Financial Project Officer (intern)

• Form: Internship
• Starting: April 2023
• Location: Amsterdam, the Netherlands
• Salary: €550 per month
• Required documents: Up-to-date Linkedin profile & Motivation Letter (max 1 A4)

At reNature, we love driven people of all sorts. Are you driven to build a perfect P&L? Creating slick formulas in excel? Fascinated to learn all the ins- and outs of the financial execution? Excited by structures and processes? And you would like to add some experience in a fast-growing scale-up? Read on.

Nature is at a point of no return. Today’s industrialized farming threatens our planet and humanity. It accounts for 1/4 of global greenhouse gas emissions, and it’s highly vulnerable to climate change. We need to change the system.

This is why reNature promotes, designs, and implements regenerative practices to bring nature back into agriculture, restore depleted land, improve the economic resilience of farmers, and tackle climate change.

reNature’s goal is to create regenerative agriculture systems at scale. To realize this, we collaborate with a growing number of farmers, communities, and organizations worldwide that want to drive the transition towards regenerative farming systems. reNature’s aim is to help them realize: net-positive impacts in environmental, social, and economic domains. We do this by bringing together the required resources, such as expert knowledge (farmers, scientists), funding, and off-takers, creating the conditions for success and scale. 

What will you do?

You will join an international scale-up that has embarked on a journey to make regenerative agriculture mainstream. We are expecting to grow fast in the coming years. To accommodate this growth, the Finance Department needs to be raised to the next level.

This is easily said, but not easily done. 

Together with the Finance Director, you will be improving and automating the project finance function, while simultaneously executing all the day-to-day accounting & administrative tasks. In the morning you might be analyzing the variance between actuals and budgets for a huge non-profit project in the Amazon together with a Senior Project Manager, just before lunch you need to book all incoming bills in our accounting system to be on time for our monthly reporting process, in the early afternoon you are working together with the Finance Director to automate our project reporting process, while in the late afternoon, you are following up with clients who have unpaid invoices.

This role is perfect for a young financial who wants to learn all the ins- and outs of the financial execution and management of a fast-growing scale-up. There is plenty of room to learn while working, but before you start you already need to love Excel, understand the difference between revenue and cash, and have a natural inclination to put everything into structures and processes.

You will be under the direct guidance of the Finance Director and will spend your time as follows:

• 50% of your time is dedicated to Project Control
  • Leading and improving the (financial) project control processes;
  • Validating project budgets that are submitted by project managers;
  • Monitoring and analyzing variances of the project budgets and actuals;
  • Preparing project reporting for internal and external stakeholders;
  • Monitoring the profitability of the total project portfolio;
  • Being the financial go-to person for the project management team.
    
• 30% of your time is dedicated to Accounting & Administration
  • Booking supplier bills;
  • Sending and following up on client invoices;
  • Preparing payments in our bank;
  • Processing paperwork;
  • Booking monthly manual accounting entries;
  • Assisting with the month-end closing activities;
  • Improving (financial) processes.

• 20% of your time is dedicated to ad-hoc tasks
  • Assisting with funding opportunities for our projects;
  • Ordering lunch, office supplies, and other miscellaneous items;

You:

• Love to organize processes in the most efficient and precise way;
• Want to be a mastermind with Excel and Google Sheets;
• Are great at spotting challenges, because you love finding solutions;

• Get excited about finding the balance between impact & financial performance;
• Care about making the world a better place, lead by example, and inspire others to act;
• Enjoy a good discussion, but always keep it respectful, whether talking with a farmer, client, or team member;

And you have:

• Educational background in accounting, business, finance, or a related field.
• Previous (internship) experience in a financial or project management role is a plus. Also, experience at a start-up or scale-up is a plus.

• Decent accounting knowledge (P&L, B/S, and CF are concepts that you understand).
• Great Excel skills (sumifs, vlookup, and Pivot tables are all familiar to you).
• Attention to detail; you are responsible for financially fact-checking your own work.
• Flexibility and creativity; you will be working in a dynamic start-up environment with little structure.
• Proactivity and independence; you need to be able to identify what you need to complete your work, ask what you need from others, and work ahead to avoid potential bottlenecks.

• Structured way of working; we try to avoid too many ad-hoc tasks and aim to put all our work into processes that we can use for scaling the company;
• Residence in the Netherlands and a valid working visa or equivalent. Working from the office several days per week is required to be able to fulfill this position effectively. 
• We have a preference for applications without a thesis-writing component.

And we offer you:

• An organization that values diversity and equality above everything else;
• A flexible working environment;

• A young and diverse team of impact-driven individuals;
• An organization at the forefront of the regenerative transition of agriculture;
• A team with an international presence and ambition;
• A team that cares more about your experience, personality, and mindset than your CV;
• Welcoming feedback and improvements to make your working with us more enjoyable
• A shared love for what we do.

Recruitment process:

1. Interview
   1. with the Finance Director
   2. 30 minutes (online)
   3. invitation in week 11 and an interview in week 11 or 12 (ideally)
2. Business case and interview
   1. with the Finance Director and COO
   2. 90 minutes (Amsterdam office)
   3. invitation in week 12 and an interview in week 13 (ideally)
3. Last interview
   1. With the CEO
   2. 15 minutes (online)
   3. invitation in week 13 and interview in week 13 (ideally)

Do you see yourself in the text above, and are you excited to apply for this creative and exciting position? Then please fill in our Typeform to apply.

reNature is an equal opportunity employer, and we are committed to diversity as well as fostering an inclusive working environment. Applications are welcome from all qualified candidates without distinction on the grounds of race, colour, sex, national origin, age, religion, disability, sexual orientation and gender identity. All applications will be treated with the strictest confidentiality.