Assistant Finance Manager

Overview

Assistant Finance Manager – Financial Reporting in Unilever's centralised finance team, responsible for preparing financial statements, governing end-to-end financial processes and managing balance sheet health, while leading a small team.

What you'll do

• Lead the preparation, review and submission of periodic financial statements in line with Unilever policies, local GAAP / IFRS and internal timelines.
• Hold governance over core financial processes (closing, reconciliations, provisions, accruals, intercompany, fixed assets) to ensure accuracy, completeness and control.
• Own and drive balance sheet hygiene, including regular balance sheet reviews, ageing analysis and timely resolution of open items.
• Coordinate month end, quarter end and year end close activities, ensuring adherence to timelines and quality standards.
• Review and sign off key account reconciliations, ensuring issues are identified, escalated and resolved promptly.
• Use SAP extensively for posting, reporting, analysis and controls, ensuring data integrity and consistency across systems.
• Leverage Power BI (where applicable) to create or enhance dashboards and reports on financial performance, balance sheet health and process KPIs.
• Partner with Controllership, FP&A, Tax, Treasury, Business Partnering and relevant business stakeholders to resolve issues and land improvements.
• Support internal and external audits by preparing audit schedules, responding to queries and ensuring remediation of audit observations.
• Identify opportunities for simplification, standardisation and automation in financial reporting and control processes, and drive agreed improvements.
• Lead, coach and develop a small team of finance professionals, ensuring clarity of goals, strong performance and learning opportunities.

What you'll need

• Professional qualification (CA / CMA / ACCA / MBA in Finance) or equivalent finance qualification.
• Strong experience in financial reporting, controllership or related finance roles, ideally in a large or multinational organisation.
• Hands-on experience with SAP (FI/CO or equivalent modules) in a financial reporting or controlling environment.
• Strong technical understanding of accounting principles and financial reporting (local GAAP and/or IFRS).
• High attention to detail with a strong control and governance mindset.
• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to drive issue resolution across multiple stakeholders.
• Good communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to work effectively in a centralised / virtual team environment.
• Ability to plan and prioritise under tight month end and year end timelines.

Nice to have

• Experience of managing or coaching team members.
• Exposure to reporting/visualisation tools such as Power BI.
• Ability to work with and interpret large data sets; familiarity with Power BI or similar tools.
• People leadership potential with willingness to coach and develop team members.

Details

• Location: Mumbai HO, India.
• Reports to Finance Manager / Senior Finance Manager – Financial Reporting.