Strategic Finance Manager

About the Role
We are looking for a Strategic Finance Manager to own planning, forecasting, and performance insight across the business. You'll serve as the finance partner that leadership relies on to turn data into decisions: shaping budgets, modeling growth scenarios, and applying commercial rigor to every major decision we make. This high-visibility role involves direct collaboration with the founders, executive team, and department heads, making it ideal for someone eager to build and innovate rather than just maintain.

What You’ll Do
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 the plan.
• Own headcount and manpower planning, partnering with People and department heads to maintain hiring plans, forecast employee costs, and assess headcount against the 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 modeling for new products, regulatory initiatives, and geographic expansion.
• Support financial modeling 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.
• Analyze 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 behavior, 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 modeling, 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 modeling skills (three-statement, scenario, and unit economics) and advanced Excel/Google Sheets proficiency.
• Proven ability to present to senior leadership and board-level stakeholders.
• Strong commercial judgment: 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.

Why You Should Join

• Hybrid work environment.
• Work directly with senior leadership in one of the region’s fastest-growing start-ups; you will get exposure to all functions and the chance to learn from the very best in the space!
• Generous equity compensation; this aims to bring a high degree of ownership into your work. As we grow, you grow with us!
• Budget for learning and development; we want all our employees to constantly strive for personal and professional growth.
• Best-in-class end-of-service savings scheme through DIFC-sponsored DEWS program.
• Off-sites and regular team events.

We maintain a high-performance culture where the bar is always rising. We bring on brilliant, ambitious, and curious people who recognize the value in our mission and want to grow with us.