FinOps Associate

Valarian Technologies is a dual-use technology company building critical tools to safeguard the future in an era of evolving global security challenges. We're rethinking security beyond traditional military domains, addressing asymmetric threats that impact our technological advantage, economic strength, and democratic institutions.

We build Acra – the platform foundation for everything we do as a dual-use technology company. The platform’s name, rooted in the Greek word for citadel (or, fortress), reflects the design and purpose of our infrastructure-agnostic secure enclaves: protecting critical data. Some of the government and commercial workflows include: increased operational resiliency for mission-critical systems and functions; enabling organizations to more quickly and widely adopt emerging technologies while ensuring the integrity of their intellectual property; information flow during disaster response scenarios, and zero-trust / least-privilege environments for M&A, attorney-client privileged communications, etc. And we’ve only scratched the surface.

At our core, we're driven by a shared mission and a belief in making a tangible impact on our world. Whether you join our London HQ or the wider global organisation, you’ll be a part of collaborative, high-performing teams, creating cutting-edge software, platforms, and infrastructure.

What you’ll do

• Own day-to-day accounts payable, including supplier onboarding, invoice processing, coding, approval tracking, payment runs, and supplier queries.

• Support accounts receivable, including customer invoicing, payment tracking, reconciliations, and debt follow-up where needed.

• Manage employee expenses and company card processes, ensuring spend is correctly coded, approved, and supported by receipts.

• Maintain accurate finance records in the accounting system and ensure transactions are posted on a timely basis.

• Perform regular bank reconciliations and investigate unreconciled or unusual items.

• Help maintain clean supplier, customer, and general ledger data.

• Support the month-end close process, including journals, accruals, prepayments, fixed assets, deferred revenue, and balance sheet reconciliations.

• Help prepare monthly finance packs, management reports, and variance analysis.

• Track spend by department, vendor, and budget owner, highlighting unusual movements or missing approvals.

• Support cash flow tracking, burn analysis, and runway reporting.

• Help improve the accuracy, consistency, and timeliness of financial reporting.

• Help design and embed basic finance controls across purchasing, approvals, payments, expenses, billing, and reconciliations.

• Create and maintain simple, practical finance processes, checklists, and documentation.

• Follow up with budget owners and employees to ensure finance deadlines, approvals, and policies are met.

• Identify process gaps, control weaknesses, duplicated work, and recurring errors, then help fix them.

• Support the implementation or improvement of finance tools, workflows, and reporting processes.

• Help establish a culture where financial ownership, documentation, and accountability are taken seriously.

• Support VAT, tax, payroll, audit, and statutory reporting processes as required.

• Assist with preparation for investor reporting, board packs, R&D claims, or other external reporting where relevant.

• Maintain organised finance records and supporting documentation.

• Work with external accountants, auditors, payroll providers, and tax advisers as needed.

You are organised, reliable, and proactive. You do not wait for perfect instructions before getting started. You are comfortable asking questions, chasing people, and bringing order to messy situations. You care about accuracy, but you are also pragmatic and understand that growing businesses require pace, judgement, and continuous improvement.

You will enjoy this role if you like fixing broken processes, making finance run more smoothly, and seeing the direct impact of your work on how the company operates.

• Supplier invoices, expenses, payments, and reconciliations are processed accurately and on time.

• Month-end close is more structured, better documented, and completed faster.

• Core balance sheet reconciliations are reliable and regularly reviewed.

• Spend approvals, expense policies, and payment controls are clearer and better followed.

• Finance data is cleaner, easier to trust, and easier to report from.

• Budget owners understand what finance needs from them and are held accountable to deadlines.

• Recurring manual work, control gaps, and process failures have been identified and improved.

• The operational finance engine is running more reliably, allowing for strategic finance, reporting, planning, and supporting the wider business.

Our culture is built on inclusivity, compassion and flexibility – we want everyone to be empowered to achieve their goals at Valarian.

The world is changing, and so is our way of working. If you want to join us in the London office – it’s quite nice! – you’re welcome to; and if you’d prefer to work remotely, that’s fine too.

And as we build elegant solutions to simplify the complexities of business collaboration, we also simplify work life: contribute wherever and whenever allows you to be your best self. We trust each other to consistently raise the bar, and we challenge each other to continually reach new heights.