Our client is a global leader and highly regarded business within the pharmaceutical sector based out of Dublin. They are hugely progressive and fast-growing in an exciting sector in the Irish market and are looking to hire an Associate Director to take ownership of financial aspects of the of global Inventory Management. This is a hugely exciting senior role in the business where you would have influence over a highly integrated driver of their business and would require a strong leader who can manage multiple senior stakeholders.

The Role

The Associate Director, Inventory Management will be sitting in the corporate global headquarters based in central Dublin, reporting to the Director of Finance, and will be responsible for the global oversight and accountability for inventory flowing through the organisation, including the execution of monthly close accounting, analysis, inventory reconciliation and controlling procedures for global inventory. This would suit a strong finance leader and business partner and will require heavy collaboration and communication skills as it will be a key link between Supply Operations and business unit finance and commercial leaders. Due to the evolving nature of the system design and the operations processes impacting inventory, the role requires strong leadership and problem-solving capabilities as well.

This exciting Associate Director role will be responsible specifically for:

• Business partnering, communication, and collaboration cross functional to ensure delivery of a robust global inventory management function
• Acting as the finance lead on cross functional project initiatives throughout the organization
• Management, support and career development of direct reports within the function
• Implementing formal procedures and continuously reviewing to identify potential risk within the inventory control environment
• Designing and implementing risk mitigation plans, where appropriate, to ensure a robust control environment
• Ensuring escalation and management review of any potential material control risks
• Leading annual review of Inventory SOX controls including the identification and implementation of any improvements to SOX control design, documentation and/or execution
• Assessing impacts of any business, finance, or system process changes to the inventory control environment and implement appropriate mitigation plans
• Leading the annual development of standard costs for the global businesses, ensuring accuracy and completeness as well as timeliness of the control execution
• Supporting the forecasting of inventory-related portion of working capital
• Managing month-end financial close process for inventory and related items, ensuring that financial statements are in compliance with US GAAP
• Implementing balance sheet reporting and review, ensuring timely resolution of open items
• Assessing and managing of Purchase Price and Production Variances, including root cause identification and remediation
• Responsible for driving the collaboration with business units to ensure financial entries related to inventory valuation are correctly recorded
• Accountability for inventory reconciliations with external and internal CMOs
• Driving the transfer of all inventory reserve calculations to the Inventory team and manage these entries on an ongoing basis

The Person

In order to be considered for this progressive and cross-functional Associate Director role, you will be a qualified accountant (ACA, ACCA or CIMA) with extensive experience taking ownership of you area of finance, ideally within inventory, and have a deep background from a similarly structure blue-chip organisations with a focus on high quality supply chain and inventory management.

Specific requirements for the successful candidate would include:

• You will be qualified (ACA, ACCA, CIMA) and have approx. 8+ years' of specific experience within finance holding overall responsibility for your function
• Working knowledge of global inventory management and standard costing
• Demonstrable knowledge and experience in managing risk and in taking ownership and accountability for performance and improvements
• Experience in financial reporting and in particular sound working knowledge of US GAAP and SOX compliance
• Advance working knowledge of SAP and/or JD Edwards, or one of the other mainstream ERP systems
• You will have excellent communications skills and evidence of co-ordinating multiple stakeholders to achieve results
• Experience managing teams as well as influencing stakeholders across different functional areas
• Strong business partnering experience across multiple regions
• You would ideally have a depth of experience from within the pharmaceutical, medical devices or FMCG sector
• Must be able to deal with ambiguity and handle multiple tasks/priorities

The Benefits

• Progressive Associate Director permanent opportunity in a leading multinational based out of central Dublin
• Huge potential to build and develop your career in a blue-chip environment
• Very competitive salary and package
• Opportunity to work in a true market leader and influence the direction of an integral function within their business

To discover more about this opportunity, apply now or contact Paul Lanigan at HRM on +353 1 632 1826 for a confidential discussion.