Global Finance & Operations Manager (Australia & Aotearoa New Zealand)

• Grade: Manager
• Role: Global Manager, Finance and Operations
• Type: Part-time 0.6 FTE (3 days per week)
• Hours: Due to the global nature of this work and our organisation, we are looking at a 22.5 hour work week split across Tuesday to Friday to ensure coordination between our teams in Australia and the US. 
• Term: Fixed Term Contract (12 months)
• Location: We’re open to candidates anywhere in Australia.
• Salary: The full-time salary for this position is A$98,036 - A$114,376. It will be prorated at 0.6 FTE to A$58,822 - A$68,626 and mapped to years of experience along with Super and Salary Packaging. Our salaries are benchmarked to the country of residence, please find our scales for 2024 here. To counter pay inequity, salaries at CPI are non-negotiable.
• Reports to: Director of Finance and Operations (based in the US)
• Work experience required: 6+ years as a qualified accountant or similar experience in budgeting, forecasting and accounting.
• Closing: April 25, 23:59 / 11:59pm Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST)

About the Centre for Public Impact (CPI)

At the Centre for Public Impact (CPI), we believe in the potential of governments to work differently to bring about better outcomes for people. We are a global not-for-profit organisation, founded by the Boston Consulting Group, that serves asa learning partner for governments, public sector leaders, and the diverse network of changemakers leading the charge to reimagine government. We work with them to hold space to collectively make sense of the complex challenges we face and drive meaningful change through learning and experimentation. CPI currently operates in 4 regions of the world, all stewarding CPI’s mission in different geographies: Australia & Aotearoa New Zealand, Asia, Europe and North America. 

This role sits within our Finance and Operations Team, which is part of our Swiss entity (known internally as “Global Hub”). Our Swiss entity provides leadership and partnership with relation to finance and operations, people and culture, and communications to our regional teams at CPI. We currently have Global Hub staff in the UK, US and India, and the incoming Global Finance Manager will work in partnership with our team in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand (ANZ). Over the last four years, the CPI ANZ team has been working to build a presence, develop strong relationships, and secure a pipeline of work. We are a small but agile team and therefore, need someone who is willing to work across the full spectrum of tasks - from administrative work to strategic thinking. We are experimental in how we work and seek to reflect the beliefs, values, and principles set in our vision for government. 

To advance our purpose of reimagining government so that it works for everyone, CPI seeks to attract and support a diversity of backgrounds, experience, talent and thought. For this reason, we encourage applicants from all backgrounds to apply. This includes candidates that have previously found it hard to be considered for other positions on the basis of their qualifications, disabilities, personal background or life events. If you would like to apply for the position but see a barrier to joining us, please do apply and we will work with you to find a solution. You can also read our full Diversity Equity and Inclusion Policy here.

What does the Global Manager, Finance & Operations role involve? 

Our Finance Managers have overall responsibilities, obligations and duties, such as finance and budget performance and strategic development. They create protocols and policies needed to help with organisational delivery. The Global Finance Manager will be accountable for day-to-day finance, payroll and accounting activities. As a Global Finance Manager, you will be asked to hold relationships with people who are managing the projects from regional teams, and potentially with stakeholders and project partners as well. This means you will need to be able to execute and develop clear, effective and efficient processes that are also suitable or able to be adapted according to different project contexts or the needs of the partners we are working with. As someone whose work will include working closely with our ANZ team, you will be responsible for making sure our team is set up to succeed and assist in ensuring our processes are equitable and accessible to everyone, both internally for the CPI team and externally in engagements with their learning partners (clients) and collaborators (subcontractors).

Core responsibilities: 

• Finance & Accounting
• Champion efficient operations in accounts receivable and accounts payable in Australia and other CPI regions/globally as required
• During the month end process, ensure that all balance sheet items are all accounted and reconciled with their respective subsidiary ledgers and/or schedules and all contra or clearance accounts are cleared at the end of every month
• Assist the Finance & Operations team in preparing annual financial plans for effective financial management of the ANZ team
• Assist the Finance & Operations team in preparing monthly management reports and performing bi-monthly forecasting
• Support the programme teams to design and implement realistic and manageable budgets. 
• Contracting & Operations
• Work with the ANZ team in drafting funder or supplier contracts to support the delivery of our programmatic activity
• Onboard suppliers into our financial systems and ensure purchase orders are raised that follow our internal financial policies & procedures
• Liaise with legal, auditors and other advisors to ensure CPI’s operations in Australia remain legally compliant
• Work with the Finance & Operations team on maintaining and updating risk registers to track key corporate risks and ensure mitigants and financial controls are working as expected
• Strategic Implementation
• Identify areas of improvement to ensure consistent systems and processes for financial control, statutory and management reporting, contracting and other Finance & Operations priorities
• Working with global teams to build financial forecasts based on projected programmatic activity, hiring needs and/or other costs that align with CPI’s strategic plan
• Thought Leadership
• Researching the effects of any changes in laws or government regulations on CPI’s accounting policies and procedures
• Routinely collaborating with our global teams to design and review solutions that improve Finance and Operations processes, and sharing knowledge and learning across the CPI regions towards equitable and rigorous financial practices. 
• Ensuring our policies are inclusive and equity-centred and take into account the diversity of our staff’s needs, backgrounds and lived experiences
• Embracing a spirit of curiosity and mutual learning as we design, apply and improve our  practices and processes, both as a regional team and global organisation.  

