Director Group Accounting - Audit & Tax

Role overview 

Numa is a tech-enabled hospitality operator running roughly 150 active properties across multiple European markets and several brands, with two young business lines in Franchise and M&A. Behind that sits a genuinely complex financial structure: a large number of legal entities, spread across countries, cities and tax jurisdictions, each with its own statutory, audit and filing obligations — and each feeding one consolidated set of group numbers. 

Our day-to-day accounting and controlling is delivered by a dedicated outsourced partner. Tax and statutory work is supported by local advisors in each market, coordinated with our in-house tax function. Numa is scaling faster than any of those structures were originally designed for. 

This role is the group-level integrator. It is accountable for pulling a fragmented, multi-jurisdictional reporting landscape into one coherent, defensible, on-time set of group numbers — closed monthly, audited annually, filed correctly in every jurisdiction, and reconciled to the tax position everywhere. 

It is not the deepest technical specialist in any single domain: we have a strong in-house tax function for tax substance, and local advisors for local specifics. What this role must do is understand audit and tax well enough to lead them — to challenge a position, to spot the risk before the auditor does, to know when an advisor is wrong, and to hold a group-wide process together across a dozen moving parts and several time zones of stakeholders. 

The role leads a growing team and, over time, builds out Numa’s internal audit and assurance capability — the function that keeps quality high across our outsourced accounting model. 

Key responsibilities 

Group close and consolidation 

• Own the group close: the monthly, quarterly and annual cycle across all entities, delivered to a fixed calendar that management, the board and our lenders can rely on 
• Own the consolidated financial statements, including consolidation logic, intercompany elimination, purchase accounting for acquisitions, and the group-level judgements behind them • Ensure the group view and the local views reconcile — with a documented bridge from local statutory accounts to group in every jurisdiction 
• Drive close timeliness and quality down through the outsourced partner, the regional accountants and the advisors, rather than absorbing their delays at group level 

Statutory reporting and audit

• Own the annual statutory financial statements for every Numa entity across all jurisdictions: scope, timeline, preparer, reviewer, filing deadline and evidence — one integrated plan rather than a dozen local scrambles 
• Lead the group audit end to end: planning, materiality discussion, PBC management, technical positions, auditor relationship and issue resolution 
• Agree material judgements with the auditor early — lease and IFRS 16 treatment across our Fixed, Variable, Hybrid and HMA structures, revenue recognition by channel, capitalisation, impairment, going concern — and document them before year-end, not during it 
• Own closure of audit findings and management letter points across the group, tracked to completion • Raise Numa’s audit readiness from an annual effort to a continuous state 

Tax coordination at group level 

• Partner closely with the in-house tax function: this role does not replace tax expertise, it makes tax execution work across the group 
• Own the group-level compliance map: every entity, every jurisdiction, every obligation — corporate income tax, VAT and indirect taxes, city and tourist tax, payroll tax, transfer pricing documentation and local filings — with owners and deadlines visible in one place 
• Ensure statutory accounts and tax positions reconcile, and that the accounting record supports the tax filings it feeds 
• Coordinate the accounting and tax workstreams for structural change: new markets, new entities, new lease and franchise structures, acquisitions and restructurings — early enough to influence them 
• Manage tax audits and authority enquiries operationally, together with the tax function and local advisors 

Provider, advisor and stakeholder governance 

• Act as Numa’s senior counterpart to our outsourced accounting and controlling partner: quality standards, delivery expectations, escalation, and a working relationship that is cooperative but unambiguous about what good looks like 
• Manage the network of local accounting, audit and tax advisors: scope, fees, quality and deadlines — and consolidate where fragmentation is costing us more than it delivers 
• Give the partner and the advisors the business context they need to book and report what actually happened commercially 

Standards, controls and internal audit 

• Lead the Senior Manager Internal Audit (Group Accounting) and build out the assurance capability around that role as the portfolio grows 
• Own the group accounting manual as the binding reference for how material transactions are treated everywhere, and sign off the technical positions in it 
• Own the internal control framework for accounting and reporting: reconciliation standards, balance-sheet substantiation, month-end checklists, and a genuine segregation of duties between Numa and the outsourced partner 
• Run a findings and remediation pipeline that gives the CFO an honest, current picture of accounting and tax risk — and closes it 

Leadership 

• Lead, develop and grow the team: tax accounting and compliance, audit, regional accounting, coordination and internal audit 
• Build the assurance function deliberately — define what capability Numa needs in-house versus what stays with the partner and the advisors, and hire against it 
• Create clarity in a structure with many external dependencies: who owns what, by when, to what standard 
• Act as the CFO’s technical deputy on accounting, audit and tax matters with auditors, lenders, advisors and the board

