Senior Project Accountant at Robert Walters

Key qualifications and experience required for the Senior Project Accountant:

• Fully qualified CA(SA) or equivalent
• 8 - 10+ years’ experience in a senior financial role with substantial exposure to project accounting, portfolio reporting orchange finance
• Thorough understanding offinancial planning, budgeting, forecasting, cost allocation principles and their application in large-scale environments
• Proven experience partnering effectively with change management or transformation teams (including PMO)
• Advanced skills in developing digital dashboards or visualisations using relevant tools (such as Power BI or Tableau) would be advantageous

Key duties of the Senior Project Accountant:

• Collaborate with project managers to create and validate business cases that adhere to internal expenditure guidelines.
• Work with the Change team to generate detailed multi-year financial reports, distinguishing cash flow from profit and loss impacts.
• Serve as a liaison between Change and Finance to ensure project-related operating costs are accurately reflected in annual budgets.
• Develop processes and tools to monitor project spending against forecasts, highlighting significant deviations for timely decisions.
• Lead or support the annual budgeting process for change initiatives, ensuring consistency and transparency across projects.
• Track and report on financial benefits from projects to inform accurate profit and loss planning and monitor benefit realisation.
• Create digital dashboards and visualisations for timely and insightful financial reporting to stakeholders.
• Define and implement standardised financial processes and controls for project accounting to drive improvement.
• Build trust with senior stakeholders by clearly communicating complex financial data for informed decision-making.
• Contribute to policy development to enhance governance around project accounting practices.

Key personal skills:

• Exceptional attention to detail combined with the ability to distil complex financial data into actionable insights for non-financial audiences
• Outstanding interpersonal skills that enable you to build trust-based relationships with senior stakeholders across multiple functions
• Display comfort operating within high-change environments characterised by ambiguity while maintaining composure under pressure
• Demonstrate commitment to continuous improvement through active participation in process development or policy enhancement initiatives