Description
: Risk Mgmt & Controls Senior Manager - Secondment
Work Level: WL2C
Location: Kingston
Reports To: Global Risk & Controls Director
Business Context
Unilever’s Group Chief Accountant’s Department (GCAD) stewards the global financial controls framework, ensuring compliance with internal and external regulations including Sarbanes Oxley (SOX). The Controls Innovation and Operations Lead partners across Markets, Finance, Technology, Process Excellence, and the Control Service Centre (CSC) to deliver a future fit, simplified, digitally enabled controls environment.
This combined role integrates strategic controls innovation with hands on control execution and operations, driving both transformation and operational excellence.
Purpose of the Role
To lead the design, innovation, execution, and continuous improvement of Unilever’s global financial controls environment. The role acts as both the strategic architect of financial controls—defining frameworks, regulatory interpretation, automation strategy—and the operational leader ensuring highquality control execution, documentation, testing readiness, team capability, and audit alignment.
The position ensures Unilever maintains a robust, compliant, simplified, and future fit controls landscape that enables reliable financial reporting, operational efficiency, and strengthened governance.
Key Responsibilities
1. Global Controls Framework Leadership & Innovation
1. Own and evolve Unilever’s Global Controls Framework, including control intent, standards, documentation requirements, and evidence expectations.
2. Act as the inhouse expert on financial controls, SOX, regulatory changes, and audit standards, ensuring requirements are interpreted and operationalised correctly across the group.
3. Drive innovation through simplification, automation, digital tooling, and predictive capabilities to improve control effectiveness.
4. Partner with Process Excellence, Technology, Cyber Security, and Markets to embed control by design into transformation initiatives (, S/4, access governance, automation programmes).
2. Operations Leadership & Control Execution
5. Oversee high quality execution of financial controls across core business processes: Record to Report, Source to Pay, Order to Cash, Make to Deliver.
6. Ensure operational teams understand SOX requirements, documentation standards, management review expectations, and testing protocols.
7. Lead a team of analysts delivering global control operations, ensuring consistency and adherence to the control standards.
8. Identify operational pain points and redesign controls where necessary to remove inefficiencies or clarify responsibilities.
3. SOX Compliance, Testing Readiness & Audit Engagement
9. Support SOX scoping, risk assessments, remediation, and reporting processes.
10. Lead interactions with external auditors—walkthroughs, evidence requests, management testing reliance, and regulatory updates.
11. Ensure control operators and reviewers provide complete, accurate, and timely SOX compliant evidence.
12. Manage issue identification, remediation, and retesting, ensuring continuous improvement and closure of audit findings.
4. Governance, Stakeholder Influence & Reporting
13. Chair and participate in governance forums across GCAD, Finance, Tech, CSC, and Process Excellence.
14. Provide insights into emerging risks, regulatory trends, and opportunities to strengthen the control environment.
15. Prepare and present control status reports to leadership, including SOX compliance status, issue trends, and improvement initiatives.
5. Capability Building & Culture Enablement
16. Deliver training to control operators, reviewers, markets, and testing teams to ensure consistent understanding and application of control principles.
17. Build enterprise wide awareness of controls fundamentals and strengthen the global control culture.
18. Develop and mentor talent within the controls organisation, ensuring strong succession and analyst growth.
Experience & Qualifications
Essential
19. Qualified accountant (ACA, ACCA, CIMA) or similar.
20. Deep experience in internal controls, SOX, audit, or risk management.
21. Strong understanding of Unilever’s or similar organisations’ business processes (RTR, PTP, OTC, MTD).
22. Proven ability to manage complex, multistakeholder projects and influence senior stakeholders.
Desirable
23. Experience driving digital and automation initiatives within ICFR or risk functions.
24. Broad exposure to SAP and financial systems.
25. Experience in multicultural, multilocation team leadership.
Key Stakeholders
26. Group Chief Accountant & GCAD Leadership
27. Internal & External Audit
28. Finance Business Groups & Markets
29. Process Excellence and Technology teams
30. Control Service Centre (CSC)
Success Measures
31. Strong SOX compliance with reduced audit findings.
32. Standardised, simplified, and automated controls environment.
33. High quality, timely control execution across global processes.
34. Strengthened capability and control culture across the organisation.
35. Effective cross functional collaboration and governance delivery.