Financial Controller | Fast Growth Global Consumer Brand | London (Hybrid)

The Client

Harmonic are delighted to be partnering with a well established global consumer brand with a strong international following and a reputation built on the quality and longevity of its product.

The business is privately owned, highly profitable, and several years into a sustained period of strong growth. There are several hundred people worldwide, the majority of them in the UK, and European expansion is now underway, with regional finance teams being built and managed from the London head office.

The Role

A newly created Financial Controller position, reporting to the Finance Director for UK and Europe and sitting at the top of a finance team of 12+ colleagues.

You own the financial control across a multi entity, multi currency operation: month end and year end close, balance sheet integrity, statutory reporting and audit, the AP and AR functions, inventory, and the internal controls framework the next phase of international growth will run on. You are also central to embedding a newly implemented ERP, leading the ongoing refinement of processes and controls that sit around it.

That is the technical half of the job. The other half, and the real reason this role exists, is the team: this is a position for someone who actively enjoys people management. You will be building rather than inheriting, recruiting as European expansion adds entities and volume, lifting the technical standard, and handing individuals genuine ownership of processes that currently escalate upwards. Success in year one looks like a finance team that has held steady through the changes that growth has brought around, and a function which is stronger in terms of automation, systems and ready for future international growth.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead a finance team of 12+ across financial control, accounts payable, accounts receivable and management accounting, with four to six direct reports
• Recruit, onboard and develop new team members as the function scales to support global / European expansion
• Coach and train the team technically, building clear ownership and accountability at every level and reducing the function’s dependency on senior leadership
• Act as the primary escalation point for operational finance issues, resolving blockers at pace, whether this is something to do with credit or support to FP&A for example.
• Own end to end financial control across the group: month end and year end close, balance sheet integrity, statutory reporting and external audit
• Take full ownership of the accounts payable and accounts receivable functions, including payment runs, invoice processing, banking controls and supplier and customer master data, at high volume and to a high standard
• Oversee inventory accounting across the group, including valuation, movement tracking and reconciliation
• Design, maintain and strengthen the internal controls framework in line with audit requirements and best practice, and drive process improvement through the ongoing ERP programme
• Partner with IT, BI, FP&A and the wider finance team to embed and optimise processes within the ERP and surrounding platforms, identifying opportunities for automation and efficiency
• Drive consistency and standardisation of finance processes across all business channels, keeping them scalable and fit for a high growth, multi channel and multi jurisdictional business
• Proactively identify and manage risk across finance operations, ensuring issues are resolved at pace with root causes understood, addressed and clearly communicated