Sobre esta vaga de Executive Finance Director, EMEA na AKQA

AKQA · Presencial · London

At AKQA (part of WPP), we believe in the imaginative application of art and science to create beautiful ideas, products, and services. With an entrepreneurial and collaborative approach, we design adaptive digital solutions that capture the imagination and drive exceptional results for our clients.

We partner with our clients to solve complex challenges and shape a better future through world-leading work, constant innovation, and a commitment to excellence.

The Executive Finance Director, EMEA is responsible for defining and driving the financial strategy and operations across the region. As a commercial thought leader, you will shape the financial future of our regional operations by combining rigorous financial planning, commercial acumen, and operational excellence. You will be a trusted advisor to the executive leadership team, providing the financial insight needed to support decision-making, evaluate investments, and optimise overall financial performance.

You will nurture finance as a strategic partner to the business across EMEA, collaborating with studio finance leads to elevate our overall financial capabilities. Your role will be pivotal in strengthening financial discipline, fostering knowledge-sharing, and ensuring consistency in commercial excellence across the region.

You will also guide and mentor the finance team, ensuring best-in-class approaches to budgeting, forecasting, risk management, and commercial negotiations. Your leadership will elevate our agency’s financial capabilities, inspire our teams, and drive long-term commercial success.

ROLE REQUIREMENTS

Financial and Strategic Leadership: Define and drive AKQA EMEA’s financial vision and strategy, developing long-term financial plans that support sustainable growth, innovation, and profitability.
Unifying the Finance Discipline: Create direction and cohesion for the finance and accounting teams across the region, fostering a sense of collective identity and shared purpose.
Reporting & Analysis: Monthly, quarterly and annual reporting and analysis to regional and global AKQA and WPP leadership.
Compliance & Audit: Supporting WPPC Controllership with any analysis or context around financial statements and internal audit controls.
Risk Management: Proactively identify financial risks across diverse markets, implementing controls and processes to mitigate risk
Regional Performance, Budgeting & Forecasting: Provide guidance and oversight to studio leadership teams across the region, ensuring rigorous budget management, accurate forecasting, and proactive risk mitigation.
Process Improvement: Analyze and optimize financial processes to enhance operational efficiency, strengthen controls, and leverage data automation.
Collaboration with Executives: Partner closely with the EMEA Executive team and CEO to evaluate investments, support strategic decision-making, and optimize financial performance.
Commercial and Client Partnering: Take an active, hands-on role in shaping commercial agreements, pricing strategies, and contract negotiations for high-profile regional clients.
Team Leadership & Development: Lead, mentor, and develop finance teams (including controllers and accountants) across the region, fostering professional growth and a business-partnering mindset.

QUALITIES & CHARACTERISTICS

Proven Leadership Experience: Extensive experience in senior financial leadership roles within creative agencies, digital consulting, technology, or related professional services environments.
Strategic and Commercial Acumen: Strong understanding of agency business models, client profitability, and the levers that drive commercial success.
Analytical and Solution-Oriented: Passionate about leveraging data to solve complex business challenges, with a track record of driving operational efficiency and margin improvement.
Exceptional Communicator: Strong ability to translate complex financial concepts into clear, actionable insights for non-finance leaders and creative partners.
Collaborative and Influential: A natural mentor and team builder who inspires colleagues, partners effectively with creative leads, and fosters cross-disciplinary trust.
Entrepreneurial and Agile: Comfortable navigating regional market complexities, adapting to changing economic landscapes, and driving financial agility.
Resilient and Adaptive: Maintain composure and precision under tight reporting deadlines and during periods of organizational change.
Inclusive and Empathetic: Champion diverse perspectives and foster an environment where finance is seen as a supportive and collaborative partner.
Track Record of Success: Proven success in managing multi-market EMEA portfolios, negotiating complex client contracts, and leading high-performing finance teams.

Explore our extensive range of benefits here

We believe great work happens when we're together, fostering creativity, collaboration, and connection. That's why we’ve adopted a hybrid approach including required in-office days. If you require accommodations or flexibility, please discuss this with the hiring team during the interview process.

