Challenger Limited is an ASX-listed investment management firm managing $120 billion in assets (as at 30 June 2026). Life with us is fast moving and always exciting. Together we’re driving to deliver our vision to provide our customers with financial security for a better retirement.

We achieve this goal by providing a work environment where people from diverse backgrounds, with a range of skills and experiences can contribute and succeed.

Senior Accountant — Financial Control and Reporting

Sydney CBD

• Take genuine ownership of complex reporting across month-end, statutory accounts and balance sheet control.

• Resolve accounting issues at the source by investigating anomalies, tracing data origins, and understanding how data moves through interconnected systems.

• Based in our Sydney office, you’ll enjoy flexible working (3 days in the office, 2 from home)
• We’re also open to considering applicants currently in Australia on a Working Holiday visa.

About the role

You’ll join Challenger’s Life Insurance and Investments Financial Control team, working with colleagues across Group Financial Control, Tax, Business Performance, Risk, Actuarial and our investment teams. It’s a broad, technically varied role where you’ll have the opportunity to see the bigger picture and take real ownership of reporting outcomes.

You’ll own reporting for a group of entities and be expected to investigate issues independently, form a view and drive them through to resolution. You’ll also develop an end-to-end understanding of how information flows from source systems through the general ledger and into financial reporting and how an issue in one area can affect the wider organisation.

In practice, you’ll:

• Own month-end reporting, balance sheet reconciliations and consolidation entries for your entities, making sure issues are understood and resolved.

• Prepare statutory financial statements and disclosures, including half-year and year-end reporting that contributes to Challenger Limited’s ASX reporting

• Investigate variances and anomalies by comparing source data, understanding system flows and tracing issues back to their root cause

• Take the lead on unfamiliar or complex accounting matters: establish the facts, research the relevant requirements, test possible explanations and form a considered view before bringing in others or recommending a way forward.

• Consider how accounting decisions affect management reporting, statutory accounts, tax and audit, and provide auditors with clear, well-supported evidence

• Strengthen controls, simplify processes and remove unnecessary manual work or recurring issues

• Explain accounting issues and recommendations clearly, while sharing knowledge and supporting others across the team

What you’ll bring

You might be a good fit if you’re a technically strong accountant who enjoys pulling things apart to understand how they fit together and finding ways to rebuild them better. You’ll be comfortable and excited to tackle unfamiliar problems, deciding how to investigate and using your accounting fundamentals to form a considered view. Support will be available, but you won’t need a step-by-step process or rely on others to tell you what to look at next.

You’ll be CA or CPA qualified, or hold an equivalent qualification, with strong experience across statutory reporting, financial statement preparation, consolidations, balance sheet ownership and financial control.

We’d also value:

• End-to-end experience preparing financial statements and disclosures, supported by strong balance sheet and reconciliation capability.

• An understanding of how source systems feed the general ledger and how accounting decisions can affect reporting across an organisation.

• Exposure to consolidations, multiple entities or another environment where issues can have broader downstream impacts.

• Examples of strengthening controls, simplifying processes, removing manual work or fixing recurring issues at their source.

• Clear, structured communication and confidence using Excel or other tools to investigate issues, test assumptions and support your recommendations.

• Strong accounting fundamentals, curiosity and the confidence to learn unfamiliar areas will be important

Desirable

• Experience in financial services or another complex or regulated organisation would be helpful, as would some exposure to Australian income tax and GST

 Why Challenger?

Working at Challenger means being part of a connected team that enjoys what they do. We’re small enough to move quickly, and big enough to make meaningful change.

We support your growth and development, offer flexibility, and value the unique contributions people bring.

We provide access to a range of exclusive employee benefits that will support you both personally and professionally and a hybrid work environment including. 

• Competitive Discretionary bonus scheme. 
• Employee share plan. 
• Eighteen weeks paid leave for all new parents with flexibility on when, and how, parental leave is taken. 
• Challenger Day – one extra day off every year in recognition of the effort our people make. 
• Subsidised on-site café and fantastic central location a stone's throw from Martin Place Metro 
• Additional support leave (fertility treatment leave, gender affirmation leaves). 
• Extra superannuation contributions. 
• Access to Fitness Passport

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Challenger's employee value proposition guides how we work: Grow and realise your potential, supporting each other, stronger together and making things happen. Our culture encourages curiosity, considered thinking and meaningful contribution, with opportunities to build a broad and rewarding career.

We are committed to fostering a safe, inclusive and respectful workplace where people of all backgrounds, identities and ways of thinking can thrive, and promoting flexible working to support work-life balance. 

Challenger is proud to be a Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) Employer of Choice for Gender Equality, a Family Friendly Workplace and recognised as a Bronze Employer in the Australian Workplace Equality Index (AWEI), the national benchmark for LGBTQ+ workplace inclusion.

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