Vice President, Global Controller

Job Description:

POLITICO is seeking an experienced Vice President, Global Controller to lead our global accounting function and serve as a key partner to the CFO and Finance leadership team. Based at our Arlington, Virginia headquarters and reporting to the CFO, you will lead our Global Accounting Team (US and European). This highly visible role will be responsible for ensuring the integrity, accuracy, and scalability of POLITICO’s financial operations across our growing global organization. The ideal candidate brings deep technical accounting expertise combined with strong business judgment and a modern, forward-looking approach to finance—someone who can strengthen controls and processes, develop a high-performing global team, and build the financial infrastructure needed to support POLITICO’s continued growth and evolving business.

Who You Are:

• A strategic finance leader and trusted advisor who can translate complex accounting and financial matters into clear insights, recommendations, and decisions for senior leadership.
• A strong technical accounting expert with deep knowledge of financial reporting, controls, audit, compliance, and accounting policy across a complex, multi-entity organization.
• A hands-on operator and transformation leader who can balance day-to-day execution with opportunities to simplify, automate, and scale global finance processes.
• A collaborative global leader who builds strong partnerships across Finance and the broader business and can effectively navigate different entities, markets, and regulatory environments.
• A developer of high-performing teams who establishes clear accountability, develops talent, and creates a culture of accuracy, partnership, and continuous improvement.

What You’ll Do:

• Lead the global close and IFRS consolidation for group reporting, with operational accounting delivered through our regional Controllers.
• Set accounting policy and be the final voice on complex judgments, including subscription revenue recognition.
• Lead statutory reporting and filings in every jurisdiction in which POLITICO operates, in partnership with our external accountants.
• Own the financial governance and control framework (ICFR), and serve as the main contact for external auditors and Internal Audit.
• Oversee tax accounting, transfer pricing and indirect tax compliance with external tax advisers.
• Partner with tax and legal on international structure, entity set-up, and the financial unwinding, liquidation or roll-up of legacy and redundant entities.
• Support acquisitions end to end, from financial due diligence and quality of earnings through to post-deal integration.
• Lead purchase accounting, including purchase price allocation, valuation of identifiable intangibles and annual goodwill impairment testing.
• Lead the accounting for disposals and restructurings, including carve-out financials and discontinued operations.
• Drive automation of finance processes in Workday and the order-to-cash flow from Salesforce through to the ledger.
• Build and develop the global accounting team, set clear accountabilities, and define how we measure the function’s success.

What You’ll Need:

Required

• 15+ years of progressive accounting experience at an international group, including several years as a regional or global Controller.
• A professional accounting qualification (CPA, ACA, ACCA, CIMA or equivalent) and a degree in accounting, finance or a related field.
• Strong understanding of the accounting principles under both IFRS and US GAAP.
• Experience consolidating a multi-entity, multi-currency group into a large corporate parent, whether in industry or in an audit practice.
• Proven ownership of an internal control framework over financial reporting and of external audits.
• Strong revenue recognition experience (IFRS 15 and ASC 606), ideally with subscription, advertising or events revenue.
• Working knowledge of transfer pricing and international tax, enough to shape structure and challenge advisers. You do not need to be a tax specialist.
• Experience leading finance teams across countries and time zones, including a regular early-morning overlap with our Brussels hub.

Preferred

• Hands-on experience with acquisitions, disposals or carve-outs, including purchase accounting and discontinued operations.
• Workday Financials and Salesforce experience, and a record of automating close and reporting.
• Familiarity with Belgian GAAP, and additional European languages.

Compensation: $250,000 - $275,000 annual salary.The final salary offered will be based on factors including relevant experience, skills, and qualifications.

We value our people. Click here for more on what we offer and what it’s like to work for POLITICO.

Let’s keep in touch. You can view our list of open positions here. We hope to see your application soon!

About Us.

POLITICO illuminates the forces shaping global power. Since 2007, we have delivered intelligence that anticipates tomorrow's headlines, not reports on yesterday's news. As politics has increasingly become the defining force of our era, our work has never been more vital.

Cabinet secretaries and Ministers start their mornings with our analysis. CEOs shape strategy around our reporting. Advocacy leaders rely on our insights to move policy. We deliver the straightforward facts and clear-eyed analysis they need to navigate the most complex political landscape of our lifetimes.

Our 1,100+ publishing professionals across the world's key democratic capitals—Washington, Brussels, London, Paris, Berlin, Sacramento, and New York—form the world's premier politics and policy newsroom. We tell the story of how power really works by explaining who wields it and how they plan to exercise it, connecting dots others miss and delivering scoops from sources others don't even know exist.

Innovation has always been a core tenet of our story. At launch, we bet that depth would trump scale, that talent would trump traffic, and that politics would become central to modern life. In 2011, we made another bet and launched POLITICO Pro to help decision-makers understand the business of government, transforming both how they shape government action and the business of journalism itself.

These bets have made POLITICO the most successful digital news startup of its generation and the indispensable resource for leaders who shape the future. Today, we are a rarity in media: a growing, profitable, and sustainable news organization.

POLITICO is a subsidiary of Axel Springer SE, a family-owned transatlantic media company headquartered in Berlin and New York. Axel Springer is dedicated to shaping the future of journalism in the free world, believing that a free and informed society is essential to democracy. The company’s guiding principles - first articulated as The Essentials by founder Axel Springer in the aftermath of World War II - remain a cornerstone of the company’s foundation today. Learn more about Axel Springer.

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