Role Purpose
The Finance Manager / Senior Management Accountant will be responsible for maintaining the accuracy, integrity and reliability of financial information across a complex manufacturing and project environment. The role combines strong technical accounting capability with hands-on transactional experience and a practical understanding of manufacturing, project accounting, WIP, inventory, costing and milestone billing.
The successful candidate must be comfortable moving between detailed transactional work, month-end accounting, reconciliations, project analysis and process improvement.
Key Position Accountabilities
- Own and support the month-end close process, including P&L, balance sheet, cash-flow reporting, journals, reconciliations and variance analysis.
- Support manufacturing, cost and project accounting, including WIP, project/job costing, inventory, standard costing, project profitability and milestone / percentage-of-completion revenue recognition.
- Oversee AP/AR, bank reconciliations, cash flow, working capital, customer invoicing, progress claims, deposits and milestone billing, stepping in to perform detailed tasks directly when required.
- Work across multiple non-integrated operational, production and finance systems to trace transactions end-to-end, reconcile differences and maintain general ledger integrity.
- Identify data-quality issues, process gaps and control weaknesses, and implement practical ERP, process and workflow improvements. Use advanced Excel to manipulate, reconcile and analyse data from multiple sources.
- Support fixed assets, audit, Australian compliance, budgeting and forecasting, while working closely with finance, project, procurement, engineering, manufacturing and operations teams.
Key Qualifications, Skills & Experience
- Bachelor's degree in Accounting, Finance or a related field. CPA, CA, ACCA or CIMA preferred, but not mandatory where experience is particularly strong.
- Approximately 8–12 years of finance/accounting experience, including experience as a Finance Manager, Senior Financial Accountant, Senior Management Accountant or equivalent.
- Strong hands-on experience in manufacturing, engineering and/or project-based environments, including cost accounting, inventory, WIP, job/project costing and project profitability.
- Experience with milestone or percentage-of-completion revenue recognition and progress billing.
- Strong end-to-end financial transaction knowledge, with hands-on exposure across the full transaction lifecycle rather than experience limited to one specific area.
- Proven ability to operate effectively in a lean, complex environment with strong self-learning, initiative, problem-solving and root-cause analysis skills.
- Clear and confident written and spoken English, with the ability to communicate effectively with finance and non-finance stakeholders.
- Experience working with Australian, New Zealand or Western organisations.
Working Hours: 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM (AEST)