Finance Manager - Operations

About the role

A leading food manufacturer with sites across regional Victoria and a head office in Melbourne's CBD is hiring a Finance Manager for its operations. Reporting to the Senior Finance Manager, you will business partner with site operations, costing and commercial teams, working closely with site leadership and manufacturing teams. This is a 12-month fixed-term contract on a hybrid basis, with travel to the regional manufacturing sites.

Key responsibilities

• Analyse and report on manufacturing variances, including daily and weekly material usage variance (MUV), identify the drivers and feed results back to site
• Work with the costing team to review and update BOMs and improve costing accuracy
• Manage site P&L lines, including direct labour, R&M, fixed salaries, utilities, cleaning and testing
• Deliver weekly reporting and forecasts on a 4-4-5 calendar, including MUV, labour costs and the month-end outlook
• Lead month-end close tasks, including journals, ledger close and balance sheet reconciliations
• Prepare forecasts and budgets with site stakeholders, including presentation packs
• Work with continuous improvement teams to quantify savings and track them through the P&L
• Support business cases for capital projects and track their benefits after implementation
• Report on inventory balances and cycle count outcomes, ensuring accounting policies and controls are followed
• Streamline and standardise reporting to give the operations team better insights

Required profile

• CA or CPA qualified with 5+ years of manufacturing finance experience
• Manufacturing is essential; FMCG experience is a bonus
• Strong problem solver, comfortable with large data sets
• Confident business partner to site leadership and with manufacturing operations teams
• Available immediately or with a very short notice period

Required skills

• SAP experience preferred but not essential
• Manufacturing finance and costing

Travel to regional Victoria is required some months each year. Salary depends on candidate experience.