Senior Finance Manager - Global Process & Operations in London

Music is Universal

It’s the passionate and dedicated team at Universal Music who help make us the world’s leading music company. From A&R to finance, legal to digital, sales to marketing, Universal Music is the place to grow and develop your career within a truly commercial and innovative business that leads in everything it does.

Everyone is welcome to apply for our roles, and we are determined to ensure that no applicant or employee receives less favourable treatment because of gender, race, disability, sexual orientation, religion, belief, age, marital status, background, pregnancy, or caring responsibilities. We also recognise the importance of diversity of thought within our teams and are fully committed to embracing the talents of people with autism, dyslexia, ADHD, and other forms of neurocognitive variation.

We will always seek to make appropriate adjustments to recruitment, workplaces, and work processes to be fully inclusive to people with different needs and working styles. If you need us to make any reasonable adjustments for you from application onwards, including alternatives to the online form or to disclose a neurocognitive condition, please email UniversalMusicCareers@umusic.com.

We are looking for an experienced finance professional to join our Global Finance Operations team.

This is a key role in a global finance organisation, with ownership of finance and royalty-related processes across accounting, reporting, process governance, and continuous improvement. The role requires a strong accounting foundation, solid business understanding, and the ability to drive initiatives across functions, countries, and systems.

Our team acts as global process owners for finance and royalty processes, including accounting and reporting to the group's Corporate Finance team. We work closely with local finance teams, Corporate Finance, IT, solution architects, business stakeholders, and external partners to ensure that our processes are robust, compliant, efficient, and scalable.

The company currently operates on SAP ECC, with Analysis for Office, BlackLine, and Hyperion HFM integrations. Experience from ERP transformation or transition projects would be highly valuable.

The Role

In this role, you will be responsible for maintaining, improving, and developing global finance processes with a particular focus on accounting, royalty-related processes, reporting, and finance process governance.

This role could be an excellent next step for a qualified accountant, management accountant, financial accountant or finance professional who has developed a strong understanding of end-to-end accounting processes and is looking to move into a broader finance operations role.

You do not need to come from a project management or dedicated process transformation background. We are primarily looking for someone with strong accounting knowledge who understands how finance works in practice and is interested in using that expertise to improve processes, systems, controls and ways of working across a global organisation.

You may currently be working in management accounting, financial accounting, controlling, finance operations or a similar role and have gained exposure to process improvement, systems changes or cross-functional projects alongside your core finance responsibilities.

Key Responsibilities

• Act as global process owner for selected finance and royalty-related processes.

• Ensure that processes support accurate accounting, reporting, compliance, and operational efficiency.

• Maintain and develop process documentation, accounting logic, controls, and reporting requirements.

• Drive finance process improvement initiatives across countries, functions, and systems.

• Translate finance and business requirements into clear process and system requirements.

• Work closely with IT solution architects and other technical stakeholders to define business needs, test solutions, and support implementation.

• Identify process gaps, risks, dependencies, and improvement opportunities.

• Participate in projects related to finance systems, ERP changes, process standardization, automation, and reporting improvements.

• Communicate expectations, decisions, timelines, and responsibilities clearly across stakeholders.

• Contribute to building a modern, scalable, and well-controlled finance process landscape.

Skills and Experience Required

Must Have

• ACA, ACCA or CIMA qualified, with relevant post-qualification experience in accounting, finance operations, financial control or a related finance role.
• Solid understanding of financial reporting processes, including record to report.

• Experience working in an international or global organization.
• Ability to drive initiatives, manage stakeholders, and move topics forward independently.

• Structured and project-minded approach to problem-solving and execution.

• Ability to translate finance requirements into process and system requirements.

Nice to Have

• Experience from ERP transition, ERP implementation, or finance transformation projects.
• Experience with royalty accounting, intercompany processes, revenue-related processes, or complex financial flows.
• Experience with process documentation, controls, governance, and change management.

• Familiarity with analytical tools, BI/reporting solutions, workflow tools, or finance automation platforms.

Key Behaviours

• Strong sense of ownership and accountability.

• Curious and analytical, with the ability to understand both details and the broader process landscape.

• Confident in expressing expectations and challenging stakeholders constructively.

• Able to build trust and collaborate across cultures, functions, and seniority levels.

• Comfortable working with complexity, legacy processes, and incomplete documentation.

• Pragmatic, solution-oriented, and persistent.

• Able to balance operational stability with continuous improvement.

Just So You Know…

The company presents this job description as a guide to the major areas and duties for which the jobholder is accountable. However, the business operates in an environment that demands change and the jobholder's specific responsibilities and activities will vary and develop. Therefore, the job description should be seen as indicative and not as a permanent, definitive, and exhaustive statement.

Job Category:

Finance & Accounting