Director; m​/f​/d Financial Planning

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Hapag-Lloyd's global liner shipping business is modernizing its financial planning and monthly closing across a large, enterprise platform (>600 users, multiple use cases). While moving to the cloud, we introduce new controlling concepts and steering hierarchies, and are impacted by the digital transformation of adjacent systems (FIS, S/4

HANA, central DWH EDWARD). Your task is to drive the robust, user-centric transformation of our financial planning and result platform making controlling data reliable, interoperable across BI tools, and AI-ready. With your people and process mindset, you lead a diverse team, listen to the Future Controller’s needs and partner with Controlling Systems and Data Analytics and the central IT and Analytics (DIA) functions to make this happen.

• Be a strong leader to your diverse team and coach them on their journey from BI to software engineering. Provide clear feedback, and a compelling growth vision.
• Influence and align stakeholders across Business, IT, and Analytics; communicate trade-offs and practice lateral collaboration to secure decisions and momentum.
• Ensure operational excellence, streamlined processes, and effective collaboration within Controlling and across departments.

• Own and govern the enterprise planning platform (BOARD preferred) and its integration with SAP S/4
  
  HANA, FIS, and the central DWH, ensuring robust ETL/data modeling and intuitive design.
• Connect cloud-based source systems and orchestrate data pipelines so data is consistent, governed, and usable across BI tools and AI/analytics use cases.
• Ensure smart interface management and maintain a coherent architecture and cost-effective operations. Ensure data contracts, lineage, and security are clearly defined and stable in alignment with Controlling Analytics, FIS, and SAP teams.

• Inherit and professionalize existing codebase by establishing modern development practices: coding standards, documentation, CI/CD, automated testing, version control, code reviews, release management.
• Run the platform as a professional product, balancing innovation with simplicity—avoid over-engineering.

• Implement new business logic and support geo, organizational, and steering hierarchy changes while simplifying processes; align planning and result processes with adjacent digital initiatives.
• Replace traditional reporting with automated solutions for monthly reporting, budgeting, and forecasting where the Business needs it; elevate data quality, transparency, and timeliness.

• Partner with Controllers: listen deeply, clarify the WHY–HOW–WHAT of requirements, challenge current practices, and co-design practical future ways of working.
• Translate business outcomes into system capabilities that are intuitive to adopt and straightforward to operate.

• University degree in business, finance, logistics, engineering, or a related field (or equivalent experience).
• Proven experience leading international, diverse teams; excellent stakeholder management and communication skills
• Customer-centric mindset; excellent listening and consulting skills; ability to distill complex requirements into clear product increments.
• Solid background in enterprise financial planning platforms and BI/analytics; experience with transformations involving SAP S/4
  
  HANA and data warehouses is a plus.
• Strong understanding of ETL, data modeling, Dev Ops, and software engineering best practices for governance and coaching (hands-on coding not primary).
• Familiarity with planning/BI tools (e.g., BOARD, Qlik, Power
  
  BI), experience with modern cloud data platforms like Databricks preferred.
• Analytical and strategic mindset; ability to balance innovation with simplicity and maintainability; resilience under change
• Fluent English (written and spoken);
  German is a plus.

• The opportunity to introduce solutions that you are individually convinced of, and to constantly take on new challenges…