Global Direct Tax Transformation Tax Lead

Job Description:

The Mars Global Direct Tax Transformation Tax Lead is responsible for defining and leading the enterprise direct tax strategy, operating model, data architecture, and technology requirements within a global SAP S/4HANA transformation program. The role serves as the senior Tax representative for US GAAP tax reporting, tax provision, corporate income tax compliance, and local non-US tax reporting requirements.

This role partners with Global Tax, Regional and Country Tax teams, Finance, Controllership, Data and Analytics, and IT to ensure that SAP S/4HANA, Central Finance (CFIN), enterprise data lake capabilities, and supporting tax technologies provide complete, accurate, and tax-ready financial data. The lead establishes the global design principles, controls, governance, and analytical capabilities needed to improve tax reporting, compliance, forecasting, audit readiness, and access to legal-entity-level data.

What are we Looking For?

• 10+ years of experience in direct tax, tax accounting, tax compliance, tax technology, or tax transformation.
• Significant leadership experience within a multinational corporation, major consulting organization, or Big Four environment.
• Deep knowledge of US GAAP income tax accounting, including ASC 740 tax provision requirements.
• Strong understanding of current and deferred tax, effective tax rate reconciliation, uncertain tax positions, tax account rollforwards, and financial statement disclosures.
• Experience with local non-US corporate income tax compliance and country-specific tax reporting requirements.
• Demonstrated ability to translate global and local direct tax requirements into finance, data, technology, and control designs.
• Experience leading direct tax workstreams within SAP S/4HANA or comparable global ERP transformation programs.
• Strong understanding of SAP S/4HANA Finance, including the Universal Journal, ledgers, company codes, charts of accounts, profit centers, cost centers, and intercompany data.
• Practical experience with SAP Central Finance and the use of CFIN to harmonize data from SAP and non-SAP systems.
• Experience defining enterprise data lake requirements, tax data models, data products, data lineage, and data quality controls.
• Experience working with large and complex financial datasets across multiple ERP systems, legal entities, ledgers, currencies, and jurisdictions.
• Experience designing tax reporting and analytical solutions using SAP Analytics Cloud, Databricks, Alteryx, or comparable technologies.
• Understanding of data integration, transformation, mapping, reconciliation, and reporting architectures.
• Experience with tax provision, tax compliance, tax reporting, or tax data management platforms.
• Strong knowledge of Record-to-Report, financial close, consolidation, intercompany accounting, statutory reporting, and legal entity reporting processes.
• Experience defining and operating tax controls within a SOX or comparable internal-control environment.
• Proven success leading global requirements gathering, solution design, testing, deployment, and stabilization activities.
• Ability to balance global template standardization with legitimate local tax compliance requirements.
• Strong governance, program management, risk management, and executive communication capabilities.
• Demonstrated ability to influence senior Tax, Finance, Data, and IT stakeholders without relying solely on direct authority.
• Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, Finance, Tax, Information Systems, Data Analytics, or a related discipline.
• CPA, CA, ACA, ACCA, MST, JD, MBA, or equivalent advanced qualification preferred.

What are the Key Responsibilities?

• Lead the global direct tax transformation workstream for the SAP S/4HANA program.
• Define the direct tax transformation strategy, roadmap, operating model, and global design principles.
• Represent Global Direct Tax in SAP S/4HANA, CFIN, data lake, finance architecture, and enterprise data governance decisions.
• Define requirements for US GAAP tax provision, tax accounting, effective tax rate analysis, and tax-related financial statement disclosures.
• Define financial data and reporting requirements for local non-US corporate income tax compliance, tax returns, and supporting schedules.
• Translate direct tax policies and reporting requirements into business, data, process, system, and control requirements.
• Define tax data requirements at the legal entity, company code, ledger, account, profit center, cost center, business unit, jurisdiction, and transaction levels.
• Ensure tax-relevant data is consistently captured, retained, mapped, reconciled, and made available from SAP S/4HANA and legacy systems.
• Define the role of CFIN in consolidating and harmonizing tax-relevant financial data from SAP and non-SAP source systems.
• Partner with enterprise data teams to design tax data products, data models, and data pipelines within the enterprise data lake.
• Define requirements for tax reporting, dashboards, forecasting, and analytics using tools such as SAP Analytics Cloud, Databricks, and Alteryx.
• Partner with Finance and Controllership on chart of accounts, Universal Journal, ledger, intercompany, legal entity, and financial reporting design decisions.
• Establish requirements for book-to-tax adjustments, permanent and temporary differences, tax basis data, deferred taxes, and return-to-provision processes.
• Partner with Transfer Pricing, Statutory Reporting, Indirect Tax, Treasury, and Legal Entity teams to manage cross-functional direct tax dependencies.
• Define direct tax controls covering data completeness, data quality, reconciliation, adjustment approval, reporting, and audit evidence.
• Lead global and regional requirements workshops, fit-to-standard assessments, solution reviews, and design governance.
• Evaluate country requirements and determine whether they should be addressed through the global template, regional solutions, data products, or controlled local processes.
• Own direct tax testing strategy, business acceptance criteria, defect prioritization, and readiness sign-off.
• Provide leadership for tax data conversion, historical data access, cutover, deployment, hypercare, and post-go-live stabilization.
• Manage direct tax risks, issues, dependencies, decisions, and escalations across the transformation program.
• Provide executive-level reporting on direct tax readiness, solution gaps, risks, decisions, and expected business value.
• Drive process standardization, automation, and continuous improvement across global direct tax operations.

