Senior Director, Operational Finance

Worley is a global professional services company of energy, chemicals and resources experts headquartered in Australia.

Right now, we're bridging two worlds as we accelerate to more sustainable energy sources, while helping our customers provide the energy, chemicals and resources that society needs now.

We partner with our customers to deliver projects and create value over the life of their portfolio of assets. We solve complex problems by finding integrated data-centric solutions from the first stages of consulting and engineering to installation and commissioning, to the last stages of decommissioning and remediation. Join us and help drive innovation and sustainability in our projects.

Purpose of the Role:

The Senior Director, Operational Finance at Worley is a pivotal operational leader charged with leading defined business areas or projects, this role integrates seamlessly across functions, necessitating a comprehensive understanding of practices in the specialized realm of operational finance.

This position plays a key role across both our American Finance and Operational leadership teams with financial oversight and responsibility of our regional operations covering circa USD$3B revenue and 6,000 employees. The role will support multiple Profit and Loss Centers within our US operations providing finance business partnership to multiple operational leaders.

The role will drive the operational finance business partnership forward delivering the finance strategy as a trusted advisor and thought leader to influence business decisions. It will involve guiding executive and local finance teams to optimize performance, ensuring regulatory compliance, leading continued process changes, and promoting financial transparency and accuracy.

Key Responsibilities:

Decision Support and Financial Governance

• Develops and oversees implementation of strategic programs and policies for their groups, which will have impact on the overall organization.
• Collaborates frequently with executive management on significant matters, contributing to global strategies that align with Worley's mission and vision.
• Leads budget and forecast preparation for the operations and provides information supporting medium to long range planning activities.
• Ensures day to day finance business partnering is provided to the P&L owners in the Region and representative of Finance function to the operations.
• Responsible for delivering consistent, accurate and timely management information (financial and statistical) to all key stakeholders for decision making purposes
• Analyzes, interprets, and presents financial results to senior management comparing budget/forecast to actual, including KPIs, key business drivers and trends, overheads, business development activities and market conditions.
• Monitors and manages overheads compared to budget and forecast.
• Drives the US Financial controller team to have a sound balance sheet management. Interacts with Worley Shared Services team and outsourced finance functions.
• Ensures the minimum operating controls for finance are implemented and monitored in all operations.
• Oversight of the planning, directing, coordinating of the finance and other functions.
• Ensures accuracy and consistency in application of Accounting Policy and Standards and appropriate internal controls.
• Works with US Tax team, US Treasury and Global Transfer Pricing team to ensure full compliance with all relevant tax laws.
• Overall project accounting responsibility of all projects and joint ventures, including compliance with revenue and profit recognition policies.
• Ensure auditable compliance with relevant legal and statutory requirements and achievement of sound corporate governance and compliance with The Way, Worley policies and IFRS.

Leadership

• Responsible for Finance Partnering and Services to the Region.
• Ensures approved position descriptions, KPIs, development plans, and succession plans are in place for all staff/positions; effectively counsels and evaluates the performance of team members and provides for their professional development and career growth; ensures all team members are effectively contributing to the business; supports regional staff development and succession planning efforts for the benefit of the Region as a whole.
• Creates and maintains a work environment that attracts, develops, and retains world class financial talent.
• Ensures the region has the appropriate systems, tools, and processes to support the operations (sources these from the global functions where appropriate).
• Positions and stewards the implementation of Finance approved strategies, policies, and processes in the region to ensure consistent Group-wide best practice is delivered.
• Collaborates with other Finance Leaders, Business Line BPs, Shared Services, and key internal stakeholder groups to act in a manner that supports the global business through sharing of resources, and intelligence to optimize delivery to customers, particularly for multi-location and / or global customer projects.

