Head of Finance

Founding Finance Lead | AI Scale-up | London Our client is a fast-scaling international AI and technology company headquartered in London, having exponentially grown annual recurring revenue. They're now ready to bring finance in-house for the first time, and this is the hire that makes it happen. This role needs someone who is very strong with financial systems, who can build them from scratch. The opportunity As the company's first finance professional, you'll build the function from scratch: setting up processes, controls and systems, and deciding what to run internally, what to outsource and what to automate. The early focus is hands-on and technical. Once the foundations are stable, the role shifts towards operational leadership, with a team built around you. What you'll own Revenue and billing

• End-to-end quote-to-cash: deal and contract structuring, the invoicing platform and invoice generation, collections, cash allocation, revenue recognition and close
• Partnering with engineering and data science to build billing models for usage-based contracts Automation and systems
• Removing manual work wherever possible, using AI-driven finance tools and the company's technical talent to keep the function lean
• Supporting new system rollouts and integrations across the accounting stack Controls, tax and compliance
• Treasury across multiple entities and currencies
• Intercompany recharges, balances and funding, plus transfer pricing documentation alongside external advisers
• Tax and statutory obligations, and adherence to US GAAP, IFRS, internal policy and regulation
• Running the external audit to deadline
• Advising on accounting treatment and writing policies and technical memos for significant transactions Accounting and reporting
• Overseeing the management accountant and/or outsourced providers
• Preparing financial statements under US GAAP, and IFRS for the UK entity
• Monthly, quarterly and annual close
• Day-to-day AP, AR, payroll accounting and cash Funding and banking
• Keeping the business investor-ready, with scope to help lead future raises
• Handling financial due diligence requests from customers
• Managing banking and credit facility relationships Planning and insight
• Working with FP&A, operations and department heads on analysis
• Budget vs actual reporting and variance commentary What they're looking for
• A Practice trained qualified accountant (ACA, ACCA, CPA or equivalent)
• At least 8 years in finance, including 5+ in high-growth SaaS and 2+ in a finance leadership role
• A minimum of 2 years handling complex quote-to-cash, ideally bespoke usage-based pricing that varies widely by customer and product
• Strong US GAAP, with working knowledge of IFRS and/or UK GAAP
• A builder's mindset: comfortable designing accounting processes from a blank sheet and shaping systems around how the business actually works
• Genuinely AI-fluent: uses LLMs such as Claude daily and knows the AI finance tooling landscape
• Desirable: 2+ years as a sole finance hire or Head of Finance