and easy to audit. If you meant classifying IT spend inside a finance team instead of job titles, jump to the section near the end on IT cost classification.

The Short Answer: Classify the Work, Not the Title

To classify a mixed finance and IT job title, ignore the title and classify the duties. List what the person actually does, estimate the share of time spent on finance work versus technology work, and assign the role to the function with the larger share. Then map it to a Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) code and an internal job family, set the level separately, and record the secondary skill set as a tag. When the split is close to even, break the tie using the skill the role requires, how you would recruit for it, and the team it sits in.

This follows the same principle the federal government uses. The SOC system classifies jobs by the work performed, and guidance for public employers states plainly that jobs are classified by duties, not by titles.

The Six-Step Framework at a Glance

1. Collect the real duties from evidence, not from the title.
2. Sort every duty into finance work, technology work, or shared work.
3. Pick the primary function with a time-share rule and ordered tie-breakers.
4. Map the role to a SOC code using the duties.
5. Assign a job family, sub-family, and level.
6. Record a secondary skill tag, the evidence, and the rule you applied.

The rest of this guide explains each step, shows five worked examples built from real US job postings, and ends with a copy-ready template.

Why Mixed Finance and IT Titles Keep Multiplying

Finance runs on software, and software now runs on finance data. ERP platforms, planning tools, expense systems, and analytics dashboards sit in the middle of every close, budget, and forecast. Someone has to configure them, connect them, and understand what the numbers mean. That person is rarely a pure accountant or a pure engineer.

The labor data shows the overlap. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) notes that many computer systems analysts specialize in the systems of one type of organization, such as financial systems, and that an analyst working for a bank may need to understand finance. In 2025, finance and insurance employed about 13 percent of computer systems analysts, one of the largest employing industries for the occupation. On the finance side, BLS reports that financial and investment analysts held about 377,200 jobs in 2025 and says these analysts will be needed to assess growing volumes of data.

Org charts add to the confusion. The Association for Financial Professionals (AFP) job description guide lists a Vice President of Information Technology among the positions a CFO may supervise, so in some companies IT reports into Finance. Meanwhile, recruiting firms list newer titles such as Fintech Product Manager and Data Scientist for finance teams that blend financial expertise with technology skills.

Mixed Titles You Will See in US Job Postings

What Does It Mean to Classify a Job Title?

People use the word classify for three different jobs. Treat them as separate layers and most arguments disappear.

Job architecture is the framework that defines and organizes roles, responsibilities, and required skills. It is different from the org chart: architecture standardizes roles and progression, while the reporting structure defines who reports to whom. Organizations that built formal architectures, such as Arizona State University, keep working titles for day-to-day use while the architecture handles grouping, so a role can carry a friendly working title and still sit in one clean family.

A common architecture runs from function to job family to sub-family to level to the individual job. Finance, for example, is a function, and Accounting, Payroll, and Tax are families inside it.

Step 1: Collect the Real Duties

Titles are marketing. Duties are evidence. Gather the following for each mixed role:

• The current job description and the original requisition
• The last two performance goal documents
• System access and admin roles the person holds (ERP, planning, BI, ticketing)
• Recurring deliverables, such as the close checklist, release notes, or cost model refresh
• The teams the person works with weekly, and the manager who sets priorities

If the job description is stale, interview the incumbent and the manager separately and compare their answers. Where they differ, trust the deliverables.

Step 2: Sort Every Duty Into Finance, Technology, or Shared

Create three buckets and place each duty in one of them.

Use one rule for shared work: look at the purpose of the output. If the output is a financial number someone will rely on, count it as finance. If the output is a working system or a data feed, count it as technology. A Power BI dashboard that reports revenue variance is finance. A Power BI data model that other teams build on is technology.

Then estimate the share of time in each bucket. Rough numbers are fine. The goal is to see which side is larger, not to run a precise time study.

Step 3: Pick the Primary Function With a Time-Share Rule and Tie-Breakers

Start with the simple rule: the function that accounts for more than half of the role wins. This matches guidance from the University of California, Berkeley, which says to use the job family that makes up over 50 percent of a hybrid job.

