Global Director - Accounts Payable

The Global Director, Accounts Payable and Procurement leads the global Procure-to-Pay finance process and owns both accounts payable and procurement operations. This role is responsible for procurement policy, purchasing controls, vendor sourcing support, vendor master governance, purchase order compliance, invoice intake, invoice approval workflows, payment execution, expense processing coordination, AP controls, shared services performance, and AP and procurement integration for acquired companies. This role ensures that goods and services are procured appropriately, vendors are paid accurately and timely, AP records are complete, accurate, and up to date, and reliable AP information is available to support FP&A, while protecting the company through strong controls, consistent policies, transparent global reporting, and disciplined purchasing practices.

Key Responsibilities:

• Establish global procurement and AP policies, procedures, controls, service levels, approval matrices, purchasing thresholds, preferred vendor requirements, and process metrics across all countries and shared services resources.
• Own the global procure-to-pay process, including procurement intake, purchase requisitions, vendor sourcing support, purchase order governance, vendor onboarding, invoice receipt, coding, approval routing, payment runs, exception handling, vendor inquiries, and AP month-end procedures.

• Partner with Legal, Tax, Treasury, Accounting, IT, operations, and local finance teams to ensure vendor compliance, proper approvals, tax documentation, payment accuracy, purchasing discipline, contract visibility, and system alignment.

• Lead procurement and AP process centralization and automation, including reducing manual effort, purchasing workflows, vendor portals, OCR, procurement intake tools, T&E integrations, purchase order matching, and ERP-enabled controls.

• Manage shared services performance for routine procurement and AP processing, including work queues, productivity, defect rates, aging, turnaround times, purchase order compliance, and escalation management.

• Oversee the global corporate card and expense management processes, including card administration, approval and spending controls, transaction reconciliation, policy compliance, and timely processing of employee expenses.

• Support acquisition integration by mapping legacy procurement and AP processes, migrating vendors, aligning approval workflows, onboarding acquired entities to company policies, and stabilizing purchasing and payment operations.

• Maintain strong controls over vendor selection, vendor master data, segregation of duties, bank detail changes, duplicate payments, fraud prevention, purchase approvals, payment approvals, contract support, and documentation retention.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, Finance, Business Administration, Supply Chain, Procurement, or related field preferred.
• 8+ years of procurement, AP, procure-to-pay, shared services, accounting operations, or finance process leadership experience, including experience in a multi-country or multi-entity environment.
• Experience with ERP systems, procurement workflows, purchasing controls, vendor master governance, workflow automation, internal controls, and acquisition integration is preferred.
• Experience driving process improvement across a global or complex organization is highly desirable.

Originally posted on Himalayas