Cross-functional 

• Work with FP&A so that actuals, forecast and reporting rest on the same defined numbers • Support Corporate Finance and Treasury with reliable, audit-proof data for lender reporting, covenant calculations and financing processes 
• Support M&A and Franchise with accounting and tax structuring input, due diligence and post-deal integration of the finance record 
• Work with Legal on entity governance: incorporations, liquidations, filings and corporate housekeeping across the group 

What success looks like 

First 90 days 

• A complete, current map of the group: every entity, its statutory and tax obligations, deadlines, responsible party and current status — the single view we do not have in one place today • A clear-eyed assessment of where our reporting is reliable and where it is not, shared honestly with the CFO 
• The team stabilised after the handover, with responsibilities and interfaces clarified • A plan for the next audit cycle that starts before year-end rather than after it 

First 12 months 

• A group close delivered reliably to calendar, with quality that survives review • All statutory accounts filed on time across all jurisdictions, with no late filings and no surprises • An audit run on a prepared basis, with no significant findings and prior-year points closed • A documented group accounting manual in active use by the outsourced partner and the regional teams 
• An internal audit and assurance function that is demonstrably lifting the quality of what the partner delivers 

How the role is measured 

• Group close timeliness and the number of post-close adjustments 
• Statutory filing compliance: on-time rate across all entities and jurisdictions, and any penalties incurred 
• Audit outcome: findings raised, findings closed, and how much of the audit was prepared in advance • Tax compliance completeness across the group and the outcome of any authority enquiries • Error and rework rate in the accounting record, and the trend in it 
• Advisor and provider cost against delivered quality 
• Team stability, capability growth and successful build-out of the assurance function 

Your profile 

We are looking for a group-level operator with real technical credibility — someone who has held a complex, multi-jurisdiction reporting landscape together before and knows that the difficulty lies in the coordination, not only in the technique. 

Essential 

• A professional accounting qualification — Wirtschaftsprüfer, Steuerberater, ACA / ACCA, CPA, RA or equivalent 
• 8+ years of relevant experience, including an audit background (Big 4 or comparable) and subsequent in-house group accounting, audit or reporting leadership 
• Proven ownership of consolidation and group financial statements in a multi-entity, multi-country group
• Hands-on experience running statutory reporting and audit across many jurisdictions in parallel — the operational discipline of a group audit plan is central to this role 
• A strong working command of international tax — corporate tax, VAT and indirect taxes, transfer pricing mechanics — sufficient to coordinate, challenge and integrate, without needing to be the deepest tax specialist in the room 
• Demonstrated experience managing outsourced accounting providers or shared service centres, and a network of external advisors, to a defined quality standard 
• People leadership experience: leading a small distributed finance team and building capability, not only managing throughput 
• The coordination instinct this role lives on: comfortable holding twenty deadlines across twelve entities and six advisors in one plan, and chasing them without becoming a bottleneck • Credibility with auditors, advisors and authorities, and the composure to hold a position under pressure 
• ERP fluency and the ability to interrogate data directly rather than requesting a report • Fluent English (our working language) and willingness to travel across our markets and to our accounting partner 

Nice to have 

• Hospitality, real estate, retail or another multi-site, asset-heavy operating environment • IFRS 16 and lease accounting depth across varied lease structures 
• German (HGB), Dutch and/or UK GAAP knowledge 
• Experience in a VC- or PE-backed company through rapid scaling, and with institutional-grade reporting standards 
• M&A accounting: due diligence, purchase price allocation, post-merger integration of the finance record 
• Experience building an internal audit or assurance function from a standing start • Additional European languages 

What this role is not 

• Not the in-house tax specialist. Tax substance sits with our tax function and our advisors. You coordinate, integrate and challenge — you do not need to write the transfer pricing study yourself. • Not FP&A. You do not own the forecast, the budget or the board pack. You own the actuals they are built on. 
• Not a pure technical accounting role. Roughly half of this job is coordination, stakeholder management and leadership across external parties. If you want to sit in the standards, this is the wrong seat. 
• Not a role that takes the bookkeeping in-house. The outsourced model stays. Your job is to make it deliver at the quality Numa needs. 

Why this is a good seat 

• Full group ownership: consolidation, statutory reporting, audit and tax coordination across every market we operate in, reporting directly to the CFO 
• A growing team and an explicit mandate to build out the assurance function — you design the target organisation, not inherit it 
• Unusual technical variety: four brands, four lease structures, multiple jurisdictions, and two new business lines in Franchise and M&A 
• A company at the point where reporting quality becomes a genuine strategic asset — and visible support from the CFO to get it there