When no side clears 50 percent, apply these tie-breakers in order:

1. Greater share than any other function. If the split is 45 percent finance, 40 percent technology, and 15 percent shared, finance has the largest share.
2. Higher skill requirement. The SOC guidance used by public employers applies a skill principle: when a worker does more than one job, classify by the job that requires the higher skill. Its example is a worker who is both a bookkeeper and an accountant. If the technology work needs senior engineering skill and the finance work is routine data entry, technology wins.
3. Required qualifications. A role that truly requires a CPA or CFA charter leans finance. A role that requires programming or systems certification leans technology.
4. Recruiting emphasis. Berkeley’s guide suggests using the family you would emphasize when recruiting. Ask which candidate pool you would search first.
5. Reporting line and budget owner. Use these as supporting evidence only. Architecture and org structure are different things, and a role can report into IT while doing finance work.
6. A defined multi-functional family. If your architecture already has one, such as Information Systems, use it when it fits better than either specific family.

Write down which rule decided the outcome. That single line of documentation prevents most future disputes.

Step 4: Map the Role to a SOC Code

The SOC system is the federal standard that classifies workers into occupations, and federal agencies use it to compare data across datasets. Each detailed occupation has a six-digit code. Employers use SOC codes for wage benchmarking, workforce planning, and various filings, so it pays to get the mapping right.

Start with the BLS Direct Match Title File (DMTF), which lists job titles that match a single detailed occupation. If your title is there, you are done. Many hybrid titles are not, because a title can point to more than one kind of work. A standard example is painter, which could mean a fine arts occupation or a maintenance occupation. In those cases, read the definitions of the detailed occupations and match on duties.

Candidate SOC codes for mixed finance and IT roles:

Wage figures come from the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook (May 2025 data). Accountants and Auditors (13-2011) is another candidate for roles that are mostly close, reconciliation, and controls work.

Two free tools can speed up the first pass. Sockit, built by RIPL with NASWA and the NLx Research Hub, suggests the most likely SOC code for a free-text job title. The North Carolina Division of Employment Security SOC lookup searches by title or description. Treat their output as a starting suggestion and confirm it against the official definitions.

When the split is close, check pay data for both candidate codes before you set a band. The BLS medians for financial and investment analysts and for computer systems analysts sit within a few thousand dollars of each other, but the manager-level codes differ by more than $8,000, so benchmark against both when a role could land on either side.

Step 5: Assign Job Family, Sub-Family, and Level

Function and level are two separate decisions. Do not let a word like Senior or VP decide the family.

Family and sub-family

Once the primary function is chosen, place the role in the most specific sub-family you already have, for example Finance, Finance Systems, or Technology, Business Applications. Resist the urge to create a new hybrid family for every blended title. Some job architecture guides warn that a sub-family with only a handful of roles probably does not need its own category and is hard to price and maintain. A secondary tag, covered in Step 6, gives you visibility without the overhead.

Level

Finance ladders are rigid and can mislead you. JobsPipe’s 2026 job title hierarchy guide notes that in banking the ladder runs Analyst, Associate, Vice President, Director or Senior Vice President, and Managing Director, and that a bank VP is a mid-level individual contributor, not a tech-style vice president. If you classify a Vice President of Finance Systems at a bank by the words Vice President, you will over-level the role.

A neutral fix is to normalize seniority into a small set of values, such as entry level, mid level, senior, director, and executive, and map each title to those values by scope and autonomy, not by the word in the title.

Step 6: Record a Secondary Tag, the Evidence, and the Rule

Every mixed role should end with a record that someone else can audit in two minutes. At minimum, store:

• Primary function and secondary function
• Estimated time split
• SOC code, plus the runner-up code you rejected
• Job family, sub-family, and level
• The tie-breaker rule that decided the outcome
• Review date

The secondary tag, such as Finance with IT systems skill, lets recruiting and workforce planning find these roles without creating a one-off family.

Worked Examples From Real US Job Postings

The splits below are illustrative. Your own numbers should come from your own duty review.

Example 1: Financial Systems Analyst (Hybrid)

A posting from Intact Specialty Solutions lists chart field maintenance and workflow configuration across ERP modules, reconciliations between source systems and reporting tools, and support for monthly and quarterly close. It asks for a degree in accounting, finance, or information systems and 2 to 5 years of experience, with posted pay ranges topping out at $108,000. The role joins the Finance team and works with Finance, IT, and QA.

Illustrative tally: system configuration and workflow 35 percent, reconciliations and data integrity 30 percent, close support 25 percent, documentation and collaboration 10 percent. Finance-type work totals 55 percent.

Result: Finance is primary, in a Finance Systems sub-family, with an IT systems tag. If a duty review showed configuration at 60 percent, the same title would flip to Technology. The title never changed. The duties did.

