Finance Manager (Budgeting)

DayOne; Kuala Lumpur; On-site; MYR 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

DayOne, a Singapore-headquartered data center platform, is seeking an Finance Manager for Asia DCO to lead budgeting, forecasting and cost governance across live and pre-live campuses. You will partner with regional leadership, drive cost controls and influence strategic investment decisions.

This role requires 8+ years in finance/FP&A, strong stakeholder management, and experience with multi-site operations in a fast-scaling data center environment. Based in Malaysia with regional scope.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Finance, Accounting or Business Administration; professional qualification (ACCA, CPA, CIMA or equivalent) preferred.
• Minimum 8 years of experience in finance, FP&A, business partnering or operations finance, including at least 3 years leading or managing a finance team.

Responsibilities

• Lead the Asia Budget and Costing team, comprising Country Controllers and the New Markets Analyst.
• Own the consolidated Asia DCO OPEX and minor CAPEX budget, aggregating country submissions.
• Present consolidated budget tracking, variance analysis and financial updates to SVP DCO and governance forums.
• Own the regional cost forecasting model and cost/kW benchmarks across live and pre-live campuses.
• Lead operational finance input into business cases and scenario analyses for new markets and expansion projects.
• Oversee monthly reconciliation and COGS validation across all countries; identify cost variance drivers and gaps.

Skills

Budgeting

Forecasting

Cost governance

Finance partnering

Data analysis

Education

Bachelor's degree in Finance, Accounting or Business Administration

Tools

Excel

PivotTables

Power Query

Power Pivot

Power BI

SAP

Oracle

Job description

About DayOne Data Centers

DayOne Data Centers is a Singapore-headquartered global digital infrastructure platform that develops and operates next-generation data centers across Asia Pacific and Europe. Trusted by leading hyperscalers and businesses, the company engineers, builds, and operates high-capacity, AI-ready campuses with speed, scale, and reliability. The Finance Manager leads the Asia budgeting, forecasting and cost governance team within Global Data Centre Operations, providing financial leadership across all live and pre-live campuses in the region. This role owns the consolidated Asia OPEX and minor CAPEX budget, sets the operational finance governance framework, and is the primary financial partner to the SVP DCO, Investment team and Corporate Finance on all matters relating to data centre operating costs. As DayOne scales toward IPO, this role is central to strengthening the maturity, consistency and auditability of operational financial reporting across the portfolio, while building and developing a growing team of country-based budget and costing professionals.

Responsibilities

Team leadership

• Lead, coach and develop the Asia Budget and Costing team, comprising Country Controllers and the New Markets Analyst.
• Set team priorities, allocate workload across countries and campuses, and ensure consistent methodology and quality standards.
• Build team capability ahead of regional growth, including onboarding as new countries and campuses come online.
• Partner with the Deputy CFO's team on the hiring pipeline for the team, including candidates from engineering or other technical backgrounds, and co-design a structured finance onboarding curriculum for non-finance hires.
• Provide direct QA oversight of team members transitioning from a technical background during their onboarding period, including formal review of their output through at least their first two to three quarter-end cycles before they sign off independently.
• Act as the escalation point for complex or cross-country financial issues raised by the team.

Budget governance and consolidation

• Own the consolidated Asia DCO OPEX and minor CAPEX budget, aggregating and quality-checking country-level submissions.
• Own the annual budget planning calendar and governance cadence across all Asia campuses.
• Review and approve budget transfers and bring-forward requests ahead of submission to central Finance.
• Present consolidated budget tracking, variance analysis and financial updates to the SVP DCO and relevant governance forums.

Forecasting and investment support

• Own the regional cost forecasting model and cost/kW benchmarks across live and pre-live campuses.
• Lead operational finance input into business cases and scenario analysis for new markets and expansion projects, working closely with the Investment team.
• Ensure forecast assumptions are robust, current and consistently applied across countries.

Financial and operational analysis

• Oversee monthly reconciliation and COGS validation across all countries, ensuring consistency of method and control quality.
• Identify systemic cost variance issues, cost driver trends and control gaps, and drive corrective action ownership with regional Finance and Operations stakeholders.
• Provide financial insight to support strategic and operational decision-making at SVP and regional leadership level.

Governance, process and IPO readiness

• Own operational finance policies, cost ownership frameworks and approval governance across the Asia portfolio.
• Standardise budgeting, forecasting and reconciliation processes to support financial reporting maturity ahead of IPO.
• Partner with Corporate Finance, Internal Audit and GRC to ensure operational finance controls meet increasing external reporting and assurance requirements.

Stakeholder management

• Act as the primary financial partner to the SVP DCO on operating cost performance, risk and governance.
• Represent DCO Finance in senior stakeholder forums, including with Investment, Corporate Finance and Regional Operations leadership.
• Build strong working relationships with Country Operations Directors to ensure financial governance is embedded in day-to-day operations.

Candidate requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Finance, Accounting or Business Administration; professional qualification (ACCA, CPA, CIMA or equivalent) preferred.
• Minimum 8 years of experience in finance, FP&A, business partnering or operations finance, including at least 3 years leading or managing a finance team.
• Experience in data centre, infrastructure, real estate or another capital-intensive, multi-site operating business strongly preferred.
• Track record of owning budgeting, forecasting, variance analysis and cost control across multiple countries or business units.
• Exposure to IPO reporting requirements, SOX-type control environments or equivalent external assurance regimes is an advantage.
• Demonstrated ability to lead and develop a team, including remote or geographically dispersed team members.
• Comfortable building team capability through a blended hiring strategy, including developing engineering or other technical-background hires into financial control roles, in partnership with the Deputy CFO's team.
• Strong stakeholder management skills, with the credibility to engage confidently with SVP-level and Investment stakeholders.
• Advanced Excel skills, including PivotTables, Power Query and Power Pivot; experience with Power BI, SAP or Oracle preferred.
• Strong commercial judgement, attention to detail and ability to translate financial detail into clear operational and executive narrative.
• Ability to operate effectively in a fast-scaling, hyperscale data centre environment with competing priorities and tight deadlines.

DayOne is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.

DayOne is a data center pioneer that develops and operates next-gen digital infrastructure for industry leaders who demand reliable, cost-effective and quickly scalable solutions. Our cutting-edge facilities empower hyperscalers and large enterprises to achieve rapid deployment and enhance connectivity, driving transformative engagement and innovation as we shape the future of industries.

DayOne's data centers are located across key markets, including Singapore, Johor (Malaysia), Batam (Indonesia), Greater Bangkok, Hong Kong SAR, Tokyo, and beyond.

Headquartered in Singapore, DayOne’s leadership team draws on over two decades of industry experience and a track record of building Asia's largest data center business.

With DayOne, they have created the SIJORI (Singapore, Johor, and Riau Islands) market as a global data center hub.

As demand for strategically located and customized data centers rises, DayOne's entrepreneurial spirit, customer-first strategy, deep local partnerships, and agile executional capabilities uniquely position us to power the growth ambitions of leading hyperscalers and large enterprises around the world.

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