Opex Controller

Lesaka Technologies; Gauteng; On-site; ZAR 900,000 - 1,300,000; Full time

Job summary

Lesaka Technologies in Johannesburg, South Africa, seeks an Opex Controller to own the Merchant Division’s operating cost base end-to-end, ensuring costs are captured, allocated, reported and forecasted with strong process discipline.

You will partner with cost centre owners and Group Finance to deliver trusted cost insights, drive cost-control initiatives and support IFRS and SOX compliance in a multi-entity setup.

Qualifications

• CA(SA) newly-qualified or up to ~3 years post-qualification.
• CIMA with equivalent depth will be considered.
• Articles at a recognised firm with multi-entity exposure.

Responsibilities

• Collate opex across Merchant entities into a single divisional view and allocate to cost centres.
• Govern cost centre hierarchy and its mapping to divisional and Group reporting.
• Produce monthly reporting at cost centre and executive level with reconciliations to the ledger.
• Run divisional opex budget end-to-end with bottom-up cost-centre templates and drivers.
• Act as finance point of contact for opex and partner with the Merchant Central Services Lead on cost base and intercompany.

Skills

Advanced Excel

Modelling

Data visualisation

IFRS grounding

Stakeholder communication

Education

CA(SA) newly qualified or up to 3 years post-qualification

CIMA with equivalent depth

Articles at a recognised firm

Tools

Microsoft Dynamics 365

Job description

We’re Hiring: Opex Controller

Location: Johannesburg, South Africa

Department: Merchant Division - Finance

Reporting To: Finance Lead, Merchant Division

Role Purpose

The Opex Controller owns the operating cost base of the Merchant Division end to end- howcosts are captured at source, allocated, reported and analysed, and the budget and forecast the division is held to. The role exists to give every cost centre owner, the divisional executive and Group Finance a single trusted view of what the division spends, why it is moving, and what is being done about it.

The division operates across multiple legal entities and jurisdictions, spanning merchant acquiring, cash management, lending and software, and carries a recharge from Group. As a subsidiary of a US-domiciled dual-listed parent, SOX 404 and SEC obligations sit alongside IFRS reporting. This is a controllership role with a strong business partnering edge: the successful candidate will produce the numbers, interrogate them, challenge the owners of the spend, and drive the process, system and policy discipline that keeps the cost base under control.

Key Responsibilities

Cost Collation, Allocation & Close

• Collate opex across all Merchant entities into a single consistent divisional view, allocated accurately to cost centres and owners; investigate and clear misallocations, suspense-held and unallocated costs.
• Govern the cost centre hierarchy - additions, closures, mergers and owner changes - and its mapping to divisional and Group reporting structures.
• Validate the opex base before release: accrual completeness and release, prepayment amortisation, cut-off, classification, and support for manual journals.
• Reconcile the divisional view to entity trial balances and Group submissions and meet the divisional and Group close timetable including the quarterly cycles supporting the listed parent.

Reporting, Analysis & Dashboards

• Produce monthly reporting at cost centre, owner and executive level to a published timetable, reconciled to the ledger and requiring no rework by recipients.
• Provide variance analysis against budget, forecast and prior period with commentary that explains drivers, separating underlying movement from foreign exchange translation and one-off items.
• Build and maintain dashboards for high-scrutiny categories - travel, professional fees, contractors, connectivity, software and licensing, amongst others - giving owners self-service visibility between reporting cycles.
• Link the costs to drivers and propose cost improvement initiatives.

Budget & Forecast

• Run the divisional opex budget end to end - timetable, templates, assumptions, guidance, consolidation, review and sign-off - built bottom-up by cost centre against documented drivers rather than prior-year uplift.
• Challenge submissions on volume, headcount, rate and inflation assumptions, and require justification for growth above agreed parameters.
• Maintain the rolling in-year forecast with a quantified risks and opportunities register, escalating movements early, and track forecast accuracy by cost centre.

Deep Dives, Savings & Business Partnering

• Run a rolling programme of deep dives into material expense lines, decomposing spend by vendor, entity, cost centre and driver.
• Identify duplication, contract overlap, unused licences, off-contract spend and out-of-market pricing; quantify the opportunity, recommend action, and track savings into the run rate.
• Act as the finance point of contact for opex, equipping cost centre owners to manage their spend, and partner with the Merchant Central Services Lead on the central services cost base and the basis on which it is allocated to business units.
• Prepare and act as secretariat to the monthly divisional cost review forum, and elevate persistent overspend or non-engagement to the Finance Lead.

Group Recharges & Intercompany

• Review and challenge recharges received from Group - basis, allocation keys and quantum - and allocate them onward to entities and cost centres on a documented methodology.
• Own intra-divisional charging where costs are incurred in one entity on behalf of others, and ensure intercompany balances agree across entities before close.

ERP, Procurement & B-BBEE

• Represent divisional cost management in the ERP rollout: define and enforce the financial dimension standard, validate data quality through migration, train users, and use the system to automate the monthly cycle.
• Enforce procurement compliance - purchase order coverage, no-PO-no-pay, three-way matching and delegation of authority routing - report exceptions by cost centre, and partner with Procurement on vendor master quality and the contracted spend and renewals view.
• Maintain the divisional measured procurement spend base, reconciled to the ledger, and partner with Procurement to keep supplier B-BBEE evidence current on the vendor master.
• Report preferential procurement recognition in-year, model the effect of pending sourcing decisions, flag those with an adverse scorecard consequence before they are taken, track Enterprise and Supplier Development spend, and prepare the schedules and audit trail for annual verification.

Policy, Controls & Audit

• Propose, draft and implement divisional expenditure policies, and drive adoption, training and monitoring once approved.
• Operate and evidence assigned opex controls to Group SOX standard, enforce discipline over expense approval, purchase order compliance and journal support, and support Group SOX and internal audit through walkthroughs, testing and remediation.
• Support the external audit on opex, accruals and expense cut-off within the audit timetable.

Minimum Requirements

Qualifications & Experience

• CA(SA), newly qualified or with up to approximately three years’ post-qualification experience; CIMA with equivalent depth will be considered.
• Articles at a recognised firm with multi-entity group exposure; financial services, payments or fintech clients an advantage.
• Management accounting, cost centre reporting or opex budgeting experience in a multi-entity or divisional environment, including intercompany and cost allocation.
• Hands-on ERP experience; involvement in an ERP implementation or a Microsoft Dynamics 365 environment is a strong advantage. Exposure to a SOX or equivalent control environment is an advantage.

Skills & Attributes

• Advanced Excel and strong modelling capability; data visualisation skills, or the aptitude to build them quickly.
• Sound IFRS grounding applied practically to expense recognition, accruals, prepayments and cut-off.
• Able to work with large, imperfect multi-entity datasets and produce reporting that stands up to challenge.
• Willing to challenge - comfortable questioning senior stakeholders and holding a position with evidence rather than assertion, without damaging the relationship.
• Structured and self-directed, able to build process in an environment that is still forming and see work through to completion.
• Clear communicator, able to explain financial information to non-financial owners and write commentary an executive can act on.

Key Skills & Competencies

• Accuracy
• Analysing and Forming Opinions
• Planning
• Structuring.
• Assertiveness
• Presenting
• Integrity.
• Organisational Sensitivity

If you are analytical, commercially aware and passionate about strong financial control, accurate reporting and effective business partnering, we’d love to hear from you.