Head of Global Financial Reporting

Head of Global IFRS Excellence (f/m/d)

Location: Walldorf, DE, 69190

Work Area: Finance

Expected Travel: 0 – 20%

Career Status: Management

Employment Type: Regular Full Time

Additional Locations: Virtual – Global

What you’ll do

This position is located within the Corporate Financial Reporting (CFR) department of SAP. You (f/m/d) will directly report to SAP’s Chief Accounting Officer and Head of Corporate Financial Reporting. CFR is directly assigned to the Group CFO of SAP and is responsible for the completeness and correctness of SAP’s IFRS accounting and for SAP’s external financial reporting under German and U.S. law.

Corporate Financial Reporting is structured in the following sub teams:

• ‘Local Accounting and Reporting’
• ‘Corporate Revenue Accounting and Reporting’,
• ‘External Reporting and Accounting Technology’
• ‘Global IFRS Excellence’.

The ‘IFRS Excellence’ team is ultimately responsible for all of SAP’s IFRS accounting CoEs (except for IFRS 15 related matters) This also includes the ownership of SAP’s Global Accounting Guideline. The role also comprises the representation of CFR on a global level in the interaction with the other global and corporate departments involved in SAP’s accounting and financial reporting and the creation and maintenance of strong and globally standardized agile processes within the organization.

As a member of the CFR leadership team, you (f/m/d) will be involved in developing and executing on CFR’s mid- and long-term strategy towards our mission “Being agile, we strive for expert service excellence and, using our technology, we provide holistic external reporting that complies with applicable regulations and at a level of transparency that best serves SAP’s interests.”

The job includes

• People management for the organization with one additional manager reporting into the function.

PRINCIPAL responsibilities:

• IFRS accounting policy setting – documentation of all critical IFRS accounting matters (except revenue recognition) – including discussions with SAP’s auditors and business stakeholders
• Ensure full compliance with external reporting regulations (e.g. SEC, ASCG, etc.) and support implementation of new accounting requirements.
• Represent CFR in internal and external working groups
• Close alignment with the corresponding CFO-organization as well as e.g. with SAP’s Shared Service organization, the Global Tax organization, Global Treasury, Corporate Development, Investor Relations and the different corporate units impacted by SAP’s accounting processes.
• Ensure a max. level of customer satisfaction of those who use CFR’s accounting and reporting services and build good business relations to CFR’s customers.
• Identify and drive CFR’s accounting digitalization initiatives in accounting– support implementation of SAP technology and co-innovate with product engineering.
• Customer interaction: present SAP-runs-SAP use cases in accounting and reporting and engage with customers/user groups.

ADDITIONAL, as eventually required or where applicable

• Support projects that impact accounting and financial reporting. Proactively participate in the design of new business models, global policies and processes.
• Strive for accounting process standardization & digitalization of processes.
• Support SAP’s Best Run GFA initiative, drive transformation within the organization.

What you bring

• 8+ years functional accounting experience in a company or in an audit firm
• Experience in both is a plus
• Accounting experience in an IT or tech-company as an auditor or accountant
• Experience in accounting in a company with a U.S. public listing is a plus
• At least 4 years of people management experience with proven leadership excellence track-record
• Very strong and broad IFRS technical accounting knowledge – knowledge in US-GAAP and German GAP (HGB) is a plus.
• Strong experience in accounting policy setting, policy writing and documentation, experience in leading an accounting-CoE.
• Ability to sync accounting policy with (digital) finance processes and IT accounting systems (ERP, analytics, etc.)
• Experience in interacting with senior leadership and at an executive level.
• Strong people focus; excellent people leadership skills – proven track record of strong leadership/leadership trust.
• Very strong interpersonal and excellent communication skills.
• Ability to anticipate and manage change in a fast-paced environment, experience in change management processes; (agile) project management/agile leadership and organizational development skills are a plus.
• Good understanding of SaaS business models and typical accounting focus areas in the software/SaaS industry
• Influencing skills at executive levels.
• Excellent English language skills – German language skills is a plus