Senior Manager, Internal Audit (m/f/d)

Role Summary

This is not a daily operations role. You are not in every posting and every invoice — the partner runs the

day-to-day. You operate in review and assurance mode, on a defined risk-based cycle, and you go deep

where the risk and the value are.

For every finding, you run the same loop:

Review. Examine the monthly numbers, the underlying bookings and the methods behind them —

substantively, not just for plausibility. Work from a risk-based review plan that you set and update:

high-risk accounts, new properties, unusual lease structures, new markets, material judgements.

Diagnose. Establish what is actually wrong and why. Distinguish a one-off keying error from a

systematic misapplication of a method from a genuine gap in guidance — the remedy is different in

each case.

Correct. Get it fixed in the current period: instruct and agree the correcting entries with the partner,

and in exceptional cases post or adjust yourself. Nothing material carries forward unresolved.

Standardise. Where the root cause is systematic, define the correct treatment as a binding group

standard — the accounting position, the booking logic, the required evidence, the responsible party

and the control that catches it next time.

Document. Write it into the group accounting manual and the relevant working instruction, in a form

the partner’s team can apply without asking you.

Enable. Walk the partner’s team through it, explain the business context behind the rule, and make

sure it is understood rather than merely received.

Re-test. Verify in the next cycles that the standard is being applied. Track it in your findings log until

it is demonstrably closed.

Your posture towards the partner is cooperative, not adversarial. You are their interface to Numa

and their access to business context — and at the same time the person who steers their output from

Numa’s perspective and holds the technical line. You carry a functional mandate to set accounting

requirements, with escalation to the CFO where they are not met

Key responsibilities

Monthly close review and assurance

Review the monthly numbers before they reach management reporting: P&L by property, entity,

brand and market, balance sheet, and the contribution margin cascade from CM1 through to

EBITDA and below

Perform substantive review of high-risk areas: accruals and cut-off, provisions, revenue recognition,

deferred revenue and prepayments, rent and lease accounting, intercompany, capitalisation, and

cost allocations

Reconcile the accounting record back to operational source data — PMS and booking data, PSP

and channel settlements, city tax, payroll — and investigate the differences rather than plugging

them

Challenge month-on-month and versus-budget movements that the numbers cannot explain, and

trace them to the underlying bookings

Own a documented sign-off gate: what has been reviewed, what was found, what was corrected,

and what remains open with an owner and a date

Accounting standards, methods and policy

Own Numa’s group accounting manual — the single, binding reference for how every material

transaction is treated across all entities and markets

Define and document technical positions on the areas that actually drive our numbers: lease

accounting and IFRS 16 across our Fixed, Variable, Hybrid and HMA structures; rent-free and

incentive periods; revenue recognition by booking channel; OTA commissions and payment fees;

city tax; bad debt; capitalisation of FF&E and pre-opening costs; franchise fee recognition

Ensure consistency between group IFRS reporting and local statutory accounts in every jurisdiction,

and own the reconciliation between them

Review controlling methods as rigorously as accounting ones: cost centre and property allocation

logic, cost splits across brands and business lines, and the definitional integrity of the KPIs built on

top of them

Assess the accounting implications of new business structures ahead of time — new markets, new

lease types, franchise arrangements and acquisitions — rather than after the first close

Provider governance and coordination

Act as the primary technical interface between Numa and our accounting partner: clear

requirements, clear priorities, clear feedback

Give the partner the business context they cannot see — new deals, contract changes, operational

events — so that bookings reflect economic reality

Maintain a quality scorecard: defect rates by area, recurring error patterns, timeliness against the

close calendar, and open findings — reviewed with the partner on a fixed cadence

Onboard new entities, properties and markets into the partner’s scope with a defined handover

standard

Escalate to the CFO where quality, timeliness or adherence to agreed standards falls short, with

evidence attached

Controls and data integrity

Build and maintain the reconciliation framework: what must be reconciled, by whom, how often, and

to what evidence standard

Design the segregation of duties between Numa and the partner so that review is genuinely

independent of preparation

Maintain the month-end checklist and balance sheet substantiation standard, and audit adherence

to both

Keep a findings and remediation log that gives the CFO an honest, current picture of accounting risk

Your Profile

This role requires genuine technical authority. You will be telling experienced accountants that their

treatment is wrong, and telling an auditor why our position is right. You need to be unarguable on the

substance.

A professional accounting qualification — Wirtschaftsprüfer, Steuerberater, ACA / ACCA, CPA,

Bilanzbuchhalter (IHK) or an equivalent recognised credential

A Big 4 audit background, minimum 3–4 years — you bring the audit methodology, the

professional scepticism, and the instinct for where errors hide

Strong German GAAP (and exposure to IFRS) expertise combined with practical knowledge

of local GAAP in European jurisdictions — you can move between the group view and the statutory

view without losing either

Demonstrated experience steering an outsourced accounting provider or a shared service

centre — you have enforced quality across an organisational boundary before and know what

actually works

Real depth in multi-entity, multi-jurisdiction structures: consolidation, intercompany, transfer pricing

mechanics, statutory-to-group reconciliation

Command of IFRS 16 and lease accounting in substance, not in theory — this is central to our P&L

ERP fluency and the ability to interrogate data directly rather than waiting for a report

The ability to write a clear, binding accounting instruction that a non-native-speaker team in another

country can apply correctly

A cooperative but firm working style: builds the relationship, gives the context, and still holds the line

on quality

Fluent English (our working language) and willingness to travel regularly to our accounting partner

and to Numa hubs

Nice to have

Hospitality, real estate, retail or another multi-site operating environment

Experience preparing a company for institutional-grade reporting and audit standards

Post-merger integration experience on the accounting side

SQL or BI capability for independent testing and sampling