Senior Accountant - Brisbane
About the Role
As a Senior Accountant, you will play a key role in supporting the day-to-day financial operations across our APAC region, ensuring accurate financial reporting, compliance and effective financial management. Working closely with the Financial Controller and broader finance team, you will oversee key accounting activities, support regional finance initiatives and contribute to continuous process improvements to drive efficiency and accuracy across the business.
About us at Populous
At Populous, our teams design the places where people love to be together. From stadiums and arenas to convention centres, airports, mixed-use developments, and entertainment precincts, we have delivered many of the world’s most iconic and community-defining projects.
With projects spanning Asia, Australia, Europe, and the Americas, we bring global expertise and local insight to every design. Our Brisbane team is central to this network, delivering impactful projects locally and across the region with a focus on sustainability, innovation, and community.
Why Populous
We don’t consider ourselves just another architecture and design practice. At Populous, we believe our strength lies in our people and their diversity of experiences. Across APAC, our team represents over 35 nationalities, and we actively celebrate and support this.
We provide our people with:
- The opportunity to contribute to projects of global significance in Brisbane and across APAC
- A collaborative international network of experts and design leaders
- Career development opportunities, including leadership training, mentorship, and global mobility
- A vibrant workplace culture where creativity, collaboration, and innovation are valued
- An environment where everyone can be themselves and grow their careers in any direction they want, all while being in an inclusive and supportive workplace
- Oh, and we’re recognised as one of the best places to work in Australia! We’ve been recognised as a Work180 Top 101 Employer for Women two years in a row, winners of two Work180 Workplace awards and recognised as a HRD 5 Star Employer!
What will you be engaged in?
As a Senior Accountant you will be involved in:
1. Financial Accounting & Reporting
- Take ownership of month-end and year-end close activities, ensuring accurate and timely completion of journals, reconciliations and reporting requirements.
- Prepare and review balance sheet reconciliations, including intercompany, foreign currency, payroll, tax and other key control accounts, investigating and resolving reconciling items.
- Maintain the integrity and accuracy of the general ledger, including review and preparation of accruals, prepayments, provisions, leases and other accounting adjustments.
- Manage multi-currency accounting, including foreign currency transactions, revaluations, exchange differences and the appropriate treatment of balances denominated in currencies other than an entity’s functional currency.
- Assist with cash flow reporting, forecasting and working capital management.
2. Tax, Compliance & Audit
- Coordinate and support external and internal audit requirements across multiple entities, including preparation of audit documentation and responses to queries.
- Support local statutory reporting, tax and regulatory compliance across APAC jurisdictions, working with external auditors, tax advisers, payroll providers and other professional advisers as required.
- Support compliance with relevant accounting standards, tax and statutory reporting requirements.
- Assist with GST/VAT, withholding tax and other periodic tax compliance across the region, including cross-border transactions where appropriate.
3. Intercompany & Regional Finance
- Support compliance with transfer pricing and intercompany arrangements, including maintenance of appropriate supporting documentation and reconciliation of intercompany charges.
- Support intercompany accounting and reconciliations, including investigation of differences and coordination with other regional or global finance teams.
4. Team Support & Development
- Review work prepared by more junior members of the finance team and provide coaching, guidance and technical support.
- Act as a key point of contact within Finance for day-to-day accounting queries and provide support across the broader finance function.
5. Finance Improvement & Strategic Support
- Support the Financial Controller with regional finance initiatives, technical accounting matters, process improvement and ad hoc financial analysis.
- Identify opportunities to improve, automate and standardise finance processes, systems and reporting.
What we are looking for
To succeed in this role you will bring:
Qualifications
- Tertiary qualified, with either Bachelor and/or Master’s degree from an Australian, or other recognised university is highly valued
Knowledge, Experience and Skills
- 3-5 years proven experience in
- An operational finance role, with public accounting experience highly valued.
- Accounting for multi-company and multi-currency environments including reconciliation and elimination of intercompany projects and accounts (requiring knowledge and experience in company/group consolidations)
- Knowledge of taxation systems and compliance requirements for countries across APAC is highly regarded
- Project accounting knowledge and experience in architecture, engineering or construction highly regarding
- High level understanding of finance systems; experience using Deltek is valued
- High level skill in written and verbal communication
At Populous, we’re not only looking for skills but also for people who share our passion for creating places where communities come together.
We design the places that bring people together — and we know that happens best when our own team reflects the diversity of the communities we serve. We encourage people of all identities, abilities, and lived experiences to apply and join us in shaping the future of design.
Send us your CV and portfolio and come help us design the places that bring people together.
