Director of Finance, Payments \& Finance Transformation

Description

We're seeking a dynamic, mission-critical mastermind to lead our Finance transformation agenda across global systems, data, and systems. This role isn't just about reporting; it's about building the foundation for hyper-scale growth and turning our Finance function into a data-driven, automated powerhouse.

You will be the key operator and visionary transforming how Kahoot! enables revenue growth, optimizes our subscription payments, and safeguards the business: all while ensuring our global finance function is prepared for its next milestone!

Key Collaborations: Operating at the Center of the Action!

This role operates at the center of Kahoot!'s operating model, with key partnerships including:

• CFO & Finance Leadership: Shaping the transformation strategy and driving adoption across all Finance teams (Accounting, Commercial, Operations).
• Product & Engineering Teams: Defining the systems, data pipelines and integration, and subscription payment requirements needed to rocket fuel revenue and scale.
• Data & Analytics Teams: Ensuring our Finance data models are scalable, governed, and integrated into our enterprise architecture.
• Sales, Sales Operations & Customer Success: Integrate financial and billing data with CRM, business intelligence, and customer workflows.
• Payments & Vendor Partners: Managing relationships with billing, gateway, and risk vendors to optimize performance and cost

Core Responsibilities: Your Impact Zones!

Strategic Leadership & Transformation: You Drive Mindset and Capabilities Change

• Co-lead the development and high-impact execution of the Finance and payments transformation roadmap, aligned perfectly with our business growth and Finance vision.
• Identify opportunities to redesign workflows, deploy automation, and eliminate manual effort (we call it ditching the dull stuff!) across the entire CFO organization.
• Drive a cultural and capability shift toward Digital Finance, leading the charge on training, change management, and adoption

Analytics Enablement: You Power Up Actionable Insights

• Lead the analytics modernization charge, enabling Finance to evolve from static reports to proactive insights and predictive models.
• Embed tools and frameworks that reduce dependency on manual analysis, boosting our diagnostic capabilities.
• Deliver complex data analysis, stunning dashboarding, and insightful ad-hoc reporting to our leadership and key business partners.

Payments & Risk Strategy and Execution: You Deliver Real Value

• You are the owner of Kahoot!'s global payments stack strategy and execution! This includes SaaS billing platforms (like Recurly), payment gateways (Stripe, Adyen), and fraud prevention solutions.
• Collaborate with Product, Engineering and Customer Experience to optimize authorization rates, drastically reduce involuntary churn, and deliver a seamless checkout and renewal experience.
• Monitor payment cost trends and drive cost efficiency across provider contracts and global routes.
• Partner with vendors to pilot and roll out improvements to billing workflows, dunning logic, retries, and reconciliation
• Serve as Finance's subject matter expert on payment systems integrations and customer-level payment behavior
• Implement and evolve robust risk controls to stop fraud and chargebacks in their tracks!

Systems & Digital Infrastructure: You Enable Future Growth

• Partner with the CFO on the evaluation, deployment, and evolution of our Finance systems (ERP, Tax Engines, Billing, Reporting).
• Champion automation across core Finance processes, exploring RPA solutions, AI agents, and API integrations
• Lead governance of master data, systems documentation, and security protocols, keeping our data clean and safe.

Your Superpowers: Technical Expertise & Behaviors

Technical Fluency: You Lead by Example

• Tool Proficiency: You have expertise in modern Finance and analytics platforms (MS Power BI, ThoughtSpot, Recurly, HubSpot, MS Dynamics, Avalara, Google BigQuery).
• Coding & Automation: Practical knowledge of Python, SQL, or similar coding tools to automate workflows and build reusable datasets.
• AI Readiness: you leverage LLM tools, and have familiarity with RPA platforms and the orchestration of AI agents (for reconciliation, reporting, etc.) to augment Finance capability.

Core Competencies & Behaviors:

• Strategic Thinking - Connects dots across business, systems, and outcomes; anticipates needs and plans for scale
• Technical Leadership - Demonstrates depth across tools, payments, automation, and risk while lifting the capability of the team
• Operational Excellence - Designs repeatable, robust processes that improve accuracy, transparency, and speed
• Influence & Collaboration - Leads through influence across technical and business teams; earns trust and drives alignment
• Change Leadership - Champions adoption, training, and behavioral shifts toward automation and data-driven decision making
• Customer Empathy - Designs systems, reports, and payment experiences with end-user value and experience in mind

Success Factors:

Your success will be measured by hitting these mission goals:

• Transformation Execution: Roadmap milestones achieved with measurable impact (cycle time, adoption, scalability).
• Payments Optimization: Authorization rates improved, involuntary churn crushed, and cost-to-collect lowered.
• Data Enablement: Finance has structured, governed data and a reduced reliance on manual workarounds.
• Systems Maturity - ERP, billing, and reporting tools delivering consistent, automated, and governed outputs
• Fraud & Risk Management - Effective control frameworks in place to manage payment fraud and chargeback rates
• Cross-Functional Trust: Finance is seen as a proactive, knowledgeable, and reliable partner in systems, payments, and analytics.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Finance, Accounting, Engineering, Business, or Data Science (Master's or CPA/CMA is a huge plus!)

• 10+ years of experience in analytics supporting SaaS businesses (B2C highly preferred), payments and risk industry, Finance transformation, and/or systems leadership.
• Proven track record leading cross-functional transformation programs in Finance or Revenue Operations environments.
• Expertise in implementing or scaling reporting, analytics or billing tools (e.g., Recurly, Adyen, Stripe, PayPal, Power BI, BigQuery, or Microsoft Dynamics).
• Demonstrated ability to lead change, manage vendors, and influence senior stakeholders across technical and commercial domains

Benefits

• A fast-growing, international environment with an informal, fun, but driven culture
• A competitive compensation package
• Autonomy and flexibility
• Remote onboarding
• Pension contribution
• Hybrid - remote work setup
• Flexible working
• Buddy program
• Social and company events (virtual and in-person)
• Equity program

These are the benefits applied to candidates working in Norway and Denmark. As for the candidates based in Poland we offer B2B consulting agreement.

About Kahoot!

As Kahoot! is on a mission to make learning awesome, we want to empower everyone, including children, students, and employees to unlock their full learning potential. Our learning platform makes it easy for any individual or corporation to create, share, and host learning sessions that drive compelling engagement.

Launched in 2013, Kahoot!'s vision is to build the leading learning platform in the world. Since its launch, Kahoot! has hosted hundreds of millions of learning sessions with more than 13 billion participants (non-unique) in more than 200 countries and regions. The Kahoot! Group includes Clever, the leading US K-12 EdTech learning platform, together with the learning apps DragonBox, Poio, Drops, Actimo, Motimate, and Whiteboard.fi.

The Kahoot! Group is headquartered in Oslo, Norway, with offices in the US, the UK, France, Finland, Estonia, Denmark, Spain and Poland. To learn more, visit us at kahoot.com, and let's play!

Our K!rew

At the Kahoot! Group we champion a positive culture of collaborative learning and innovation. With a global team of more than 600 employees, representing over 50 different nationalities, we are a diverse and fun bunch of people! We work hard and celebrate our wins, tackle challenges with original ideas, and learn something new every day.

We are driven by our mission and guided by our values: playful, curious, and inclusive.

If you talk to anyone working in the Kahoot! Group, they will tell you that one of the greatest perks is being able to see how the work you do, puts a smile on the faces of kids, teachers, and learners all around the world.

We look forward to hearing from you!