Head of Finance

Echelon; Riyadh; On-site; SAR 600,000 - 1,200,000; Full time

Job summary

Echelon in Riyadh is seeking a Head of Finance to design and run the finance function for a fast-growing, multi-entity group. You will own the monthly close, forecasting, budgets, five-year projections, and the board-ready financial narrative, with a moved-in-house ledger and ERP over time.

You will lead cash, tax, statutory accounts, and controls, while partnering with leadership to manage spend, pricing, and governance for investor reporting and strategic decisions.

Qualifications

• Professionally qualified (CPA, ACCA, CA or equivalent) with venture-backed or fast-scaling company experience.
• English required; Arabic an advantage.

Responsibilities

• Close the monthly close and management reporting for the group and by business unit.
• Own the budget, quarterly forecast and five-year model as single source of truth.
• Manage cash, treasury, statutory accounts, tax and audit for Saudi ops and holding.
• Implement DoA controls with quarterly expenditure ceilings and payroll inputs.
• Prepare investor and Board reporting with data room and deal support.

Job description

Head of Finance

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia - Full-time - Independent Group functions

CONTEXT & MANDATE

Echelon is a Saudi-born, sovereign technology company that brings leading global AI technologies to the Kingdom, deploys them with its own forward deployed engineering organization, compounds partner technology into Echelon IP and, over time, productises Saudi-developed capability.

Echelon runs one aggregated P&L at group level, measures each business unit on contribution margin, prices every open seat on a published framework and is putting a Delegation of Authority with quarterly expenditure ceilings in place; accounting has been run to date through an outsourced provider.

You will build and own the finance function end to end — the close, the numbers the Management Committee and the Board run on, the model, cash and the controls — and take the group through its first institutional round and its first audited year as a multi-entity company.

The seat sits at the centre of how Echelon decides: the monthly close and management reporting by business unit, the budget and quarterly forecast reconciled to the five-year model, the finance view on every spend and every seat, the investor and Board reporting the round depends on, and the move from outsourced accounting to an in-house ledger and systems that fit. The method is not given. You define it, and you grow the team with the group.

We are not looking for the most senior controller available. We are looking for someone whose best work is ahead of them — who has done a close, a forecast and an audit with their own hands, is curious about how the business makes money, and wants to build a function rather than inherit one.

WHAT YOU WILL OWN

• Close & management reporting — Run the monthly close and management reporting for the group and by business unit — people cost, performance bonus, non-people OPEX and contribution margin per unit — on a calendar the Management Committee and the Board can rely on.

• Budget, forecast & model — Own the budget, the quarterly forecast and the five-year model as the single source of truth — partner revenue share by tier, Frontier attach, headcount off the seat roster — reconciled to the Board pack and the partnership strategy.

• Cash, treasury & compliance — Cash, treasury, statutory accounts, tax and audit for the Saudi operating company and the holding company, and the move from the outsourced provider to an in-house ledger and ERP.

• Controls & the Delegation of Authority — The finance side of the DoA — expenditure approvals against quarterly ceilings, T&E, payroll inputs (allowances, GOSI, bonus), recruitment fees, and the Finance view on every seat-release recommendation to the GNRC.

• Investor & Board reporting — The data room, deal support and the numbers behind term sheets — partner revenue-share economics and transfer pricing between Technologies and Frontier.

WHO WE ARE LOOKING FOR

Exact, curious and calm. As comfortable in the ledger as in the model, and more interested in why a number moved than in reporting that it did.

• Curiosity — You want to know how a partner deal turns into revenue, why Frontier attaches to some partners and not others, and what a chairman who reads the numbers closely will ask next — before he asks it.

• Speed of learning — A new jurisdiction, a new system, a new instrument — transfer pricing, revenue share, a share plan — is yours within a quarter, set up from first principles and explained in plain language.

• Ownership — You have personally owned a close, a forecast and an audit, not only their review, and you are willing to be the whole function for a while.

• Judgement — You say no to a spend request with the policy in hand, stay calm under a fundraise timetable, and are exact without being slow.

• Where you are — Professionally qualified (CPA, ACCA, CA or equivalent), with time in a venture-backed or fast-scaling company — that time matters more than the number of years — and working knowledge of Saudi requirements (ZATCA, GOSI, Saudisation reporting) or deep GCC exposure with the appetite to learn them fast. English required; Arabic an advantage.

THE SEAT

Reports to: Managing Director
Location: Riyadh, with travel across the Kingdom as required