Senior Finance Manager at Climate Tech Startup (Remote | English)

🌍 Finance Manager at Climate Tech Startup (Remote | English)

Location: Fully Remote; All Southern African and Eastern European locations welcome
Employment Type: Full-Time employee, on an annual contract term, with option to renew
Languages Required: English proficiency is mandatory
Experience Required: Senior, with in-depth technical finance and tax expertise, and a minimum of 8 years of experience in a finance role
Salary Range: Market-related (by region), based on experience
Reports to: OET Board
Works Closely With: Head of People, Admin Team, and Board
Work Travel Requirements: None
Start Date Goal: 1 September 2026 (or sooner; notice-dependent)

🧭 About Us

We’re a remote-first, mission-driven, registered non-profit, comprising around 50 highly-skilled and motivated professionals from all around the world! Our culture is built on trust, autonomy, and collaborative professionalism.

We thrive in a fast-paced, distributed environment, where communication is clear, empathy is second nature, and each of us takes full ownership of our work. We work independently, but also collaborate easily when appropriate.

Open Energy Transition (OET) is a non-profit organization advancing the global energy transition by developing innovative open-source tools and data solutions for energy and grid planning.

Our vision is to make open approaches the global standard by 2030, enabling energy planning that is more accessible, transparent, and effective.

This shift is essential to better guide trillion dollar worth public and private investment toward affordable, sustainable, and secure energy systems. This is not a distant aspiration; our work is already being adopted by leading system operators, regulators, and philanthropic partners.

We are currently looking for an experienced Senior Finance Manager to support our entire team.

To learn more about OET and our team, you can visit our website, and browse around our Handbook.

🎯 About the Role

In this role, you'll be working closely with our People Team, Admin Team, and Board, supporting our general finance and accounting, controller, and business administration activities. The purpose of this role is to help ensure accurate financial operations, maintain compliance with German accounting requirements, support monthly payroll processes, work with our external vendors, review agreements, and support day-to-day bookkeeping and reporting.

Exciting activities include the transition to a new accounting system and ERP system and the setup of several improved internal controlling/ operation solutions.

You'll work closely with our Board for general finance-related matters, reporting, and forecasting, as well as with our Head of People for payroll and other admin.

The ideal candidate is comfortable working autonomously and fully remotely as part of a dedicated, distributed team, and enjoys building efficient, functional, scalable, and transferrable financial processes that support mission-driven work.

Important: The role requires someone with confidence in handling the responsibilities listed below autonomously and proactively, rather than seeking guidance and training.

This is a position that requires a high degree of discretion, attention-to-detail, self-management, professionalism, and confidentiality. Language proficiency in English is required, as this is our working language. Proficiency in German is a bonus, for communicating with certain external vendors, such as our tax consultants in Germany. 

We’re all about transparency, and want to give you the best possible opportunity to prepare for any potential interviews. To learn a bit more about the people you’ll be working most closely with, click here:

1. Our CEO, Max Parzen
2. Our Head of People, Quintin Coetzee
3. Our Admin Team
4. Our Board

🛠️ Your Key Responsibilities

• Proactively, autonomously, and confidently take ownership of the Finance function at OET
• Maintain accurate financial records, including bookkeeping, reconciliations, and transaction tracking
• Process invoices, expenses, and payments while ensuring proper documentation and compliance
• Support monthly, quarterly, and annual financial closing processes
• Assist with financial reporting and internal financial tracking
• Create and maintain project- and Department-specific budgets
• Support compliance with German accounting and tax requirements in collaboration with external tax advisors
• Process monthly payroll across our direct entity and employer of record services
• Collaborate with the People Department on relevant matters
• Support audits and financial documentation requests as needed
• Contribute to improving financial workflows and documentation within the organization
• Cash flow management
• Financial planning (FP&A)
• Risk management
• Fundraising support

✅ You’ll Be a Great Fit If You Are/Have...

