Senior Manager – Financial Planning & Analysis at Astron Energy (Pty) Ltd.

The Senior Manager FP&A ensures the delivery of insights through financial and commercial analysis, to support business decision-making and drive organisational performance. Partner with business units to understand drivers of financial performance and facilitate informed decision-making, ensuring financial data is translated into actionable intelligence.

• Lead and coordinate the preparation of the annual budget/ strategic business plan, Q1 reforecast, and monthly EBM (IBP) reforecasts across supported business units (EVCO, Logistics, Retail, Commercial and Lubricants) including operational and capital planning.
• Ensure accuracy, alignment and integrity of forecasts and assumptions with business and macroeconomic drivers.
• Partner with business units to challenge historical performance and assumptions, identify risks and opportunities, and improve forecast accuracy.
• Provide input into the development of the long-term valuations and business plans, supporting strategic decision-making.
• Lead the monthly performance reporting process, ensuring timely accurate, insightful, and actionable analysis and reporting of financial and operational performance for supported BUs.
• Develop meaningful dashboards and metrics that highlight key performance drivers, variances and trends.
• Provide analysis and recommendations to the CFO, EXCO and business unit GMs to drive informed decision-making.
• Continuously improve reporting packs, tools and processes for effectiveness, clarity and relevance.
• Facilitate alignment between finance and business operations, ensuring shared accountability for performance outcomes and resolution of misalignment between business and the broader finance group (e.g. credit, treasury, accounting and tax).
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to evaluate and prioritise strategic initiatives, investment cases and commercial opportunities.
• Act as first approver (prior to CFO submission) of business cases for capital projects, commercial opportunities, pricing decisions, partnerships and acquisitions (organic and inorganic growth).
• Set hurdle rates (e.g. WACC and IRR) and ensure all relevant KPIs, financial metrics and strategic considerations are assessed in each commercial evaluation, seeking appropriate approvals from shareholder and EXCO as required.
• Support commercial negotiations with external parties on commercial opportunities and investments as CFO representative.
• Partner with the cross-functional teams to maintain financial discipline, consistency and transparency in business case development and investment decision-making.
• Lead a financial modelling centre of excellence that builds, reviews and maintains complex financial models and tools used by business in the evaluation of commercial and investment decisions.
• Identify and lead opportunities for process simplification, automation and digital transformation within FP&A and broader finance and business processes to enable enterprise-wide efficiency and effectiveness.
• Support the design, implementation, and rollout of enterprise-wide budgeting and performance management tools and enhancements (e.g., SAP Analytics Cloud).
• Enhance data quality, accuracy and accessibility through system improvements, data governance and leveraging available tools and systems (e.g. PowerBI, SAC).
• Challenge the status quo and support change initiatives that improve efficiency, insights and alignment with enterprise value creation objectives.
• Support the CFO and BU GMs in the development and updates of enterprise and BU strategies ensuring financial impact and value drivers are clearly articulated and linked to enterprise strategic objectives.
• Champion and embed a value creation mindset across the business through understanding of enterprise value, performance and value-driven decision-making.
• Identify and evaluate Enterprise and BU specific risks and opportunities, providing quantitative support to Strategy function in assessing risks and opportunities for inclusion in Enterprise risk registers.
• Lead and contribute to cross-functional/ transformation projects that drive enterprise performance, cost optimisation and long-term sustainability.

People Management:

• Provide direction and define objectives to be achieved in department.
• Manage performance of direct reports ensuring agreement of annual goals and measuring performance against agreed goals and addressing non-performance issues.
• Deploy people management processes effectively, in line with Company policies, procedures and prevailing improvement initiatives.
• Drive operational excellence through area of supervision.
• Oversee resource deployment to ensure adequate cover and resilience in the team.
• Promote, support, and encourage team members to live the Company values.

Financial Management:

• Lead and coordinate the preparation of the annual budget/ strategic business plan, Q1 reforecast, and monthly EBM (IBP) reforecasts across supported business units (EVCO, Logistics, Retail, Commercial and Lubricants) including operational and capital planning.
• Ensure accuracy, alignment and integrity of forecasts and assumptions with business and macroeconomic drivers.
• Partner with business units to challenge historical performance and assumptions, identify risks and opportunities, and improve forecast accuracy.
• Provide input into the development of the long-term valuations and business plans, supporting strategic decision-making.
• Presentation of annual budget and business plan to CFO, CEO and Shareholder for approval.

Stakeholder Relationship Management:

• Identify, build, and nurture trust and collaborative relationships with internal and external stakeholders.

Professional Qualification and Certifications:

• Qualified CA(SA)

Work Experience:

• 8 years’ experience:
• Relevant senior level experience preferably in a similar role in a large, complex commercially focused business

Knowledge and skills:

• Proven track record in analysis of customer profitability models
• Understanding of Internal transfer pricing methodologies and Regulatory Accounting System Pricing requirements
• Ability to build strong relationships throughout the business and drive improvement in financial and operational KPIs
• Strong commercial acumen and financial planning experience
• Advanced data analysis and interpretation skills
• Ability to translate complex data into actionable insights.
• High proficiency in reporting tools and advanced Excel skills.
• Excellent problem-solving ability.
• Exceptional communication and presentation skills, including the ability to clearly convey complex information

Application deadline:

• 04 January 2026