Key Deliverables

• Global direct tax transformation strategy, roadmap, and target operating model.
• Direct tax design principles and requirements for the SAP S/4HANA global template.
• Global requirements for US GAAP tax provision and tax accounting.
• Country and regional requirements framework for local non-US income tax compliance reporting.
• Direct tax process designs covering tax provision, compliance, forecasting, audit support, and return-to-provision.
• Tax data architecture spanning SAP S/4HANA, CFIN, the enterprise data lake, and downstream tax applications.
• Tax data model and data dictionary defining required fields, attributes, hierarchies, ownership, and lineage.
• CFIN requirements for harmonization, replication, mapping, reconciliation, and access to tax-relevant financial data.
• Legal-entity-level reporting requirements, including account, ledger, jurisdiction, profit center, cost center, intercompany, and transactional detail.
• Tax data lake requirements and reusable direct tax data products.
• Reporting and analytics requirements for SAP Analytics Cloud, Databricks, Alteryx, or comparable platforms.
• Requirements for book-to-tax adjustments, permanent and temporary differences, current and deferred tax, and tax provision calculations.
• Requirements for return-to-provision, effective tax rate reconciliation, tax account rollforwards, and tax forecasting.
• Country compliance reporting requirements and standardized data extracts supporting local non-US tax returns.
• Tax reporting dashboards for provision status, compliance readiness, data quality, reconciliation, and risk monitoring.
• Global tax controls framework, including control objectives, evidence requirements, ownership, and monitoring procedures.
• Source-to-report data lineage and reconciliation documentation.
• Functional requirements, user stories, process flows, and solution design approvals.
• Direct tax testing strategy, end-to-end scenarios, test scripts, expected results, and acceptance criteria.
• UAT execution results, defect tracking, remediation decisions, and business sign-offs.
• Historical data, data retention, and audit-access requirements.
• Deployment readiness assessments, cutover plans, and country go-live approvals.
• Training materials, standard operating procedures, and knowledge-transfer documentation.
• Post-go-live support model, stabilization plan, and continuous-improvement backlog.
• Executive reporting covering delivery status, design decisions, risks, dependencies, resource needs, and value realization.
• Preferred SAP S/4HANA Transformation Experience:
  • Led a global direct tax transformation workstream within a multi-country SAP S/4HANA program.
  • Designed a tax data architecture incorporating SAP S/4HANA, CFIN, an enterprise data lake, and downstream tax applications.
  • Established standardized tax data products that can be reused for provision, compliance, forecasting, audit, and analytics.
  • Implemented legal-entity-level reporting and drill-down capabilities from consolidated balances to source transactions.
  • Developed automated data pipelines and transformations using Databricks, Alteryx, or comparable tools.
  • Designed executive and operational tax dashboards using SAP Analytics Cloud or similar business intelligence platforms.
  • Implemented automated book-to-tax, return-to-provision, tax account reconciliation, or tax forecasting capabilities.
  • Defined mechanisms to support local non-US compliance without creating unnecessary customizations in the SAP global template.
  • Established tax data governance covering ownership, definitions, mappings, lineage, quality, security, access, and retention.
  • Led end-to-end testing across SAP S/4HANA, CFIN, the data lake, analytical tools, and tax reporting applications.
  • Managed tax dependencies across Finance GPOs, Controllership, Transfer Pricing, Statutory Reporting, Treasury, Data, and IT teams.
  • Supported deployment waves, cutover, historical data access, hypercare, and continuous improvement across multiple countries.

What can you expect from Mars?

Work with diverse and talented Associates, all guided by the Five Principles. Join a purpose driven company, where we’re striving to build the world we want tomorrow, today. A strong focus on learning and development support from day one, including access to our in-house Mars University. An industry competitive salary and benefits package, including company bonus.

The base pay range for this position at commencement of employment is expected to be between the below range, however, base pay offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factors, including but not limited to, market location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. The total compensation package for this position may also include other elements, if eligible, including variable pay & general allowances (depending on the position and employee’s work schedule).  Subject to the terms and conditions of the applicable policies and plans then in effect, and depending on the position offered and the employee’s work schedule (i.e., part-time schedule), eligible employees are automatically enrolled in a 401(k) plan, are eligible to participate in Company-sponsored medical, dental, vision, and basic life insurance plans for the employee and the employee’s eligible dependents and may be eligible to take up to 18 weeks of paid parental leave. Employees will also receive the following paid-time off (which may be prorated based on start date and the employee’s work schedule): 120 hours of vacation per year, paid sick time for eligible Associates of 100% pay continuation for a maximum of 40 hours per calendar year, and 12 paid holidays (equal to 96 paid holiday hours) throughout the calendar year that include both fixed and flexible holidays.  

Base Salary Pay Range: $170,000 -  $220,000

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The base pay range for this position at commencement of employment is between the range listed below, however, base pay offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factors, including but not limited to job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. The total compensation package for this position will include variable pay, medical and dental benefits, participation in 401k plan, and paid time off benefits. Details of participation in these benefit plans will be provided if an applicant receives an offer of employment.

The pay range shown is applicable to all US locations listed within the job posting:USD 169,840.00 - USD 233,530.00