Senior Manager/Director, Operations & Project Controlling in München

• Own and develop the company’s project controlling framework, providing consistent financial visibility across the project portfolio.
• Establish processes for project budgeting, forecasting, cost tracking, margin analysis, and variance management.
• Develop a standardized approach to monitoring project financial performance from project initiation through completion.
• Partner with Project Management and Scientific Operations to monitor project progress against budget, timeline, resource plan, and expected financial outcome.
• Identify projects at risk of cost overruns, margin erosion, or delivery delays and ensure these risks are visible to management.
• Provide independent Finance challenge to project assumptions, resource requirements, timelines, and expected costs.
• Establish clear financial ownership and accountability for project performance across Business Units and Project Management.

Project Margin & Costing

• Lead the implementation of project margin analysis, providing management with a clear understanding of the profitability of individual projects.
• Develop and maintain a methodology for calculating fully loaded project costs, including appropriate allocation of direct and indirect costs.
• Ensure project margins reflect the full economic cost of delivering projects, including relevant personnel, laboratory/scientific resources, facilities, equipment, and other operational overheads.
• Develop appropriate cost rates and allocation methodologies in partnership with Finance and operational stakeholders.
• Establish consistent definitions and methodologies for project revenue, direct costs, indirect costs, contribution/margin, and project profitability.
• Continuously improve the accuracy and relevance of project cost and margin reporting.

Business Partnering with Operations & Project Management

• Act as the key Finance Business Partner to Scientific Operations, Business Unit leadership, and Project Management on project economics and operational performance.
• Work closely with project teams to understand the operational drivers behind financial performance.
• Translate project status, resource utilization, scope changes, and delivery risks into financial implications.
• Participate in project and operational review meetings, providing a financial perspective on project performance.
• Challenge project teams constructively where assumptions, resource requirements, or delivery expectations are inconsistent with financial targets.
• Support project managers and operational leaders in identifying corrective actions to improve project delivery, cost efficiency, and margins.
• Build strong relationships with scientific and operational stakeholders while maintaining appropriate Finance independence and control.

Project Forecasting & Variance Analysis

• Develop regular project cost-to-complete forecasts, incorporating actual costs, project progress, remaining activities, resource requirements, and expected completion dates.
• Monitor actual project costs against budget and forecast and provide detailed variance analysis.
• Identify the operational drivers of material variances rather than simply reporting financial deviations.
• Track changes in project scope, timelines, resource requirements, and other factors that may affect project economics.
• Establish early-warning indicators for projects experiencing cost or margin pressure.
• Improve forecasting accuracy through systematic analysis of historical project performance and operational drivers.
• Provide portfolio-level analysis of project performance, identifying trends, recurring issues, and opportunities for operational improvement.

Process Development & Controls

• Design and implement a scalable project controlling process, including governance, responsibilities, reporting cadence, and standardized methodologies.
• Establish appropriate controls to ensure project financial data is complete, accurate, and timely.
• Define clear interfaces between Finance, Business Units, Scientific Operations, Project Management, and other relevant functions.
• Improve the integration of operational and financial data to reduce reliance on manual reporting and improve transparency.
• Develop and maintain project controlling tools and models, including Excel-based models where appropriate.
• Identify opportunities to automate and improve project reporting and analysis as the organization and project portfolio scale.
• Establish consistent project financial KPIs and performance standards across the organization.

Planning & Strategic Support

• Support the annual budgeting and forecasting process with detailed project-level operational and cost assumptions.
• Provide input into resource planning and capacity decisions by translating expected project activity into financial requirements.
• Support investment and resource allocation decisions through project economics and scenario analysis.
• Analyze historical project performance to improve future pricing, costing, resource planning, and operational decision-making.
• Work closely with the Sales & Revenue Controller to connect commercial assumptions, project delivery, and financial performance, ensuring consistency between revenue forecasts and project cost forecasts.

Your profile

Experience

• Significant experience in project controlling, operational controlling, FP&A, or finance business partnering in a project-based, services, R&D, contract research, engineering, or similarly complex environment.
• Proven experience establishing or improving project controlling processes and frameworks.
• Strong experience with project budgeting, forecasting, cost-to-complete analysis, variance analysis, and project margin management.
• Experience developing fully loaded costing methodologies and project profitability analysis.
• Demonstrated ability to work closely with operational and project teams and translate operational activity into financial outcomes.
• Experience working with resource-intensive projects where personnel capacity and utilization are significant cost drivers.
• Strong Excel and financial modelling skills.
• Experience with ERP, project management, resource planning, or other operational data systems would be advantageous.

Skills & Attributes

• Strong project controlling and financial modelling expertise with excellent attention to detail.
• Commercially and operationally minded, with a strong understanding of the drivers of project profitability.
• Confident challenging project managers, scientific leaders, and Business Unit leadership in a constructive and collaborative manner.
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills, including the ability to work effectively with non-financial stakeholders.
• Highly analytical, structured, and pragmatic.
• Comfortable building processes and frameworks in an environment where systems and processes are still developing.
• Hands-on and entrepreneurial, with the ability to operate independently and take ownership of a critical business process.
• Able to communicate complex financial information clearly to senior management.

Why us?

• An industry leader at an inflection point, with considerable growth and expanding capabilities ahead.
• An organization positioned for disruptive changes in the CRO market.
• Detail oriented with strong organizational skills.
• An innovative field of work in an exciting industry.
• A long-term, responsible position in a healthy, growing and future-oriented company.
• Comprehensive onboarding to prepare you optimally for your area of responsibility.
• Multicultural teams and an open corporate culture.

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