strategic finance manager

The Role

We're looking for a Strategic Finance Manager to own planning, forecasting and performance insight across the business. You'll be the finance partner leadership relies on to turn data into decisions: shaping budgets, modelling growth scenarios, and bringing commercial rigour to every major bet we make.

This is a high-visibility role working directly with the founders, the executive team and department heads, and it's suited to someone who wants to build, not just maintain.

Planning & Forecasting

• Own the annual budget, rolling forecast and long-range business planning process across UAE and KSA operations and products, including consolidation.
• Build and maintain the company's core financial models covering revenue, GMV/AUM, product and channel unit economics, headcount, opex, cash flow, liquidity and runway.
• Run scenario and sensitivity analysis to support strategic decisions, market expansion, capital allocation and fundraising.
• Own regular reforecasting and provide forward-looking analysis of risks, opportunities and expected performance against plan.
• Own headcount and manpower planning, partnering with People and department heads to maintain hiring plans, forecast employee costs and assess headcount against budget.
• Build financial models and business cases for new products and strategic initiatives, assessing revenue potential, cost structures, unit economics, cash requirements and overall financial viability.
• Maintain forward-looking cash flow, liquidity and runway analysis and assess funding requirements under different operating scenarios.
• Support longer-term business planning and financial modelling for new products, regulatory initiatives and geographic expansion.
• Support financial modelling and analysis for new regulatory frameworks and strategic initiatives, including VARA-related planning, working closely with Compliance.

Performance & Insight

• Own Monthly KPI reporting across markets and products, including GMV, AUM, investor acquisition and retention, conversion, average investment value, CAC/LTV, rewards, contribution margins and transaction volumes.
• Own preparation of recurring monthly and quarterly financial performance commentary, including MD&A, highlighting key movements, risks, opportunities and implications for the business.
• Analyse product, campaign and channel performance, identifying the underlying drivers of revenue, margin and customer economics.
• Develop investor and cohort analysis covering acquisition, retention, repeat investment, LTV, yield, dividends, vacancy and portfolio performance to support commercial and customer decision-making.
• Own and develop daily and automated performance reporting to provide management with timely visibility over key financial and operational metrics.
• Partner with Data and Accounting teams to validate underlying financial and operational data and maintain consistency across reporting sources.
• Review and support accounting methodology where commercial arrangements affect management reporting, including revenue recognition and classification of revenue and cost items.
• Identify, reconcile and clearly communicate differences between business and accounting reporting methodologies.

Strategic Partnership

• Partner directly with founders and senior leaders across Growth, Product, Sales, Operations, Marketing, People, Data and Compliance to align resources with priorities and support strategic and commercial decisions.
• Evaluate business cases, pricing, promotions, rewards, commercial structures, new product lines and investment decisions through robust financial analysis.
• Own financial analysis of promotions, rewards and customer incentives, assessing cost, contribution margin, customer behaviour and overall commercial economics.
• Own and prepare the monthly Marketing and Sales performance review presented to co-founders and Sales, Marketing and Growth leadership.
• Model and review Sales and Operations commission structures, including monthly calculations for the relevant teams.
• Provide regular and ad-hoc strategic financial analysis directly to founders and Heads of Department to support time-sensitive commercial, operational and investment decisions.
• Identify and evaluate cost-efficiency opportunities across technology, suppliers and operating expenditure.
• Partner with budget owners to challenge assumptions, monitor spend and ensure resources remain aligned with business priorities

Board, Shareholder & Investor Reporting

• Develop Board and shareholder materials covering historical performance, forecasts, long-range business plans, scenarios, sensitivities, risks and key strategic drivers.
• Translate detailed financial and operational performance into concise Board and shareholder narratives highlighting key drivers, risks, opportunities and strategic implications.
• Own preparation of quarterly management accounts for shareholder and investor reporting, working with Accounting to ensure consistency with the underlying financial statements.
• Respond to financial and performance-related shareholder and investor queries and prepare supporting analysis as required.
• Support fundraising and due diligence processes through financial modelling, historical analysis, forecasts and preparation of supporting financial information.

Build & Scale

• Lead the ongoing development of Abacum as the company's FP&A platform, covering planning, forecasting, reporting and data integration.
• Develop and automate recurring financial, KPI and commercial reporting to improve reporting speed, accuracy and scalability.
• Partner with Data teams to define Finance data requirements, resolve reporting issues and develop reliable datasets and dashboards.
• Support the financial planning of future geographic expansion.
• Identify opportunities to use automation and AI-enabled tools to improve the efficiency and quality of financial analysis, planning and reporting.

What You'll Bring

• 5–8 years in FP&A, strategic finance, investment banking, PE/VC or management consulting, ideally including time in a high-growth startup or scale-up
• Expert financial modelling skills (three-statement, scenario and unit economics) and advanced Excel/Google Sheets
• Proven ability to present to senior leadership and board-level stakeholders
• Strong commercial judgement: you ask "so what?" before anyone else does
• Comfortable with ambiguity, pace and building from scratch
• Degree in Finance, Economics, Accounting or a related field; CFA, ACCA, CIMA or CPA is a plus
• Experience in fintech, proptech, real estate or asset management
• Exposure to DFSA or other financial-services regulatory environments
• Familiarity with BI tools (e.g. Looker, Power BI, Tableau) or planning software