Cash Management

• Drives best in class cash management around DSO and WIP (both collections efficiency and invoicing efficiency). Focus on full CCR lifecycle and manage outcomes for Worley.
• Stewards ongoing cash forecasting; upholds strong, visible credit risk management.
• Actively monitors at-risk clients for financial impairment.
• Communicates regularly with regional business leaders to ensure accurate and timely customer invoicing and up-to-date project cost information.
• Monitors regular AR reports and collections and engages business for resolutions of disputes and timely collection of outstanding accounts.
• Cash dashboard completion for regional management and group reporting.
  
• Overall responsibility for liquidity management of the location.
  

Commercial Support

• Active participant and influencer on business decisions in: Commercial Reviews, Bid no Bids meetings, Risk Register reviews, Project Reviews, Key legal Claims reviews, Strategy meetings.
• Works with Commercial Finance Lead to ensure a commercial finance structure is working effectively and is represented on the operational management team.
• Provides financial advice and commercial support to operations; actively participates in an operations management to deliver strategic objectives.
• Involved in the development and regular review of proposals.
• Develops processes that enable the business to effectively manage its costs. Identifies and implements cost reductions and/or leakages.
• Identifies and manages financial and treasury risks for the region.

Continuous Improvement

• Identifies and contributes to the ongoing development of systems and processes to enhance capabilities, including delivery of deeper information for decision support.
• Identifies and supports cost reduction opportunities across the location.
• Actively works on COE initiatives (LER, FRDA, SSC transition, Cash).

What you will bring

• Demonstrable experience managing large operational focused teams in an international business with significant scale and complexity.
• Extensive progressive and comprehensive financial and general management experience in multinational Engineering Services companies involved in large EPC or EPCM projects, providing guided expertise and support to functional senior leaders and operational executives.
• Well-developed team building and leadership skills with experience in training, coaching, and managing cross-functional teams to accomplish and meet critical targets.
• Track record of optimizing processes, reducing costs, and increasing profit contribution including regional shared services implementations.
• Successful track record of delivering transformation initiatives: where they have been instigated, led and overseen through to delivery in highly matrixed organizations with multiple stakeholder groups.
• Ability to be impactful, create a compelling vision of the future, gain buy-in from peers & key stakeholders at all levels of an organization, and develop valued relationships with leadership teams and external suppliers.
• Highly analytical, with the ability to interpret complex or ambiguous information, identify trends, and create strategic action plans based on the information.
• Ability to demonstrate an in-depth understanding of an organization's core business, strategic direction, challenges, and articulates how finance can add measurable value.
• Tenacious, self-driven individual who takes personal responsibility for resolving performance issues before they impact on the business; consistently seeing things through to completion.
• Demonstrates excellent communication skills, particularly in presenting complex proposals and reports to executive-level management and the Board. Effective communication is vital for conveying financial strategies and influencing key stakeholders.

Education - Qualifications, Accreditation, Training:

Essential

• Holds a university degree, in accounting, finance, or related field or applicable discipline.
• CPA, CA, or CMA certification in addition to a relevant university degree is highly preferred.
• This educational foundation is crucial for understanding and navigating the complexities of finance.

Desirable

• Master of Business Administration (MBA).

Moving forward together

We want our people to be energized and empowered to drive sustainable impact. So, our focus is on a values-inspired culture that unlocks brilliance through belonging, connection and innovation.

We're building a diverse, inclusive and respectful workplace. Creating a space where everyone feels they belong, can be themselves, and are heard.

And we're not just talking about it; we're doing it. We're reskilling our people, leveraging transferable skills, and supporting the transition of our workforce to become experts in today's low carbon energy infrastructure and technology.

Whatever your ambition, there's a path for you here. And there's no barrier to your potential career success. Join us to broaden your horizons, explore diverse opportunities, and be part of delivering sustainable change.

We're committed to building a diverse, inclusive and respectful workplace where everyone feels they belong, can bring themselves, and are heard. We provide equal employment opportunities to all qualified applicants and employees without regard to age, race, creed, color, religion, sex, national origin, ancestry, disability status, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, citizenship status or any other basis as protected by federal, state, or local law.

Our policy is to conduct background checks for all candidates who accept an offer of employment with us.

Please note: No agency representation or submissions will be recognized for this vacancy.