What are we looking for? 

We understand that not everyone may meet all of our requirements because of how systems in the world enable (or disable) accessibility for different groups based on our identities and socio-economic status. So we have divided the skills, knowledge and attributes we’re looking for into what is essential and non-negotiable for us (our candidates will need these to be successful in the role) and those that are desirable and we would love if you possess them already, but we are also open to you learning them as you work with us.

Essential: 

• Experience working in the non-profit/social impact sector with a commitment to cultivating a culture of equity, inclusion, and belonging in the workplace
• Have 6+ years work experience as a qualified accountant and/or be qualified by experience (QBE) with a strong working knowledge of Australian Accounting Standards. What we mean by that is someone with a solid understanding of financial statements and forecasting techniques. Eg: you may have started out as a bookkeeper and moved up in your organisation to be able to put together financial statements and have ideally even held a more senior finance role.  Please note that this is a technical role and these skills are non-negotiable for us.
• Have a working knowledge of using tools such as Xero and Approval Max and experience making project budgets and discussing various options and costs with team working on delivery and potentially external partners.
• Feel excited about joining an international organisation and be willing to make the effort needed to build relationships and stay connected with colleagues in different time zones
• Have high integrity, with the ability to hold confidential information and conversations tightly and excellent interpersonal skills to build new relationships, and negotiate challenging conversations if necessary

Desirable:

• Have working knowledge of Trello and willingness to co-create processes that work for both delivery teams and finance. 
• Comfortable with experimentation and iterative processes to document learnings in ways that are relatable and useful to the project team. 
• Able to hold an anticipatory stance, where you’re often able to sense what people need before they even know it themselves and be comfortable with ambiguity and the complexity of our work, where anything is possible but not always known in advance
• Experience collaborating with programme teams to understand the work they do and why and helping create systems and processes that are consistent with team values and ways of working

Salary, Benefits, and How To Apply

At the Centre for Public Impact, we are committed to countering pay inequality and recently completed a global compensation benchmarking process to ensure that we're paying our staff fairly and well for the roles that they hold and therefore, salaries are non-negotiable. Salary rises with experience, which includes work experience, educational experience, and lived experience.

CPI offers comprehensive benefits to our staff in Australia through salary packaging; dedicated professional development funds; generous paid leave with a minimum of 25 days (prorated based on part-time employment) and no maximum under our Flexibility with Responsibility Policy and public holidays; paid parental leave and extended illness leave; a year-end organisation-wide closure; and contribution to the employee’s superannuation fund. 

We are open to qualified candidates from anywhere in Australia. CPI anticipates this position will require some domestic and international travel depending on projects and the successful applicant's location within Australia. 

CPI is an equal-opportunity employer. Applicants will not be discriminated against because of race, colour, creed, caste, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, religion, national origin, political ideology, citizenship status, disability, ancestry, marital status, veteran status, medical condition or any protected category prohibited by local, state or federal laws.

We are using Applied in order to reduce bias in our hiring process and ensure that we are shortlisting candidates based on their skills and ideas. Please note that we do not ask for a cover letter and instead, this is the first round of the application which requires four paragraph-length answers. Your application will be anonymised for review and your scores will determine if you're invited to interview with us.

Please apply by April 25, 23:59 / 11:59pm AEST or preferably earlier to avoid last minute tech glitches. The application portal closes automatically and we will not be able to re-open it.

CPI offers comprehensive benefits to our staff in Australia through salary packaging; dedicated professional development funds; generous paid leave with a minimum of 25 days (prorated based on part-time employment) and no maximum under our Flexibility with Responsibility Policy and public holidays; paid parental leave and extended illness leave; a year-end organisation-wide closure; and contribution to the employee’s superannuation fund.