FinOps Manager

Job description

## Valarian: Innovating for the new era of digital sovereignty Valarian Technologies is a dual-use technology company building critical tools to safeguard the future in an era of evolving global security challenges. We're rethinking security beyond traditional military domains, addressing asymmetric threats that impact our technological advantage, economic strength, and democratic institutions. We build Acra – the platform foundation for everything we do as a dual-use technology company. The platform’s name, rooted in the Greek word for citadel (or, fortress), reflects the design and purpose of our infrastructure-agnostic secure enclaves: protecting critical data. Some of the government and commercial workflows include: increased operational resiliency for mission-critical systems and functions; enabling organisations to more quickly and widely adopt emerging technologies while ensuring the integrity of their intellectual property; information flow during disaster response scenarios, and zero-trust / least-privilege environments for M&A, attorney-client privileged communications, etc. And we’ve only scratched the surface. At our core, we're driven by a shared mission and a belief in making a tangible impact on our world. Whether you join our London HQ or the wider global organisation, you’ll be a part of collaborative, high-performing teams, creating cutting-edge software, platforms, and infrastructure. ## The Role We are looking for a hands-on Finance Manager to take ownership of finance operations, month-end accounting and management reporting within a growing, early-stage business. Reporting to the Head of Finance, you will be responsible for ensuring that the day-to-day finance function runs accurately, consistently and on time. You will own the monthly close through to the production of management accounts, while also managing a broad range of finance, compliance, equity, systems and business-support workstreams. This is a manager-level individual contributor role rather than a junior support position. You will be expected to independently prioritise work, establish what needs to be done, coordinate internal stakeholders and external advisers, and drive tasks through to completion. You should escalate material risks and decisions, but will not need the Head of Finance to manage each step of your work. A key part of the role will be utilising modern finance software, integrations and pragmatic automation to operate an effective finance function with a lean team. You will assess where technology can remove repetitive work, improve controls, strengthen data quality and provide better visibility, while avoiding unnecessary complexity or overengineering. You are not expected to personally provide specialist tax, legal or valuation advice. However, you will be expected to own those processes internally: gathering information, briefing advisers, managing deadlines, reviewing outputs, coordinating approvals and ensuring actions are completed. What you’ll do - **Finance operations and controls** - Own the day-to-day finance operations of the business, including accounts payable, accounts receivable, expenses, company cards, supplier onboarding and payment runs. - Manage the end-to-end supplier invoice process, including coding, approval tracking, payment scheduling, supplier queries and maintaining complete supporting documentation. - Own customer and intercompany invoicing, including recurring invoices, recharges, payment tracking and debtor follow-up. - Prepare and manage regular payment runs, including urgent and exceptional payments, while maintaining appropriate approval and bank-detail verification controls. - Oversee employee expenses and spend-management processes, ensuring transactions are supported, approved and correctly coded. - Maintain accurate accounting records and ensure transactions are processed on a timely basis. - Complete regular bank, card, supplier, customer and intercompany reconciliations. - Manage recurring payments, subscriptions, renewals and cancellations, identifying duplicate, unused or unnecessary spend. - Introduce and maintain practical controls across purchasing, approvals, payments, expenses, billing and supplier management. - Ensure finance policies, approval limits and documented processes are understood and followed across the business. **Month-end and management accounts** - Own the monthly close timetable and drive all required actions to completion. - Prepare and post month-end journals, including accruals, prepayments, payroll, fixed assets, deferred revenue, intercompany balances and foreign-exchange adjustments. - Maintain complete and accurate balance-sheet reconciliation schedules. - Review the general ledger and investigate unusual, incomplete or incorrectly coded transactions. - Produce monthly management accounts, including: - Profit and loss statement - Balance sheet - Cash-flow and runway reporting - Budget-versus-actual analysis - Departmental and cost-centre reporting - Relevant operational and financial KPIs - Clear variance commentary and recommended actions - Work with the Head of Finance to improve the accuracy, consistency and timeliness of monthly reporting. - Maintain a clear audit trail and ensure that management accounts can be supported back to the underlying accounting records. - Support the preparation of investor, board and other stakeholder reporting. **Budgeting, forecasting and cost oversight** - Maintain the company budget and rolling forecast in collaboration with the Head of Finance and departmental budget owners. - Support the preparation of half-year and annual budgets, ensuring that current performance and agreed assumptions flow into future planning. - Track spend against budget by department, supplier and cost category. - Provide budget owners with clear and timely reporting and follow up on significant variances. - Review proposed and existing expenditure - Support cash-flow forecasting, burn analysis and runway management. - Help develop scalable reporting that provides leadership with clear visibility over financial performance and commitments. **Year-end, tax and statutory compliance** - Own the internal year-end process, including maintaining a close plan, preparing schedules and responding to external accountant or auditor requests. - Coordinate the preparation and filing of corporation tax returns with external tax advisers. - Maintain an organised record of tax, statutory and compliance deadlines across the business. - Ensure intercompany agreements, invoicing, recharges and balances are documented and reconciled. - Support VAT filings and other applicable tax reporting. - Coordinate payroll inputs, payroll reconciliations and related accounting entries. - Oversee pension compliance activities and maintain evidence that required submissions and employee communications have been completed. - Manage company insurance renewals, information requests and related administration. - Maintain accurate, accessible and well-organised finance documentation. **Equity, corporate and employee-related finance** - Coordinate UK and US option valuation processes with external tax, legal and valuation advisers. - Maintain accurate records of equity transactions and ensure that signed documents, approvals, accounting entries and cap-table records remain aligned. - Own or support the implementation and ongoing administration of the company’s cap-table platform. - Work closely with People, Legal and external advisers to ensure employee and contractor-related finance actions are completed accurately and on time. **Systems, data and process improvement** - Take ownership of finance tools and workflows, including the accounting platform, spend-management tools, expense systems, cap-table platform and finance-related CRM reporting. - Lead the onboarding, migration or replacement of finance systems where required. - Ensure finance-system access, approval workflows, master data and reporting configurations are appropriately controlled. - Identify manual, inconsistent or poorly controlled processes and implement proportionate improvements alongside process documentation. - Manage system providers and implementation partners and ensure agreed projects are delivered through to completion. ## What you’ll bring - Approximately 4–7 years of relevant experience in management accounting, finance operations or a broad finance role. - Experience working in a startup, scale-up or fast-moving SME environment is highly desirable. - Demonstrable experience owning a monthly close process and preparing management accounts. - Part-qualified, finalist or qualified ACA, ACCA or CIMA preferred. Strong qualified-by-experience candidates will also be considered. - Experience coordinating external accountants, tax advisers, payroll providers, legal advisers or other specialists. - Strong Excel or Google Sheets skills, including experience working with reconciliations, management reporting and financial models. - Experience using Xero or a similar accounting system. - Experience with spend-management, expenses, CRM or cap-table platforms is desirable. - Exposure to UK and US entities, cross-border transactions, equity administration or transfer pricing would be beneficial, but is not essential. - Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the confidence to follow up with senior stakeholders and challenge incomplete or unsupported requests. - Able to manage multiple workstreams, deadlines and dependencies without requiring constant supervision. - Comfortable working in an environment where processes are still developing and where part of the role is to create structure.