Example 2: Technology Business Management Analyst, Posted Two Ways

TBM is the discipline of tracking and allocating IT costs. A New York posting for a Senior Financial Analyst (Technology Business Management) leads with expense transparency, cost allocation frameworks, budgeting, forecasting, and financial analysis. Advocate Aurora Health posts a Technology Business Management and Apptio Analyst role that asks for a bachelor’s degree in information technology and about 5 years of information systems experience, with duties centered on importing and transforming data from systems of record and building models, dashboards, and reports in Apptio.

Same discipline, two answers. The first is Finance-primary, with candidate SOC 13-2051. The second is Technology-primary, with candidate SOC 15-1211. Neither employer is wrong. Each classified the duties and requirements it actually posted, which is the whole point.

Example 3: Senior Financial Analyst, Information Systems

A Dallas posting describes monthly actual and forecast consolidation, variance explanations, KPI tracking, cost transparency work, and support for budgeting and long-range planning for a technology organization of roughly $675 million, plus financial systems improvements. It asks for a bachelor’s degree in finance, accounting, or a technology field.

Result: Finance-primary, FP&A sub-family, candidate SOC 13-2051, with an IT domain tag. The title contains Information Systems, but the output is a financial number.

Example 4: Finance and Business Systems Analyst (A Close Call)

A New York posting from Beacon Hill lists support for NetSuite, planning, expense, and BI tools, troubleshooting, training finance staff, integrations, testing, and documentation, and it asks for 2 to 4 years in FP&A or financial systems. The posted range was $90,000 to $110,000.

Here the tie-breakers disagree. The time share leans technology, but the required experience is FP&A. This is where a documented rule matters more than a perfect answer. A practical call is to place the role where your organization houses finance application support, assign candidate SOC 15-1211, and tag Finance domain skill. Whatever you choose, apply it to every similar role.

Example 5: Fintech Product Manager and Finance Data Scientist

Recruiting firm SF Partners lists Fintech Product Manager and Data Scientist, Finance among emerging finance titles that blend financial expertise with technology skills. The outputs are products and models, not financial statements, so these roles usually belong in a Technology or Product family with a Finance domain tag. Data Scientist has a clean match at SOC 15-2051.

Cheat Sheet: Finance-Led vs IT-Led Versions of the Same Title

Seven Mistakes That Break Hybrid Classification

1. Classifying by a keyword in the title. The word Systems does not make a job IT, and the word Financial does not make it Finance.
2. Classifying by department. Org charts change faster than the work. Use duties.
3. Letting reporting lines decide. A reporting line is evidence, not the rule.
4. Creating a new family for every hybrid title. You end up with dozens of tiny families that are hard to price.
5. Letting seniority words set the family or level. A bank VP is not a tech VP.
6. Skipping documentation. Without a recorded rule, the same role gets classified three ways in three years.
7. Treating the SOC code as permanent. Codes change with revisions, which is the next section.

Keep Your Classification Future-Proof: The 2028 SOC Revision

The 2018 SOC is the current version. BLS and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) opened a review of the 2018 SOC for a possible 2028 revision in June 2024, with the review intended to finish by the beginning of 2027 and the new structure released for use in reference year 2028. In 2024, the SOC Policy Committee said it expected to publish the final structure in spring 2027. Occupations can be merged, renamed, or split, so store the SOC code in its own field, record the SOC version, and keep the duty evidence. Then a remap is a data update, not a new classification project. Check bls.gov/soc for the latest status, since timelines can change.

If You Meant Classifying IT Spend Inside Finance

Some searchers use this phrase for costs, not people. If your question is how to classify IT costs, the usual approach in finance is Technology Business Management, which maps ledger spending into a standard taxonomy so IT cost can be allocated to services and consumers. That is the work TBM analysts do, and it is why TBM roles sit at the boundary between finance and IT. The same rule applies: classify by what the spend does, not by the general ledger account it was booked to.

Copy-Ready Classification Template

Frequently Asked Questions

Key Takeaways

• Classify by duties, never by title keywords.
• Sort duties into finance, technology, and shared work, then apply a more-than-50-percent rule.
• Use ordered tie-breakers for close calls and write down which one you used.
• Map to SOC by duties, starting with the BLS Direct Match Title File.
• Decide level separately from function, and do not trust seniority words like VP.
• Use a secondary tag instead of inventing hybrid families.
• Store the SOC version and the evidence so the 2028 revision is a data update.