Senior Finance Manager - Middle East Delivery

Job Description

Are you a strategic finance professional with a track record of driving financial performance and leading high-impact teams? We are seeking an experienced Senior Finance Manager to join our dynamic organization to be based in Abu Dhabi, UAE. In this role, you’ll be instrumental in guiding our financial strategies, analyzing key performance metrics, and providing actionable insights to senior leadership. You’ll collaborate across departments to optimize financial operations, ensure compliance, and support our mission of sustainable growth.

This is an exciting opportunity for a visionary leader who thrives in fast-paced environments and is passionate about leveraging data to influence business decisions. If you're ready to make a significant impact and grow within a forward-thinking organization, please apply and we will get back to you!

Responsibilities

This role exists to drive Finance excellence in the Projects Middle East Delivery community. That excellence is to be delivered into a multi-country Middle Eastern environment where performance will be measured by the ability to deliver growth, quality of earnings and cash performance into a growing team.

To meet the North Star the Middle East team is focused on growing the business to a level of c $300M in 2026, together with improving EBITDA and cash performance.

To be successful in the job, the Senior Finance Manager will be highly adaptable, risk management driven, with exceptional ability to think ahead and anticipate, to allow the business to rapidly improve, continuously. The job will set the financial vision and purpose for not only the F&A team, but for the entire Projects Middle East Delivery community and this will be done through inspiring leadership. The job will be characterized by exceptional time management, integrity and trustworthiness.

This role plays a key part of the regional leadership team.

The role has dual reporting responsibilities to the Vice President Finance & Administration, and the Senior Vice President Projects – Middle East – Delivery. Being comfortable in a matrix organization with an exceptional customer and service level focus is an essential part of the job. Business partnering is a key element of the role in providing finance and decision-making support through building relationships and promoting close links with operational leadership. The business partner element to the role is to provide analysis, insight and views in respect of the financial performance of the business, be a trusted advisor and to add value that will assist in decision making to the entire community.

The role carries profit and loss and working capital responsibility, and balance sheet responsibilities for the projects Middle East delivery business. Clarity and accuracy in reporting and communicating are key to the roles success. The other main aspects of the role include governance, financial control, internal and external reporting, financial forecasting and cash collection. The role will include responsibility for a team, and therefore team management and development will be essential elements. This role has responsibility for ensuring that all Group requirements are adhered to and that any financial risks are understood and mitigated as appropriate.

Key Responsibilities and duties

• Full responsibility for all financial matters including accurate and timely completion of monthly reporting, optimising financial performance; and provide stewardship over any profit delivery plan
• Report business / country / region financial performance to senior management including variance analysis, accounts receivables, DSO, accruals and unbilled analysis
• Ownership for annual budget, forecasts and rolling forecasts in conjunction with senior management, including validation / challenge over backlog, inputs from BD and operations
• Ensure forecasting accuracy and predictability through the rolling forecast v monthly actual result process
• Ownership of monthly customer billing to ensure invoices are prepared in accordance with the commercial terms of the contract
• Responsible for driving sustainable working capital improvements and/or maintaining performance working with operational management, project managers, supply chain and other relevant areas to optimise cash collection and minimise DSO, including customer relationships and reporting
• Leadership and management of business / country / region finance team including recruitment, staff development, performance management and the setting of objectives
• Challenge management to drive the highest levels of financial performance which includes understanding the cost base, allocated costs, revenue base and associated budget/forecast, support the business through actionable insights
• Ownership of implementation and financial adherence with the finance operating model
• Assisting during client audits and dispute management
• Engagement with commercial teams on the pre award phase in terms of bids, rates, and relevant analysis and a key contact and team participant for such, including input to financial terms contained in contracts and bids where appropriate
• Engagement with commercial teams on post contract award phase in terms of margin analysis looking for opportunities to drive improvements and commercial efficiencies, and attending key project reviews to ensure that reported financials are appropriate
• Lead engagement with external and internal auditors to successfully complete relevant audits
• Ensure that an effective control environment exists through compliance with all Group control frameworks, policies and procedures as relevant
• Responsibility for relevant project accounting, including monthly reviews, analysis and project set up, accounting judgements and provisioning while working with relevant functions such as Commercial, Legal and Tax
• Work with Operations and serve as a conduit between the business and Legal, Tax and Treasury, IT, Shared Services and Supply Chain
  
  

Qualifications

QUALIFICATIONS

• Professionally qualified accountant
  
  

Knowledge, Skills And Experience

• Minimum of 8 years relevant accounting experience
• Strong experience of business partnering
• Excellent track record in people management
• Demonstrable commercial experience
• Previous experience of leading and developing a team
• Good IT / Systems knowledge
• Sound knowledge of Oil & Gas services business and accounting methodology
  
  

Personal attributes

• Sets example and fully participates in the company values building strong relationships across the business
• Strong people skills and desire to develop the team, look to recruit the best
• Manages with honesty and commitment
• Ability to discuss issues clearly and concisely at all levels in the organization
• Ability to work proactively to analyse problems/issues and identify solutions
  
  

About Us

Wood is a global leader in consulting and engineering, helping to unlock solutions to critical challenges in energy and materials markets. We provide consulting, projects and operations solutions in 60 countries, employing around 35,000 people. www.woodplc.com

Diversity Statement

We are an equal opportunity employer that recognises the value of a diverse workforce. All suitably qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment on the basis of objective criteria and without regard to the following (which is a non-exhaustive list): race, colour, age, religion, gender, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, protected veteran status, or other characteristics in accordance with the relevant governing laws.