Financial Controller

The job ad is for a senior financial controller (individual contributor) – a new role / an addition to the existing team. The finalist must be a fluent / bilingual Arabic speaker.

Role Overview

The Financial Controller position covers the ownership and accountability for the Record to Report (R2R) figures reported in country both for local GAAP and US GAAP. The Controller is expected to keep the Company compliant with all local finance and accounting statutes. The role is to provide accounting oversight and is supported by outsourced operations. This position will have financial control for Cisco entities in Saudi Arabia. A successful Controller will create and retain excellent working relationships with the other Finance functions such as Tax, Treasury, Sales and Service Finance and where appropriate to the Business leaders, as well as maintain and foster relationships with third party professional firms, for example external auditors.

Who We Are

We change the World. Everything is converging on the Internet, making networked connections more meaningful than ever before in our lives. Our employees' ground-breaking ideas impact on everything imaginable. Here, that means we will take creative ideas from the drawing board to dynamic solutions that have real world impact. Cisco is evolving a rich solution portfolio of next generation software, hardware, and services to meet customers' changing business requirements in the digitization journey.

What You’ll Do

Key Responsibilities

• Leading the Group Accounting and Reporting Organization for the Country
• Ownership and Accountability for the R2R figures reported in the Cisco legal entities (ensuring that effective R2R delivery is performed in the country, including an overall management of close and reporting requirements in line with Cisco policies)
• Escalation point of contact for the country at an entity level, providing rapid resolution or escalation of all Global Accounting and Reporting (GAR) critical issues impacting their business customers. Ensuring adequate and timely root cause analysis to understand problem drivers and implementation of necessary corrections and/or changes
• Accountability for the Statutory / Tax compliance commitment in the country for three entities
• Accountability for the Cisco internal audits and controls (ICS, GRC, SOX)
• Interactions with the close consolidation team to ensure the accuracy on the close of their entities
• All other tasks which require physical presence in the country eg. releasing bank payments, managing storage of physical documents, etc.

Stakeholder Collaboration

• Providing oversight and coordination of the Dispute Resolution process between the affected parties
• Supervising and coordinating in conjunction with the outsourced accounting team to ensure accuracy in the accounting processes and figures
• Closely collaborating with the peer community
• Supervising external audits and giving final sign-off to statutory accounts and financial statements
• Being the point of contact for physical visits of authorities on behalf of GAR
• Being responsible for conducting country review of balance sheet with the Management team
• With cross-financial business partners, proactively contributing to the execution of corporate wide finance initiatives within the country
• Being the main point of contact for the FP&A Team with regard to Actual and forecast comparisons where needed

Continuous Improvement

• Responsibility for ensuring Cisco policies are updated in response to changing environment and legislation
• Review and participation as appropriate in substantial changes to the existing model
• Identifying innovation, scalability opportunities within the country
• Ensuring cross-region opportunities are identified and cross-region areas for improvement are addressed
• Taking lead on various projects on processes and accounting requirements as set by Senior Management Team

Minimum Qualifications

• A recognized accounting qualification
• 8+ years of relevant working experience (ideally gained in an international-oriented & cross-functional environment)
• Strong accounting background and a strong working knowledge of US GAAP, local Saudi regulations and IFRS, Saudi Local Content Score requirements
• Strong Understanding of Financial regulations as it pertains to books and Records
• Excellent oral and written communication skills in English, complete fluency in Arabic
• Experience in dealing with local Authorities

Required Technical Skills

• Data Analysis
• Oracle knowledge
• MS Excel, PowerPoint, and Word
• Hyperion knowledge (advantageous)

Personal Attributes and Behavior Expected

• Ability to communicate effectively, and to listen and understand concerns and issues
• Strong Business understanding and acumen
• Ability to work with others in a formal process for solving issues and problems
• A wish to drive best practice and continuously challenge and drive initiatives
• Ability to quickly interpret and understand local requirements and valid treatments for both Local and US GAAP purposes
• Ability to work independently and effectively manage vendors

Why Cisco

#WeAreCisco where every individual brings their unique skills and perspectives together to pursue our purpose of powering an inclusive future for all.

Our passion is connection—we celebrate our employees’ diverse set of backgrounds and focus on unlocking potential. Cisconians often experience one company, many careers where learning and development are encouraged and supported at every stage. Our technology, tools, and culture pioneered hybrid work trends, allowing all to not only give their best, but be their best.

We understand our outstanding opportunity to bring communities together and at the heart of that is our people. One-third of Cisconians collaborate in our 30 employee resource organizations, called Inclusive Communities, to connect, foster belonging, learn to be informed allies, and make a difference. Dedicated paid time off to volunteer—80 hours each year—allows us to give back to causes we are passionate about, and nearly 86% do!

Our purpose, driven by our people, is what makes us the worldwide leader in technology that powers the internet. Helping our customers reimagine their applications, secure their enterprise, transform their infrastructure, and meet their sustainability goals is what we do best. We ensure that every step we take is a step towards a more inclusive future for all. Take your next step and be you, with us!