Senior Finance Manager at Climate Tech Startup (Remote | English)

🌍 Finance Manager at Climate Tech Startup (Remote | English)

Location : Fully Remote; All Southern African and Eastern European locations welcome
Employment Type : Full-Time employee, on an annual contract term, with option to renew
Languages Required : English proficiency is mandatory
Experience Required : Senior, with in-depth technical finance and tax expertise, and a minimum of 8 years of experience in a finance role
Salary Range : Market-related (by region), based on experience
Reports to : OET Board
Works Closely With : Head of People, Admin Team, and Board
Work Travel Requirements : None
Start Date Goal : 1 September 2026 (or sooner; notice-dependent)
🧭 About Us

We’re a remote-first, mission-driven, registered non-profit, comprising around 50 highly-skilled and motivated professionals from all around the world! Our culture is built on trust, autonomy, and collaborative professionalism.

We thrive in a fast-paced, distributed environment, where communication is clear, empathy is second nature, and each of us takes full ownership of our work. We work independently, but also collaborate easily when appropriate.

Open Energy Transition ( OET ) is a non-profit organization advancing the global energy transition by developing innovative open-source tools and data solutions for energy and grid planning.

Our vision is to make open approaches the global standard by 2030, enabling energy planning that is more accessible, transparent, and effective.

This shift is essential to better guide trillion dollar worth public and private investment toward affordable, sustainable, and secure energy systems. This is not a distant aspiration; our work is already being adopted by leading system operators, regulators, and philanthropic partners.

We are currently looking for an experienced Senior Finance Manager to support our entire team.

To learn more about OET and our team, you can visit our website, and browse around our Handbook.
🎯 About the Role

In this role, you'll be working closely with our People Team, Admin Team, and Board, supporting our general finance and accounting, controller, and business administration activities. The purpose of this role is to help ensure accurate financial operations, maintain compliance with German accounting requirements, support monthly payroll processes, work with our external vendors, review agreements, and support day-to-day bookkeeping and reporting.

Exciting activities include the transition to a new accounting system and ERP system and the setup of several improved internal controlling/ operation solutions.

You'll work closely with our Board for general finance-related matters, reporting, and forecasting, as well as with our Head of Peoplefor payroll and other admin.

The ideal candidate is comfortable working autonomously and fully remotely as part of a dedicated, distributed team, and enjoys building efficient, functional, scalable, and transferrable financial processes that support mission-driven work.

Important: The role requires someone with confidence in handling the responsibilities listed below autonomously and proactively, rather than seeking guidance and training.

This is a position that requires a high degree of discretion, attention-to-detail, self-management, professionalism, and confidentiality. Language proficiency in English is required, as this is our working language. Proficiency in German is a bonus, for communicating with certain external vendors, such as our tax consultants in Germany.

We’re all about transparency, and want to give you the best possible opportunity to prepare for any potential interviews. To learn a bit more about the people you’ll be working most closely with, click here:

- Our CEO, Max Parzen

- Our Head of People, Quintin Coetzee

- Our Admin Team

- Our Board

🛠️ Your Key Responsibilities

- Proactively, autonomously, and confidently take ownership of the Finance function at OET

- Maintain accurate financial records , includin