Opportunity brief
Unilever is hiring for the role of Assistant Finance Manager!
Responsibilities of the Candidate:
- Lead the preparation, review, and submission of periodic financial statements in line with Unilever policies, local GAAP / IFRS, and internal timelines. - Hold governance over core financial processes (e.g., closing, reconciliations, provisions, accruals, intercompany, fixed assets) to ensure accuracy, completeness, and control. - Own and drive balance sheet hygiene, including regular balance sheet reviews, ageing analysis, and timely resolution of open items. - Coordinate month-end, quarter-end, and year-end close activities, ensuring adherence to timelines and quality standards. - Review and sign-off key account reconciliations, ensuring issues are identified, escalated, and resolved promptly. - Use SAP extensively for posting, reporting, analysis, and controls, ensuring data integrity and consistency across systems. - Leverage Power BI (where applicable) to create or enhance dashboards and reports that provide insight into financial performance, balance sheet health, and process KPIs. - Partner with other finance teams and relevant business stakeholders to resolve issues and land improvements. - Support internal and external audits by preparing audit schedules, responding to queries, and ensuring remediation of audit observations. - Identify opportunities for simplification, standardisation, and automation in financial reporting and control processes, and drive agreed improvements. - Lead, coach, and develop a small team of finance professionals, ensuring clarity of goals, strong performance, and learning opportunities.
Requirements:
- Professional qualification preferred (e.g., CA / CMA / ACCA / MBA in Finance) or equivalent finance qualification. - Strong experience in financial reporting, controllership, or related finance roles, ideally in a large or multinational organisation. - Hands-on experience with SAP (FI/CO or equivalent modules) in a financial reporting or controlling environment. - Exposure to reporting/visualisation tools such as Power BI is an advantage. - Experience of managing or coaching team members is preferred. - Strong technical understanding of accounting principles and financial reporting (local GAAP and/or IFRS). - High attention to detail with a strong control and governance mindset. - Proficiency in SAP for financial postings, reconciliations, and reporting. - Ability to work with and interpret large data sets; familiarity with Power BI or similar tools is a plus. - Strong problem-solving skills and ability to drive issue resolution across multiple stakeholders. - Good communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to work effectively in a centralised / virtual team environment. - Ability to plan and prioritise under tight month-end and year-end timelines. - People leadership potential with willingness to coach and develop team members.