Financial Accountant - Wellington

New Zealand Police; Wellington; On-site; NZD 104,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

New Zealand Police is seeking a Financial Accountant to join the Corporate Finance transformation in Wellington. You will lead key financial accounting and external reporting activities, including statutory obligations and year-end statements, within a large public sector organisation.

The role offers significant stakeholder engagement across Police and partner agencies, opportunities to strengthen controls and drive financial excellence while delivering trusted business insights and robust

Qualifications

• Strong financial accounting and external reporting experience, ideally within a large and complex organisation.
• Sound understanding of accounting standards, financial controls, and public sector reporting requirements.
• Demonstrated experience managing taxation and statutory compliance obligations, including GST, FBT, withholding tax, and other regulatory reporting requirements
• Strong attention to detail, while maintaining a focus on delivering outcomes and meeting competing priorities

Responsibilities

• Lead financial reporting to Treasury and support annual financial statements.
• Deliver accurate financial forecasts, cash-flow reporting, and budget insights.
• Manage GST, FBT, withholding tax, and other statutory obligations.
• Partner with stakeholders across Police and external agencies to provide trusted financial advice.
• Identify opportunities to strengthen controls, improve processes, and enhance reporting outcomes.

Skills

Financial accounting

External reporting

Public sector accounting

Stakeholder engagement

Job description

Company description:

New Zealand Police is working with the community to make New Zealanders be safe and feel safe. With over 15,000 staff, we provide policing services 24 hours a day, every day. We operate by land, sea and air, manage over 860,000 emergency calls a year and are always actively preventing crime and crashes.

We're working towards specific goals and targets that highlight our intent to work collaboratively with iwi and communities, other government sectors and business partners to deliver and achieve long-term change.

Job description:

• Based at Police National Headquarters, Wellington
• Permanent/Full Time
• Job Reference 6019621

E tῡ ki te kei o te waka, kia pakia koe e ngā ngaru o te wā.

Stand at the stern of the canoe and feel the spray of the future biting at your face.

Mō te tūnga | About the role

New Zealand Police is completing the final phase of its Corporate Finance transformation, building a high-performing, advisory-led function aligned to executive priorities and frontline outcomes. The new operating model strengthens strategic capability, simplifies leadership structures, and reinvests capacity into financial planning, reporting, systems, and controls to support a $3B+ organisation operating in a constrained fiscal environment. This role offers the opportunity to support a modern finance function that delivers strong stewardship, high-quality insights, and trusted business partnership across the organisation.

As a Financial Accountant with New Zealand Police, you'll play a critical role in ensuring the financial integrity, accountability, and transparency of one of New Zealand's largest and most complex public sector organisations. Working as part of the Finance team, you'll lead key financial accounting and reporting activities, including external reporting to Treasury, statutory and taxation obligations, financial forecasting, cash-flow management, balance sheet reconciliations, and year-end financial statements.

This is a diverse and influential role where you'll work closely with stakeholders across Police and partner agencies, providing high-quality financial information, analysis, and advice that supports decision-making at both operational and strategic levels. You'll have the opportunity to build strong relationships with Treasury, Inland Revenue, auditors, and internal business groups while contributing to initiatives that strengthen financial controls, improve processes, and enhance organisational performance.

Beyond the technical accounting responsibilities, you'll be a trusted advisor, sharing your expertise, supporting continuous improvement, and helping ensure New Zealand Police meets its financial and statutory reporting obligations. Whether you're preparing forecasts, managing complex reporting requirements, or identifying opportunities to streamline financial practices, your work will help enable Police to deliver on its commitment to keep people safe and help communities feel safe.

If you're looking for a role that offers variety, visibility, meaningful stakeholder engagement, and the opportunity to make a real impact, this could be the next step in your career. You'll join a supportive team environment where your ideas, expertise, and contributions will be valued as you help drive financial excellence across New Zealand Police.

Nga kawenga matua | Key Accountabilities

• Lead financial reporting to Treasury and support annual financial statements.
• Deliver accurate financial forecasts, cash‑flow reporting, and budget insights.
• Manage GST, FBT, withholding tax, and other statutory obligations.
• Partner with stakeholders across Police and external agencies to provide trusted financial advice.
• Identify opportunities to strengthen controls, improve processes, and enhance reporting outcomes.

He aha taau e kawe mai | What you'll bring

Whilst we are looking for skills, knowledge and experience relevant to the role, we also place high importance on your state of mind, the alignment of your values with ours, your ability to contribute to and build high performing teams, and the way that you lead yourself or others.

Apart from holding a relevant tertiary qualification and/or demonstrating knowledge and experience in financial accounting, the successful applicant will need to demonstrate:

• Strong financial accounting and external reporting experience, ideally within a large and complex organisation
• Sound understanding of accounting standards, financial controls, and public sector reporting requirements.
• Demonstrated experience managing taxation and statutory compliance obligations, including GST, FBT, withholding tax, and other regulatory reporting requirements
• Strong attention to detail, while maintaining a focus on delivering outcomes and meeting competing priorities

Whakaritenga motuhake | Special requirements

This role is Team Leader level. You can refer to Indicators of Success for further information on the requirements.

To view the position description for this role please copy and paste this link into a new browser:

https://www.police.govt.nz/sites/default/files/pd/2026-10/Financial%20Accountant.pdf

Mo tātou | About us

New Zealand Police is the lead agency responsible for preventing crime and enhancing community safety. It works in partnership with individuals, communities, businesses, and other public sector agencies towards the vision of making New Zealand the safest country. Police is the government's largest front‑line response agency with around 15,000 staff in large and small communities all over New Zealand and in liaison and policing development roles overseas.

Your development is highly valued at New Zealand Police. Our employees enjoy significant investment in their development not only at an individual level, but also at the team and community practice level. We work hard to match you with work that will both play to your strengths and challenge you in new ways.

The work you'll be engaged in is real, tangible work that directly benefits our frontline and communities. Taken all together, this means we can offer you career path opportunities to progress in your chosen profession and become a more well-rounded, experienced leader, with opportunities across the range of work we support.

Utu ā-tau | Salary

This position is covered by a collective agreement, and salary will commence between $103,836 and $120,224 dependent on skills and experience relevant to the role.

If you are an internal applicant, you must apply internally through the police system. You must provide an alternative contact email address and state your future commitments should you be successful in the next stage of the recruitment process.

Please note: Deadline for applications is 5:00 pm on Sunday 1 November 2026. Applications may be reviewed prior to the close date as well as contact made with candidates.

If you have any questions about this vacancy, please contact Sarah Payne, at [e-mail].