Title: Head of Finance (HR startup with global remote team) (Remote)

• Remote Worldwide
• Full-Time
• Finance

Category: Accounting & Finance
Job Type: Full-Time
Job Desc:

Head of Finance

Are you passionate about international business, looking for flexibility and creative freedom?

Then come and lead our finance team! We are looking for a team-oriented, resourceful and self-motivated person to make an impact in a young, growing company.

Job Purpose: Head of Finance

Shield GEO provides outsourced employment and payroll for hundreds of employees in over 60 countries. Our Finance team is the engine that makes sure all our GEO employees get paid on time every month. The team collaborates closely with colleagues in Global Mobility, Subject Matter Experts and Implementation to ensure our clients have a great experience.

This is a broad reaching role as you’ll be responsible for the smooth operation and ongoing improvement of our three functions within finance. Our Operational team create invoices, process payments and generate payslips. Our SME team resolve issues and answer questions about international tax, payroll and finance. They also setup new GEO employees and process termination payrolls. And our Reporting team handle our internal payroll, company administration and reporting.

You’ll report directly to the company founders and be a key contributor to our leadership team. You’ll have plenty of support from your team leads, the operational and project teams, our systems and our technology platform. All employees at Shield have flexibility about when and where they work. Most of us choose to work remotely with flexible hours.

Working with Shield

If you are excited by the thought of playing an active role in a company that provides opportunities to create and innovate, you’re at the right place.

We’re a remote-friendly company with employees all around the world. We don’t want to be limited by location and are open to hiring anyone from anywhere as long as it’s a great fit for us and you. Before we get to know you, we’d like to give you a sense of who we are and what is important to us. We hope this helps you decide if you want to be a part of Shield GEO.

Every person is unique. At Shield GEO, we encourage an inclusive culture that embraces each individual’s differences. We believe that diversity of thought and experience is vital to generating creative ideas, developing effective strategies and making better decisions.

When hiring we do not discriminate by any unlawful means including, but not limited to, race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, age or veteran status.
We offer reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities wherever possible. Our employees are provided with the basic equipment required to give them a comfortable, safe and productive workplace. If you require additional equipment beyond our standard offering we are happy to work with you to try to find a solution.

We can’t quite show you what it’s like to work with us but you can hear from our employees themselves. Here’re some articles written by our Co-Founder, Customer Success Manager and Digital Marketing Manager.

• Working remotely and flexibly with Shield Geo
• Leave policy
• Work equipment policy
• Workplace Diversity policy

Do you share our values?

Our 4 values are integral to who we are. Our company culture is constantly evolving, every person who joins us adds something unique to our culture. But our values are shared by all Shield GEO employees. Do these values resonate with you?

Grow

We believe that personal growth and company growth go hand in hand. We look to foster our own growth and help grow the company. Every day is an opportunity to face a new challenge and get a little better. In our world of international employment it is impossible to know all the answers. Instead of trying to know everything, we focus on knowing how to solve problems. When mistakes happen we know it’s all part of the learning curve and we seek feedback to help us improve. We keep an eye on the big picture so we can identify improvements to processes and systems. As the problems become larger and more complex, it means that we’ll need more flexible and agile minds to come up with solutions.

Own It

We are self-motivated and love to see tasks to completion. Our managers and team mates are often in different time zones, and that’s ok! We aren’t afraid to step up when things get a little tough. We don’t like to micro-manage or be micromanaged. We trust our team mates to carry out their part of the process. We are responsible for our own workload and making sure we get our most important things done each day. If we get stuck we proactively seek help. And we show our reliability and accountability by keeping our systems updated. This also means our results can speak for themselves.

Do The Right Thing

Our clients trust us with compliance on their most important asset – their employees. This is a big responsibility! Doing the right thing means often times we choose a harder path and see it through to the end. It means we are open with our colleagues, clients and suppliers about bad news just the same as we share good news. And sometimes doing the right thing means we have to make decisions that will upset the very person we are trying to help. It’s a high standard but we stand by this very strongly. Doing the right thing also means considering how our actions impact those around us.

Be Human

We are a service business and helping people is at the core of everything we do. We pride ourselves on how we interact with colleagues, service providers and clients. We recognize that in all areas we’re dealing with real humans.

We know that working remotely and dealing with such a mix of people around the world is challenging. We know that if we are having trouble understanding someone, they are also struggling to understand us. Empathy is fundamental to helping us discover what people mean and how they are feeling. To avoid misinterpretation we assume best intent in others.

Because so much of our communication is written and asynchronous, we default to over-communication. This means we give extra details because we don’t leave people guessing. We make sure our words are clear and easy to understand. And we are kind to our fellow humans.

Your Background

• More than five years experience within Finance
• More than five years experience in a leadership role
• International tax or payroll experience required. You must be very familiar with concepts related to the employment and payroll of workers in multiple countries like; employer social security; foreign exchange; gross ups; and expense reimbursements.
• Specific experience of employment and payroll in any of the following countries is an advantage; Australia; Canada; India; Singapore; UK; and USA.
• Comfortable with technology. We are mostly remote and we rely on a bunch of applications and communication protocols to keep connected. That means video conferences and voice calls (Zoom), chat and messaging (Slack, Skype and Salesforce Chatter), shared documents (Dropbox). You’ll likely be working by yourself during parts of your day without access to tech support.
• Experience with Salesforce or Xero is helpful but not essential.

Essential Characteristics of this role

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills and the ability to absorb information quickly. Because we are distributed across 9+ time zones and often working asynchronously clear and detailed written communication is particularly important.
• Able to prioritize effectively and work autonomously while coordinating with an international team.
• Able to both create and improve processes and workflows as well as coach your team on the same.
• Exceptional attention to detail.
• Ideally located between UTC+3 and UTC+8 time zones
• Some flexibility in working hours. We discourage overtime work and you will only be expected to work a standard number of hours each week. But we have clients and colleagues all over the world so sometimes you will need to be on calls in the morning or evening.

Responsibilities

Finance

• Ensure Shield GEO finance delivers a reliable, efficient and customer focused service.
• Line management of the 3 finance team leads.
• Encourage growth for finance team members.
• Setting the direction for the teams and supporting their ongoing progress.
• Agreeing and taking ownership of financial growth goals. This will be done in conjunction with the company owners and the leadership team.
• Build and maintain collaborative working relationships with our leadership team and other colleagues.
• Act as a point of escalation for finance team leads.
• Encourage the finance team to represent Shield GEO’s values in their day to day work.
• Other ad-hoc duties

Operational

• Support Operational team lead in the creation of hundreds of invoices and payslips each month
• Prepare the team, processes and systems for growth as we continue to scale
• Work with the operational team and our technology team to introduce automation and process improvements

SME

• Support our Subject Matter Expert team in resolving the hundreds of cases raised by our Clients, GEO Employees and Service Providers each month
• Assist in resolving escalated issues
• Work with SME team and other departments to identify ways to reduce volume of issues and improve issue resolution times.
• Identify and develop future Subject Matter Experts within other finance teams.

Reporting

• Support our Reporting team in creating monthly profit reporting, audit, tax filing, , internal payroll, insurance and compliance for 3+ corporate entities with more to come
• Include financial goals in reporting and track progress
• Work with Reporting team to analyse historical performance and identify trends
• Jointly identify opportunities to improve reporting processes and introduce automation

Next Steps

If you like what you’re read so far, this is a fantastic opportunity to join a global team committed to service. We’d really like to hear from you! Please submit a cover letter of under 250 words and include the achievement you’re most proud of.