My client is a leading US Top 50 and Global 50 law firm, with offices across the United States, Europe and Asia. They advise multinational companies on public/private enterprises and help emerging companies grow, from critical regulatory and compliance matters to deals, transactions and high-stakes litigation.
They are recruiting for a Senior Finance Manager for their City of London office. Are you an experienced finance leader ready to step into a genuinely international role? This is an exciting opportunity to join one of the world’s leading global law firms as their Senior Finance Manager, overseeing the firm’s non-US accounting and compliance operations across multiple jurisdictions.
In this role, you will play a critical part in shaping the firm’s financial integrity, leading a team of six skilled accountants based across 3 jurisdictions. You’ll work directly with senior stakeholders including the Director of Accounting, US Finance leadership and Office Chairs across Europe and Asia ensuring robust financial reporting, strong controls, and streamlined compliance in a highly dynamic global environment.
Responsibilities
- Lead and develop a global team of six accountants across the US, UK, and Paris, providing coaching, oversight, and structured opportunities for growth.
- Project manages the team and external consultants to ensure timely compliance with local statutory accounts filings, VAT, income tax, and audit obligations.
- Supervise the preparation of Financial Statements ensuring compliance with the relevant financial reporting standards (e.g. UK GAAP, tax cash basis). Ensure excellence and standardisation of processes across jurisdictions and teams.
- Review financial statement audit support for accuracy and completeness.
- Review VAT filings in local jurisdictions and drive improved processes and controls.
- Manage relationships with external auditors and accounting services firms, ensuring responsive communication, efficient work, and high-quality deliverables.
- Partner with the UK Finance Director, Partners and Office Chairs on monthly office reporting and ad hoc requests.
- Maintain strong monthly close processes, including expense coding review, balance sheet reconciliations, reconciliations between different accounting books and currencies.
- Ensure compliance with SARs and Money Laundering Regulations and manage annual SARs audit, liaising with the auditors and the office’s Compliance partner as needed.
- Develop and mentor team members, foster technical excellence, strong management capability, and opportunities for stretch assignments.
- Collaborate with the Director of Accounting to identify and implement processes and control improvements across finance operations.
- Monitor and interpret regulatory changes (e.g., VAT, e-invoicing, GAAP, SARs), ensuring timely adoption and compliance.
- Oversee additional statutory reporting obligations, including Surveys, PSA returns, and collaborator payments.
- Provide training and onboarding support for new team members.
Candidate Profile
- Deep knowledge of a GAAP accounting framework (e.g. UK GAAP, IFRS, US GAAP).
- Excellent knowledge of UK VAT return preparation and filing processes.
- Awareness of income tax and payroll tax considerations across multiple jurisdictions.
- Exceptional organizational skills with the ability to deliver high-quality output independently.
- Strong interpersonal and team-building skills; ability to collaborate effectively with staff at all levels.
- Self-starter: ability to back into solutions, finding the solution and passing that knowledge to the team.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills with the ability to convey complex information clearly and diplomatically.
- High level of customer service in a fast-paced environment.
- Ability to manage high volumes of work while maintaining accuracy and strong attention to detail.
- Proficiency in MS Office. Strong knowledge of Excel preferred.
- Preferable: knowledge of the Solicitors Accounts Rules.
- Chartered Accountant qualification (e.g. ACA) or similar technical accountancy certification.
- 10+ years’ experience working in accountancy, with at least two years managing accountants.
- Experience in both audit/accountancy practice and in-house accounting, preferably within a professional service environment.
- Preferable: experience with LLP accounting (ideally Law Firms).
- Nice to have experience with accounting software ‘Aderant’ and Accounts Payable software ‘Chrome River’.
Important Notice
It is Career Legal’s policy, as a matter of courtesy, to respond to all applications within three working days. However, because of the volume of applications, we are sometimes unable to respond to individual candidates. If we have not contacted you within three working days your application has been unsuccessful, and your details have not been retained. Please apply for any other position that you may see in the future. Thank you.
Career Legal is a Recruitment Agency and is advertising this vacancy on behalf of one of its clients.
