Finance Director

The Role

As Finance Director at Salience Labs, you will play a pivotal role in ensuring smooth financial operations, compliance, and insightful reporting to support our business strategy. Working closely with the CFO and cross-functional teams, you will lead financial processes and provide actionable insights in a fast-paced, high-tech environment.

• Overseeing bookkeeping, ledger accounting, and financial control
• Preparing monthly financial statements, management accounts, and Board presentation materials
• Developing and implementing internal control guidelines, policies, and procedures
• Managing payroll, cash flow, expense processes, and financial close cycles
• Designing and delivering detailed financial reporting, focusing on project-based actuals and cash use against budgets
• Ensuring compliance with payroll, VAT, income tax, and other statutory requirements in the UK, Germany, and the U.S.
• Supporting vendor negotiations and maintaining key financial relationships
• Monitoring and reporting on grant, R&D, and contract expenditures, including preparing and submitting grant reimbursement claims
• Implementing and optimizing finance technology stacks to enhance efficiency
• Collaborating with external accountants, auditors, and payroll providers
• Contributing to strategic projects, including budgeting/reforecasting and share option scheme management

• Minimum 10 years of post-qualification experience, including 5+ years in start-up or fast-growth environments
• Proven expertise in financial controllership, IFRS and/or GAAP knowledge, and UK tax/payroll compliance
• Strong proficiency in accounting software, Excel, and financial reporting tools
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills to collaborate effectively across teams
• A detail-oriented problem-solver who can manage change and prioritize tasks in a fast-paced setting like a start-up

• Have familiarity with financial regulations and practices in Germany and the U.S.
• Bring experience from fabless manufacturing or high-tech industries like semiconductors
• Have a track record of leading software selection and implementation projects
• Possess leadership skills to drive innovation and growth within the finance function

Salience Labs Limited is a leader in photonic solutions targeting connectivity for AI datacenter infrastructure.

Backed by over a decade of research from the University of Oxford in the UK and the University of Münster in Germany, Salience’s innovative developments in photonic switching technology enable high-speed, ultra-low latency networking fabrics that remove infrastructure bottlenecks for AI workloads.