Financial Compliance Manager

VSO is the world’s leading international organisation working through volunteers to create a fair world for everyone. We focus on people who are marginalised or excluded, including those living in poverty, people with disabilities or illness, and those facing discrimination, violence, disasters, disease, and conflict.

VSO places these individuals at the centre of its work as primary actors and agents of change. We work with communities to identify their priorities, opportunities, and solutions, supporting locally led and sustainable change.

Our Approach

VSO’s Volunteering for Development (VfD) approach supports vulnerable and marginalised people to claim their rights and drive lasting change. It addresses the root causes of vulnerability and marginalisation through three core approaches: social inclusion and gender, social accountability, and resilience. These approaches underpin our work in inclusive education, health, resilient livelihoods and peace building.

About the Job

VSO is a lead implementer of the Internship Opportunities for Young Women program (iWork), financed by the Mastercard Foundation. The program will be implemented in Ethiopia across Amhara, Oromia, and Harari regional states, as well as the Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa city administrations. iWork aims to create internship opportunities for 24,000 financially disadvantaged young people, with a primary focus on young women. The program also promotes inclusion by reaching persons with disabilities, refugees, internally displaced people, and returnees. Through internships, iWork aims to help young women build the skills and experience they need to access dignified and fulfilling work, contributing to poverty reduction and an improved quality of life.

VSO Ethiopia is recruiting a Finance and Compliance Manager for iWork program.

Role Purpose:

Provide effective grant finance & operations coordination across the VSO’s three assigned clusters including risk management, compliance, and donor reporting in compliance with VSO policies, quality assurance standards, donor requirements, local laws and legislations. The role directly manages the Cluster Finance Officers and technical coordination and accompaniment to ensure cluster-level grant compliance and effective operation.

Tasks Responsibilities

 Financial Compliance

• Implement VSO’s financial processes and tools to ensure financial compliance
• Ensure strong financial control mechanisms are in place to distribute donor’s funds in a most secure way to the interns, the partners, and to deliver the activities.
• Assess potential financial risks, maintain the risk register
• Engage with the PMU, the VSO Finance Manager, and the Global VSO Finance Team to validate the risk assessment and relevant mitigating measures
• Prevent financial fraud and other misconduct
• Coordinate with the Global Audit team to ensure financial and risks audits are carried out as often as necessary
• Monitor financial risks and implement mitigating measures as needed
• Anticipate changes in the operating environment and ensures control mechanisms remain unaffected and efficient.
• Support Finance Manager PMU and PIL to communicate with donor for any compliance related queries (budget over/under spent, VSO costings and policies etc.)
• Review and monitor partners compliance: review documents and systems to ensure necessary compliance checks on project suppliers and partners are consistently and diligently conducted – design and implement corrective actions as needed (visits, training, etc.)
• File relevant documentation (contracts, budgets, guidelines and compliance requirement).

 Financial Coordination and Monitoring

• Provide finance coordination support across the three clusters to ensure they are done in line with VSO guidelines and donor rules or contractual requirements.
• Work with Finance & Operation Manager to consolidate cluster-level financial project budget, updating and adjusting budget and forecasts in the changing environment throughout project lifecycle using SUN system
• Monitor VSO’s project expenditure and income, reviewing in country shared costs, and monitoring to ensure compliance.
• Advise VSO’s Program Manager on variances in expenditure and income and follow up on corrective actions.
• Prepare VSO’s grant reconciliation and ensure full grant reconciliation reports for the SUN grant data and balances to the donor reports.
• Support in preparing donor report adapting to the changing needs; reconcile with SUN to ensure finance and programme reports are aligned.
• Support on tax, statutory and internal audits working closely with Head of Finance VSO Ethiopia to ensure audit findings are minimised.
• Consistently carry out cluster-level field visits, monitoring and documentation and escalation in line with VSO guidelines and donor requirements.
• Conduct regular financial monitoring for the three clusters; review vouchers and supporting documents, physical verification, third party verification (wherever required), field visit etc.
• Based on monitoring visit prepare and share financial monitoring report with Finance & Operations Manager, VSO Program Manager and Cluster team and ensure that clusters have followed up the recommendations.

Operations and Administrative Management

• Coordinate procurement, logistics, asset management, travel management, and administrative support functions.

Work Location: Addis Ababa  office with frequent travel to visit the cluster offices in Central Amhara and Eastern Amhara

Required Qualification

Education

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent knowledge and skills in finance, Accounting, Business Administration, Project Management, Economics, Management, or related fields.
• Professional certification in accounting or finance (ACCA, CPA, CIMA, or equivalent)  Master degree is an added advantage.

 Required Experience

• Significant progressive professional experience in finance, operations, grants management, or project management within donor-funded development programs.
• Demonstrated experience managing large and complex project budgets, financial systems, and operational processes.
• Strong experience in financial planning, budget monitoring, forecasting, expenditure tracking, and financial reporting.
• Proven experience supporting procurement, logistics, administration, and operational coordination for multi-regional projects.
• Experience working with international NGOs, development organizations, or consortium-managed projects.
• Proficient in grant financial management skills.
• Experience of provide grant finance coordination support with good knowledge of donor requirements preferably experience with Mastercard Foundations.
• Proficient in using financial software, accounting system and reporting packages especially Excel, SUN systems, Q&A XL.
• Proficient skills in coordination and capacity strengthening for field offices on grant and financial management.
• Ability to work in a multi-cultural project team in a global organisation.
• Demonstrated VSO Behavioural Competencies.
• Commitment to VSO’s vision, mission, values, code of conduct, people-first principles, volunteering for development approach.

 Travel Requirement: 

Ability to travel to project field locations and work away from the home base for up to 20% of time.

Equal Opportunities

VSO promotes equal opportunities and values a diverse workforce.

VSO is committed to a fair, transparent and merit-based recruitment. VSO does not charge any application, processing, training, interviewing, testing or other fee in connection with the application or recruitment process.