Senior Accountant

PURPOSE STATEMENT

The Senior Accountant is a fully qualified finance professional responsible for delivering high quality technical accounting, strong oversight of the Enterprise Service Organisation (ESO) based in India, indirect tax support, and assisting with multi-entity consolidations. This role acts as a senior pivot between UK Finance leadership, global stakeholders, and offshore teams, ensuring accurate, timely and compliant financial results across the Group.
This position requires deep technical capability, strong leadership, and the gravitas to influence at senior levels across the UK, Europe, USA, and Asia. 

KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES/OUTCOMES

1. ESO Leadership, Governance & KPI Delivery
• Act as senior UK based owner of ESO performance across R2R, O2C, P2P, and Banking.
• Set expectations, provide instructions, and lead formal weekly performance reviews.
• Ensure ESO adherence to SLAs and manage exceptions, root cause analysis, and corrective action.
• Strengthen process controls, documentation quality, and compliance with internal audit requirements.
• Influence ESO team leads to enhance capability, efficiency, and service delivery standards.
2. Accounts Receivable – Oversight & Insight
• Oversee AR performance and fortnightly reporting issued to Business Directors and the Sales team.
• Ensure commentary covers ageing performance, escalations, customer disputes, and credit exposure.
• Partner with Sales and Commercial teams to resolve structural collection barriers.
• Oversee ESO execution of invoice processing, cash allocation, and credit note workflows.
3. Accounts Payable – Oversight & Control
• Oversee P2P performance including vendor onboarding, invoice matching, GRNI integrity, and exception resolution.
• Review ESO prepared payment runs and submit final proposals to senior UK/US finance approvers.
• Strengthen AP controls, approval governance, and audit readiness.
4. Banking & Treasury Support
• Oversee ESO’s bank reconciliation activity and ensure timely resolution of reconciling items.
• Upload approved payment files into banking systems.
• Support short term cash flow forecasting and treasury reporting.
• Enhance banking controls and ensure compliance with authority matrices.
5. Tax – Indirect Tax & Global Tax Support
• Oversee preparation and review of all European VAT return workings (UK, Ireland, and other applicable regimes).
• Ensure correct VAT treatment of imports, exports, reverse charge mechanisms, and intra community transactions.
• Maintain VAT GL reconciliations and ensure audit evidence is complete.
• Support Group Tax with:
o Transfer pricing documentation
o Country by Country Reporting data
o Pillar 2 readiness and compliance support
o Global corporate tax audit responses
6. Technical Accounting & Controls
• Assist the Accounting Manager with group consolidations.
• Support the Accounting Manager with both internal and external audit requirements.
• Resolve complex accounting issues across revenue recognition, provisions, intercompany, leases, and FX translation.
• Strengthen internal control frameworks by partnering with Controllership CoEs.
• Drive continuous improvement across month end processes, reporting cycles, and system usage.
• Support D365 enhancements and reporting tool optimisation.
7. Additional Responsibilities
• Prepare quarterly Plastic Packaging Tax submissions.
• Complete ONS, statutory data requests, and ad hoc regulatory filings.
• Support major global transformation projects (Galileo, North Star, Polaris).

KNOWLEDGE/SKILLS/EXPERIENCE

Essential
• Fully qualified Chartered Accountant (ACCA, ACA (ICAEW), CA(SA) or similar) – membership number must be supplied in application and CV
• 3+years PQE line management experience including technical accounting, consolidation, or group reporting.
• 3+ years experience of advanced ERP systems (ideally D365 or SAP).
• 3+ years experience line management or managing off-shore team deliverables 2+ years experience working with offshore/shared service teams.
• Strong IFRS/UK GAAP technical knowledge.
• Indirect tax (EU VAT) experience and understanding of cross border transactions.
• 2+ years experience preparing or reviewing multi currency consolidations.
• Strong Excel capability (PowerQuery/Pivot modelling preferred).
• Ability to work under pressure and at pace.
Desirable
• Manufacturing or supply chain environment experience.
• Exposure to Pillar 2, transfer pricing, or tax audits.
• Strong process improvement background in outsourced/shared service environments.

Key Competencies
• Strong leadership and influencing ability across geographies.
• Technical rigour with high attention to detail.
• Ability to communicate complex financial matters clearly to non finance stakeholders.
• Continuous improvement mindset and strong problem solving capability.
• Commercial acumen and ability to provide insight‐driven analysis.