Senior Manager, Internal Audit (m/f/d)

Role Summary

This is not a daily operations role. You are not in every posting and every invoice — the partner runs the
day-to-day. You operate in review and assurance mode, on a defined risk-based cycle, and you go deep
where the risk and the value are.

For every finding, you run the same loop:

•  Review. Examine the monthly numbers, the underlying bookings and the methods behind them —
  substantively, not just for plausibility. Work from a risk-based review plan that you set and update:
  high-risk accounts, new properties, unusual lease structures, new markets, material judgements.
•  Diagnose. Establish what is actually wrong and why. Distinguish a one-off keying error from a
  systematic misapplication of a method from a genuine gap in guidance — the remedy is different in
  each case.
• Correct. Get it fixed in the current period: instruct and agree the correcting entries with the partner,
  and in exceptional cases post or adjust yourself. Nothing material carries forward unresolved.
• Standardise. Where the root cause is systematic, define the correct treatment as a binding group
  standard — the accounting position, the booking logic, the required evidence, the responsible party
  and the control that catches it next time.
• Document. Write it into the group accounting manual and the relevant working instruction, in a form
  the partner’s team can apply without asking you.
• Enable. Walk the partner’s team through it, explain the business context behind the rule, and make
  sure it is understood rather than merely received.
• Re-test. Verify in the next cycles that the standard is being applied. Track it in your findings log until
  it is demonstrably closed.

Your posture towards the partner is cooperative, not adversarial. You are their interface to Numa
and their access to business context — and at the same time the person who steers their output from
Numa’s perspective and holds the technical line. You carry a functional mandate to set accounting
requirements, with escalation to the CFO where they are not met

Key responsibilities

Monthly close review and assurance

• Review the monthly numbers before they reach management reporting: P&L by property, entity,
  brand and market, balance sheet, and the contribution margin cascade from CM1 through to
  EBITDA and below
• Perform substantive review of high-risk areas: accruals and cut-off, provisions, revenue recognition,
  deferred revenue and prepayments, rent and lease accounting, intercompany, capitalisation, and
  cost allocations
•  Reconcile the accounting record back to operational source data — PMS and booking data, PSP
  and channel settlements, city tax, payroll — and investigate the differences rather than plugging
  them
• Challenge month-on-month and versus-budget movements that the numbers cannot explain, and
  trace them to the underlying bookings
• Own a documented sign-off gate: what has been reviewed, what was found, what was corrected,
  and what remains open with an owner and a date

Accounting standards, methods and policy

• Own Numa’s group accounting manual — the single, binding reference for how every material
  transaction is treated across all entities and markets
• Define and document technical positions on the areas that actually drive our numbers: lease
  accounting and IFRS 16 across our Fixed, Variable, Hybrid and HMA structures; rent-free and
  incentive periods; revenue recognition by booking channel; OTA commissions and payment fees;
  city tax; bad debt; capitalisation of FF&E and pre-opening costs; franchise fee recognition
• Ensure consistency between group IFRS reporting and local statutory accounts in every jurisdiction,
  and own the reconciliation between them
• Review controlling methods as rigorously as accounting ones: cost centre and property allocation
  logic, cost splits across brands and business lines, and the definitional integrity of the KPIs built on
  top of them
• Assess the accounting implications of new business structures ahead of time — new markets, new
  lease types, franchise arrangements and acquisitions — rather than after the first close

Provider governance and coordination

• Act as the primary technical interface between Numa and our accounting partner: clear
  requirements, clear priorities, clear feedback
• Give the partner the business context they cannot see — new deals, contract changes, operational
  events — so that bookings reflect economic reality
• Maintain a quality scorecard: defect rates by area, recurring error patterns, timeliness against the
  close calendar, and open findings — reviewed with the partner on a fixed cadence
• Onboard new entities, properties and markets into the partner’s scope with a defined handover
  standard
• Escalate to the CFO where quality, timeliness or adherence to agreed standards falls short, with
  evidence attached

Controls and data integrity

• Build and maintain the reconciliation framework: what must be reconciled, by whom, how often, and
  to what evidence standard
• Design the segregation of duties between Numa and the partner so that review is genuinely
  independent of preparation
• Maintain the month-end checklist and balance sheet substantiation standard, and audit adherence
  to both
• Keep a findings and remediation log that gives the CFO an honest, current picture of accounting risk

Your Profile

This role requires genuine technical authority. You will be telling experienced accountants that their
treatment is wrong, and telling an auditor why our position is right. You need to be unarguable on the
substance.

• A professional accounting qualification — Wirtschaftsprüfer, Steuerberater, ACA / ACCA, CPA,
  Bilanzbuchhalter (IHK) or an equivalent recognised credential
• A Big 4 audit background, minimum 3–4 years — you bring the audit methodology, the
  professional scepticism, and the instinct for where errors hide
• Strong German GAAP (and exposure to IFRS) expertise combined with practical knowledge
  of local GAAP in European jurisdictions — you can move between the group view and the statutory
  view without losing either
• Demonstrated experience steering an outsourced accounting provider or a shared service
  centre — you have enforced quality across an organisational boundary before and know what
  actually works
• Real depth in multi-entity, multi-jurisdiction structures: consolidation, intercompany, transfer pricing
  mechanics, statutory-to-group reconciliation
• Command of IFRS 16 and lease accounting in substance, not in theory — this is central to our P&L
• ERP fluency and the ability to interrogate data directly rather than waiting for a report
• The ability to write a clear, binding accounting instruction that a non-native-speaker team in another
  country can apply correctly
• A cooperative but firm working style: builds the relationship, gives the context, and still holds the line
  on quality
• Fluent English (our working language) and willingness to travel regularly to our accounting partner
  and to Numa hubs

Nice to have

• Hospitality, real estate, retail or another multi-site operating environment
• Experience preparing a company for institutional-grade reporting and audit standards
• Post-merger integration experience on the accounting side
• SQL or BI capability for independent testing and sampling