AKQA is an equal opportunity employer and considers applicants for all positions without discrimination or regard to particular characteristics. We are committed to fostering a culture of respect in which everyone feels they belong and has the same opportunities to progress in their careers.

About WPP

WPP is the trusted growth partner for the world’s leading brands. We unite cutting-edge media intelligence and data solutions, world-class creativity, next-generation production, transformative enterprise solutions and expert strategic counsel in a single company – powered by exceptional talent and our agentic marketing platform, WPP Open, to help our clients navigate change, capture opportunity and deliver transformational growth. For more information, visit WPP.com.

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Sobre a AKQA

CORE VALUES

Our founding values guide our work and the philosophy of our firm:

Innovation – pioneering ideas combined with the application of technology, to achieve lasting improvements in performance for our clients.

Service – outstanding service to our clients and colleagues, so we retain exceptional people and create trust-based relationships with clients.

Quality – adhere to the highest professional standards and superior quality.

Thought – recommending the best solutions through the most rigorous thinking process.

TEAMWORK

AKQA provides the highest quality ideas and innovation services to clients around the world. Our consistent track-record of results achieved for clients have set our firm apart. Through our focus on our core values, thought-leadership, rigorous delivery, and industry initiatives, AKQA is today one of the world’s most influential companies. Our goal is to become a high-performance environment where the most talented people flourish. With our perfectionist approach, people join AKQA for the opportunity to do the best work of their careers.

We create digital products, services and immersive experiences that are useful, usable, delightful and enjoyed by millions. We employ a rapid ideation and prototyping process that focuses on getting pilots into market quickly, helping clients make a sustained impact, increase their relevance and expand their connection. By embracing a pioneering approach that continues to lead and define the industry, we deliver cohesive blueprints that fulfil audience needs and surpass business goals.

LONG-TERM COMMITMENT

AKQA is committed to helping our team develop into the best possible practitioners and to providing them with an unparalleled foundation for their career. We help develop well-rounded professionals acquire leadership skills more quickly than at other organisations. Our employees benefit from the trusted long-term nature of our client relationships as well as the cultural alignment between the client and our own organisation, creating an optimum environment to deliver the work without any compromises.

ORGANISED TO SUCCEED

The core motivation at AKQA is product excellence. Although we are part of WPP, AKQA operates as an independent firm. Organically grown, our team works as a single firm, without geographic division. This means we can bring the best resources from our network to provide solutions for our clients.

In addition to our own Future Lions initiative, we have formed partnerships with many of the world’s leading universities so we can hire their best graduates. We combine youth and energy with maturity and experience to form a community that has a unique diversity of knowledge and exceptional professional judgement.

DEVELOPMENT

In addition to on-the-job training, AKQA offers a menu of training through the AKQA Academy and WPP Professional Development. This comprehensive curriculum of formal training is designed to equip our team with the substantive creative, engineering, business acumen, communications, management and analytical skills required to have professionally rewarding careers. AKQA Academy and WPP Professional Development courses are taught by leaders in their fields including AKQA’s own senior team and respected external experts.

To maintain the continuous focus on our core values, and provide a clear career path for our team, all of our Managing Directors and Executive Partners are promoted from within AKQA.

All AKQA employees and clients are invited to participate in the AKQA Insight and AKQA Tech.Insight thought leadership programmes. These comprise a series of informative lectures and Q&A sessions with authors, artists, athletes, scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs who are recognised leaders in their respective disciplines.

DIVERSITY

We believe that diversity is vital to AKQA’s ability to provide our clients with the best recommendations and are committed to fostering a varied and inclusive work environment. We provide our employees with the canvas, tools and confidence to help them advance their careers in a way that best suits them.

SUSTAINABILITY

At AKQA we believe everything a company does should be about taking the responsibility to be respectful towards the community and the environment. We consider community and pro-bono work to be an important commitment of our employees. We encourage our team to devote their skills to a broad range of pro-bono and community activities, working with myriad charitable and not-for-profit organisations. AKQA is part of WPP’s Sustainability initiatives. WPP is ranked no. 49 in an annual round-up of the World’s Greenest Companies.