The Senior Specialist, Internal Audit – Financial & Data Analytics plays a critical role in delivering high value, data driven internal audit and advisory engagements. This role is heavily focused on financial analysis, performance insights, and advanced data analytics, integrating FP&A skillsets into internal audit work to enhance risk coverage, anomaly detection, and business insight.
The role partners closely with Finance, FP&A, and business stakeholders to evaluate financial integrity, forecasting accuracy, management reporting, and key financial risks through analytics enabled audit techniques.
Key Responsibilities
Financial & FP&A Focused Audit Execution
• Lead and perform financial centric internal audits covering:
o Financial planning, budgeting, and forecasting processes
o Management reporting and key performance indicators (KPIs)
o Cost structures, margin analysis, and profitability drivers
o Revenue, expense, and working capital trends
• Evaluate the accuracy, completeness, and reasonableness of financial models, assumptions, and forecasts.
• Assess governance and controls over financial analysis, variance analysis, and performance tracking.
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Data Analytics & Continuous Risk Assessment
• Contribute to the development and maintenance of databases and data pipelines. This ensures data quality and accessibility for analysis.
• Extract data from various sources (databases, APIs, web scraping, etc.), clean it, and transform it into a usable format. This often involves dealing with challenging datasets that includes missing values, lump sum amounts, inconsistencies, and different data types/format.
• Design and execute data driven audit procedures using advanced analytics to:
o Identify anomalies, trends, and outliers in large financial datasets
o Perform end to end population testing rather than sample based testing
o Support continuous auditing and monitoring initiatives
• Build and maintain repeatable analytics scripts and audit routines.
• Predictive Modelling: Building ML models to forecast future outcomes based on historical data. This can involve machine learning techniques like regression, classification, and clustering.
• Create dashboards to aid in continuous monitoring efforts or present audit findings.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to translate audit objectives into data questions and analytical approaches.
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Internal Audit & Risk Advisory
• Lead or supervise audit engagements from planning through reporting, including:
o Risk assessment and scoping
o Audit program design with a strong analytics component
o Results communication and issue validation
• Provide forward looking insights beyond control gaps, highlighting:
o Process inefficiencies
o Financial risks and opportunities
o Data quality or reporting reliability issues
• Support ad hoc management and Board level requests involving financial analysis.
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Stakeholder Management & Collaboration
• Act as a trusted partner to Finance, FP&A, and business teams.
• Present audit findings and analytical insights clearly to senior management.
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Process Improvement & Innovation
• Drive the integration of advanced analytics and automation into internal audit methodology.
• Identify opportunities to:
o Improve financial controls through data insights
o Enhance audit efficiency through scripting and visualization
• Stay current on data analytics tools, finance transformation trends, and audit innovation.
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Required Qualifications & Experience
Education & Certifications
• Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, Finance, Business Analytics, Economics, or related field
• Professional qualifications preferred, such as:
o CPA / CA
o CIA
o CFA (or partial completion)
o CISA (analytics heavy roles)
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Experience
• 4–7 years of experience in:
o Internal audit, external audit, FP&A, or financial analysis
• Demonstrated experience in financial planning, forecasting, and performance analysis.
• Hands on experience applying data analytics in audit or finance roles.
• Prior experience supervising or mentoring junior team members is preferred.
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Technical & Analytics Skills
Finance & Audit
• Strong understanding of:
o Financial statements and management reporting
o Budgeting, forecasting, and variance analysis
o Internal controls and risk management frameworks
Data Analytics & Tools
• Advanced proficiency in one or more of the following:
o SQL
o Power BI (DAX and Power Query) / Tableau
o Python / R (for Machine Learning and advance statistical analysis)
o Advanced Excel (Power Query, Power Pivot, VBA)
• Experience working with:
o Large ERP datasets (e.g., SAP, Oracle, Teradata)
o Snowflake
o Financial and planning systems
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Key Competencies
• Strong analytical mindset with attention to detail
• Ability to translate complex data into clear business insights
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills
• Proactive, curious, and comfortable challenging assumptions
• Ability to balance audit rigor with commercial awareness
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Why Join This Role
• Exposure to finance leadership and strategic decision making
• Opportunity to shape the future of analytics driven internal audit
• Blend of assurance and value adding advisory work
• Continuous learning across data, finance, and audit disciplines
