About the role
AirportLabs provides a complete suite of products that drive efficiency in aviation. Our products and solutions help major airports, airlines, and ground handlers worldwide solve the hardest operational problems, improve efficiency, and develop the value of their services.
We are looking for a Lead Controller to join our Finance team — someone who owns accounting operations end to end and ensures the financial data the entire company relies on is accurate, timely, and auditable.
AirportLabs operates 10 SaaS products sold through annual subscriptions, multi-year contracts, and — increasingly — usage-based pricing for our Data and AI products. Customers include airport operators, government-owned entities, airlines, and ground handlers across multiple geographies. This means revenue recognition is not straightforward: multiple performance obligations, deferred revenue schedules, partner channel economics, expansion billing, and usage-based metering all need to be accounted for correctly. Your job is to make sure they are — and that the financial controls, close cycle, and audit readiness behind them are robust.
This is a hands-on role. You will carry direct accounting responsibilities — revenue recognition, month-end close, financial controls, audit coordination — and handle the full accounting function yourself initially. As AirportLabs scales, you will build the team and the processes needed to scale the accounting function ahead of the business.
If you are an accountant who cares about getting the numbers right, wants to build scalable financial operations in a growing SaaS company, and finds satisfaction in clean audits, tight close cycles, and well-designed controls, we'd love to meet you.
Key data for you to consider
- Income: 2000–3000 GBP gross salary/month, depending on role fit and experience level
- Yearly profit share
- Various performance and behaviour-based bonuses
- In-office or hybrid (partial office & partial remote)
- Office location: Cluj-Napoca
- Contract based on PFA or SRL with our UK entity
- Paid holidays
Responsibilities
- Own revenue recognition for 10 SaaS products across all contract types — annual subscriptions, multi-year contracts, usage-based pricing, and partner channel deals — in compliance with IFRS 15 (or applicable standards).
- Manage the full accounts payable and receivable cycle: vendor invoice processing, customer invoicing, collections, AR ageing analysis, and cash collection. Airport authorities and government entities often have extended payment cycles — the process must handle this without losing visibility.
- Design, implement, and maintain internal financial controls: segregation of duties, approval authorities, reconciliation procedures, and exception handling.
- Own the month-end and year-end close: drive a 5-business-day close cycle, ensure all reconciliations are complete, and deliver management accounts (income statement, balance sheet, cash flow) on time.
- Allocate shared costs across products and departments to support product-level P&L analysis, unit economics modelling, and RPE (revenue per employee) tracking.
- Coordinate external audits: prepare audit schedules, respond to auditor queries, and ensure a clean/unqualified audit opinion.
- Own the accounting system (ERP/accounting software): configuration, integrations with CRM and billing platforms, and automation of recurring processes. Build the automation roadmap so manual workarounds are replaced before they break at scale.
Qualifications & skills
- 3+ years in accounting or financial control roles, ideally with exposure to a SaaS or subscription-based technology company.
- Knowledge of revenue recognition standards (IFRS 15 or ASC 606): multi-element arrangements, deferred revenue, and variable consideration.
- Experience managing the full accounting cycle: AP, AR, general ledger, reconciliations, month-end close, and year-end close.
- Experience with financial controls: segregation of duties, approval frameworks, and reconciliation procedures.
- Proficiency with accounting systems (Xero, QuickBooks, NetSuite, or similar).
- Experience with multi-currency accounting. Fluency in Romanian is mandatory for internal collaboration.
- Attention to detail: accounting errors compound and erode trust in financial data. Accuracy is non-negotiable.
- Ability to work under deadline pressure: close cycles and audit timelines are fixed.
- Bachelor's degree in accounting, finance, or a related field.
Nice to have
- Professional accounting qualification (ACA, ACCA, CIMA, CPA, or equivalent)
- Experience coordinating external audits and delivering clean audit opinions
- Familiarity with SOC 2 or ISO 27001 financial control requirements
- Experience with usage-based or consumption-based billing models and the revenue recognition complexity they create
- Experience with partner channel accounting: referral fees, reseller margins, and co-sell revenue recognition
- Familiarity with the aviation, airport, or transportation domain
- Experience with FinOps or cloud cost allocation in a SaaS environment
Our recruitment process
We will use a three-step process for the recruitment of this role:
- A first questionnaire on accounting fundamentals, SaaS revenue recognition, and financial controls with the candidates who have been selected based on the CV & motivation description.
- A first interview with the candidates who have been selected based on the questionnaire, where we will discuss accounting experience, your approach to revenue recognition and close cycle management, and relevant experience with audits and financial controls.
- A practical exercise will be sent over email to the candidates selected: you will receive a scenario involving SaaS contract data and be expected to produce a revenue recognition schedule and identify control considerations within 4 working days, then present your approach and output.
Career development
Should you be interested in further professional development, we will support you to boost your skills and capabilities. Being a product company, we have a wider breadth of departments and skills that may be attractive to you:
- Financial Planning & Analysis
- Finance Management
- Legal & Compliance
- Operations
- Top Management
We place efficiency at the core of our business. Our day-to-day efforts help improve the quality of passengers' travel experience worldwide.
We foster a values-driven culture; therefore, it is essential that colleagues who join our team abide by and uphold our company values: Assertiveness, Efficiency, Grit, Initiative, Kindness & Collaboration, Knowledge transfer, Openness, Ownership, Responsibility & Accountability, Predictability, Psychological safety, and Transparency.
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