Finance Systems Analyst

Short company description

Peter Lang is an international publishing group specialising in Humanities and Social Sciences. We publish about 1,000+ books every year in German, English, and French, as well as in multiple other languages, from traditional print products to eBooks and Open Access publications.

Back in 1970, the Swiss entrepreneur and philanthropist Peter Lang founded his academic publishing company in his own name. In over fifty years since then, the company has undergone growth and change and overcome many challenges as an independent, internationally focused business. We are now a dynamic, entrepreneurial group of colleagues working across the globe to deliver excellence in academic publishing.

You will experience an international work environment with lean management. The Peter Lang headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, are the central hub for management and administration. The rest of our team is based in continental Europe, Anglo-American regions, and Asia with offices in Berlin, New York, Oxford, Brussels, Chennai and supporting locations in Vienna, Warsaw, Istanbul and Madrid.

Requirements

You are a finance professional who speaks the language of both accounting and technology? We are looking for a Finance Systems Analyst. This is an in-house role for someone with a solid understanding of accounting who enjoys looking at end-to-end processes across departments and using IT solutions to automate workflows, reduce manual effort, and make sure our financial data is accurate, auditable, and actionable.

Our accounting team runs the monthly close. This role is about why the close is harder than it should be. You will find the causes and fix them for good or develop solutions that make accounting and finance work better for everyone involved, from the accountant to the CEO to the clients who deal with our accounting team.

Many of the problems we are facing have a technical cause or solution, so you will work closely with IT and our software partners. You don''t need to be a developer. You need to know what the numbers should look like, explain exactly what the system has to do to someone without an accounting background, and check that what is delivered actually works for accounting. You don''t shy away from big datasets, and you can tell a process problem from a posting problem.

- At least 3 years in accounting, audit, controlling or finance/ERP consulting, ideally in a multi-entity or international environment. Big Four backgrounds welcome
- Solid knowledge of accounting processes: accounts payable and receivable, reconciliations, month-end and year-end close, reporting
- Experience explaining financial requirements to technical people and technical constraints to finance people
- Strong analytical skills with the ability to interrogate complex datasets and draw actionable conclusions
- Advanced Excel; comfortable with large data extracts and pivot-based analysis
- You take ownership of a problem and follow it through until it is solved, also when several teams are involved
- Comfortable operating in a cross-functional environment
- Fluent English; comfortable with both accounting and IT terminology

Desired (nice-to-have) Qualifications & Skills

- Experience in a process improvement, ERP implementation, system migration or automation project working between accounting and IT
- Hands-on experience with SAP FI/CO (posting logic, master data, cost centers) or another ERP or accounting system
- A qualification such as ACA, ACCA, CIMA, German: Bilanzbuchhalter or Fachausweis Finanz- und Rechnungswesen, WP/StB exams in progress, or equivalent experience
- Power Query, Power BI or SQL; experience building financial reports and dashboards
- Automation tools such as Microsoft Power Automate, or AI tools used for finance data
- Experience working in a FinTech or finance-adjacent tech environment
- Experience in publishing, media or rights management

Responsibilities

Systems and ERP
- Be the main link between the Finance & Accounting (F&A) team and IT: translate finance requirements into clear technical specifications, test what IT and our partners deliver, and check that it still works at month-end after handover
- Own the finance and accounting requirements: record-to-report, order-to-cash, procure-to-pay, royalties, intercompany, multi-entity and multi-currency, VAT
- Support and validate the move to new systems, so that processes keep running and data stays complete and correct during the transition
- Define the chart of accounts, cost center and master data design, and the approach for data migration and reconciliation in cooperation with the F&A team
- Lead process and systems projects from start to finish: scope, requirements, stakeholder alignment, timeline, testing and go-live
- Evaluate technology and vendor solutions, and recommend them where they bring a measurable benefit

Automation and reporting

- Design, build and maintain automated workflows and reports with the IT team, to replace manual Excel work
- Support the monthly management reporting and budget structure across our entities
- Give senior management structured analysis to support decisions

Processes and internal controls

- Analyze existing F&A processes and find where they can be automated, simplified or made less risky
- Build an internal control system (ICS) for the key finance processes: clear ownership, reconciliation routines and controls that catch problems before the close
- Write and maintain process documentation, so that processes are auditable, consistent and work as the group grows

Data quality and reconciliation

- Trace data and reconciliation differences to their cause (posting logic, master data, a failed interface or a genuine open item) and fix the cause, not only the symptom
- Identify and reduce financial risks such as incorrect payments, data inconsistencies and process failures

Other info

Location: remote, CET time zone  
Employment rate: 100%  

If you thrive at the intersection of finance, data, and process improvement, we invite you to apply. Join us in shaping the future of academic publishing! 

Benefits

• Laptop