Finance Director, Global Programmes and Operations

The Organisation

Plan International is an independent development and humanitarian organisation that advances children’s rights and equality for girls.

We believe in the power and potential of every child. But this is often suppressed by poverty, violence, exclusion and discrimination. And it’s girls who are most affected.

Working together with children, young people, our supporters and partners, we strive for a just world, tackling the root causes of the challenges facing girls and all vulnerable children.

We support children’s rights from birth until they reach adulthood. And we enable children to prepare for – and respond to – crises and adversity. We drive changes in practice and policy at local, national and global levels using our reach, experience and knowledge.

We have been building powerful partnerships for children for over 85 years, and are now active in more than 80 countries.

The Opportunity

In Finance, our vision is ‘to be a globally trusted partner in the organisation’s delivery of life-changing programmes for girls and young women’.

We aim to do this by ‘providing the robust financial systems, reports, tools and data, and the skilled people to enable successful project delivery. We equip our customers with the insights, capabilities, and expert advice that they need to change lives’.

Plan International have embarked on an ambitious and exciting strategic change initiative to make the organisation more transparent, legitimate and agile. Stregthening our financial planning, processes, decision making and analytics is a key enabler in attaining our strategic goals. 

The Global Programmes & Operations Finance Directorate will be responsible for providing critical leadership, guidance, oversight and support to Plan International’s regional and country office finance teams. It will ensure that appropriate internal standards and effective processes and tools are available and consistently adhered to, for Plan International and its partners to meet external financial standards, projects managers needs and donors’ financial regulations. It will also provide financial expertise to the Global Programmes and Operations Directorate.

In collaboration with other Finance Directorates, it will tailor support to Regional Hub’s and Country Office’s:

• With the Corporate Finance and Treasury Directorate, it will support compliance with accounting standards, year-end processing and audit deliverable in COs and RHs.
• With the Strategic Finance Directorate, it will provide oversight of the global fund’s allocation and COs and Regions Financial performance.
• With the Finance Transformation Directorate, it will strengthen capability and improve capacity in teams to deliver core finance activities.

In line with our strategic priority to scale up the humanitarian impact, the Directorate will also lead in shaping and managing effective and clear financial standards and processes for managing our humanitarian responses in collaboration with the Disaster Risk Management (DRM) team.

As head of the Directorate, you will work closely with the Regional Finance Directors for Plan’s four regions (Asia Pacific, Middle Eastern, Eastern, Southern Africa, West and Central Africa, and Region of the Americas) ensuring that your team provides guidance, oversight and quality support to their regional finance teams. You will also lead the financial support to the Global Programme and Operation Leadership team (GPOLT) by being a core member of the team.

The Director will form part of the Finance Leadership Team and will support the development of the five-year Finance Strategy. You will also be accountable for providing day-to-day oversight and management of the Directorate, including reporting, people management, and quality assurance responsibilities.

The Requirements

A Qualified Chartered Accountant (ICAEW or recognised equivalent) you bring a breadth of financial experience within an INGO (ideally with both humanitarian and development focus) or non-profit sectors and audit practice. Experience of working in countries delivering development programmes would be a significant advantage and an understanding of INGO funding streams and importance of full cost recovery is imperative.

Complex problem solving is a core requirement of this role and you bring strong process design/optimisation skills to support the ongoing improvement of processes across the function.

A skilled leader you bring exemplary negotiation, facilitation and influencing skills. Customer focused, you promote high performance and continuous improvement from your staff. You are resilient and outcome focused with an ability to build those qualities within your team.

Please follow this link for a full role profile; Director of Global Programmes and Operations Finance_Role Profile_March 2023-FINAL.docx

Location: The location of this role can be flexible where Plan International has an office* that can employ on behalf of the Global Hub and you have the pre-existing right to work and live.

Type of Role: Permanent or maximum fixed term contract as per employing office’s standard terms and conditions. 

Reports to: Chief Financial Officer

Salary: We will be happy to disclose the salary and applicable benefits to applicants as part of this process, however, please kindly note that the salary and employment benefits will be set according to your location and therefore it is not possible to include full details here.

Closing Date: Monday 22nd May

*Applicable locations include: Australia, Bangladesh, Belgium, Benin, Bolivia, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Central African Republic, China, Colombia, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Finland, Ghana, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Honduras, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Ireland, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Korea, Laos, Lebanon, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Spain, Sudan, Sweden, Switzerland, Tanzania, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Togo, Uganda, United Kingdom, United States, Vietnam, Zambia, Zimbabwe

Equality, diversity and inclusion is at the very heart of everything that Plan International stands for.

We want Plan International to reflect the diversity of the communities we work with, offering equal opportunities to everyone regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation.

Plan International is based on a culture of inclusivity and we strive to create a workplace environment that ensures every team, in every office, in every country, is rich in diverse people, thoughts, and ideas.

We foster an organisational culture that embraces our commitment to racial justice, gender equality, girls’ rights and inclusion.

Plan International believes that in a world where children face so many threats of harm, it is our duty to ensure that we, as an organisation, do everything we can to keep children safe. This means that we have particular responsibilities to children that we come into contact with and we must not contribute in any way to harming or placing children at risk.

A range of pre-employment checks will be undertaken in conformity with Plan International’s Safeguarding Children and Young People policy. Plan International also participates in the Inter Agency Misconduct Disclosure Scheme. In line with this scheme we will request information from applicants previous employers about any findings of sexual exploitation, sexual abuse and/or sexual harassment during employment, or incidents under investigation when the applicant left employment. By submitting an application, the job applicant confirms their understanding of these recruitment procedures.

Please note that Plan International will never send unsolicited emails requesting payment from candidates.