• 8 years minimum experience in accounting, finance, controlling, and/or bookkeeping
• Strong understanding of accounting principles, and ability to collaborate with external tax advisors to ensure compliance with local requirements (this being Germany in our case)
• Experience with accounting software and financial management tools (e.g. Odoo, Datev)
• Experience working with financial data, formulate, etc., in Google Sheets and Excel
• Strong attention to detail and organizational skills
• Ability to manage financial records accurately in a remote work environment, including the use of cloud storage and sharing (while maintaining strict access control)
• Strong communication skills and ability to collaborate with cross-functional teams asynchronously
• Fluency in English (our main working language) is mandatory. German proficiency (used with some vendors) is a bonus.

💎 Bonus Points For

• Interest in open-source collaboration and/or the energy sector
• Prior work at a startup and/or in the energy sector
• Prior work as part of a fully-remote, distributed team
• Prior work on open-source projects
• Familiarity with donor-funded or non-profit environments
• Experience with Odoo, or other similar platforms
• Experience processing payroll and invoices for employers of record
• Experience reporting directly to senior leadership

A university degree is not required—your experience, communication skills, and work ethic matter most. However, if you happen to have a degree in business, finance, accounting, economics, or a similar field, that may be considered a bonus.

✨ What We Offer

• A flexible, fully-remote work environment where you’re trusted to work very autonomously. Zero micro-management, as that goes against our culture.
• The opportunity to support hardworking, passionate, busy leaders who value and respect your contributions, and are working to create positive societal change in the energy sector.
• A culture that values transparency, empathy, trust, humility, diversity, collaboration, and recognition.
• We have an open-door policy, and value reciprocal feedback. You’ll always know where you stand, and always have the ability to have your voice heard, simply by reaching out.
• A pretty flat hierarchical structure, where titles are not emphasized, and all contributions are valued.
• Competitive salary with growth potential. Any relevant benefits depend on your region of residence.
• Supportive onboarding and training, tailored to your strengths, interests, and career ambitions.
• The ability to be part of our formation! We’re still growing, changing, and improving. Anyone who is part of our team now is able to meaningfully contribute towards our culture, and processes. We’re open to all suggestions, and take them seriously!

📝 What Our Hiring Process Entails

We take hiring seriously, and want to bring on candidates who will contribute positively towards our culture just as much as they will succeed in their roles.

Also, we don’t only want to have good outcomes from you. We also want you to feel happy and fulfilled in your position. That means we have a structured process to determine best fit. Our hiring process is as follows:

1. Candidates apply via Greenhouse, and include as much information as possible and comfortable.
2. Various team members of OET will shortlist candidates in our ATS.
3. Certain shortlisted candidates will be contacted to arrange a screening call.
4. Screening calls are conducted, and feature a max. 30 minute chat with our People Team.
5. Certain candidates will go through to a first-round interview, of max. 1 hour, with our People Team. This interview will screen for a combination of competency and culture fit.
6. Finalists will go through to a second-round interview, of max. 1 hour, with the OETers with whom they’ll work most closely.
7. Bonus round -  there may be a short written assignment, depending on the role.
8. The chosen candidate will be provided with an offer letter, and opportunity to ask any questions.
9. Onboarding with our People Team begins.
10. Your start date arrives!

➡️ How to Apply

If you're excited to bring clarity and efficiency to the chaos of the lives of our senior leadership team, we’d love to hear from you! Please submit an application via Greenhouse (our ATS). All applications are reviewed in there. If you have any questions about OET or the role, we’d be happy to answer them should we invite you to take part in a screening call or interview.

Before you apply, please ensure that you are a fit for all the mandatory requirements for this role.

Please note that due to the volume of applications we receive, we are not able to respond to individual emails or LinkedIn requests. Kindly submit your application via Greenhouse, and we will shortlist and reach out to candidates.

If you have not received a response within 2 weeks of submitting your application, please consider it unsuccessful at this point in time. We may, however, still reach out in future. Our team maintains Talent Pools, containing candidates shortlisted for contact for future roles that may arise.

We look forward to meeting the next person who will become an invaluable part of our team! Thank you for your time, and for considering joining OET.

If this role is not for you, feel free to check back later for any future positions that may have been posted.