Director of Finance, Payments & Finance Transformation

We are seeking a dynamic, mission‑critical mastermind to lead our Finance transformation agenda across global systems, data and payments. 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.

Key Collaborations

• CFO & Finance Leadership: Shape the transformation strategy and drive adoption across Accounting, Commercial, and Operations finance teams.
• Product & Engineering: Define the systems, data pipelines and integration, and subscription payment requirements needed to fuel growth.
• Data & Analytics: Ensure scalable, governed finance data models that feed the enterprise architecture.
• Sales, Sales Operations & Customer Success: Integrate financial and billing data with CRM, business intelligence and customer workflows.
• Payments & Vendor Partners: Manage relationships with billing, gateway and risk vendors to optimize performance and cost.

Core Responsibilities

• Co‑lead development and execution of the Finance and Payments transformation roadmap aligned with business growth.
• Identify opportunities to redesign workflows, deploy automation and eliminate manual effort across the CFO organization.
• Drive a cultural shift toward Digital Finance, leading training, change management and adoption.
• Lead analytics modernization, moving Finance from static reports to proactive insights and predictive models.
• Embed tools and frameworks that reduce dependence on manual analysis, enhancing diagnostic capabilities.
• Deliver complex data analysis, dashboarding and ad‑hoc reporting to leadership and key business partners.

Payments & Risk Strategy & Execution

• Own Kahoot!’s global payments stack strategy and execution – SaaS billing platforms, payment gateways and fraud prevention.
• Collaborate with Product, Engineering and Customer Experience to optimize authorization rates and reduce involuntary churn.
• 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 SME on payment systems integrations and customer‑level payment behaviour.
• Implement and evolve robust risk controls to stop fraud and chargebacks.

Systems & Digital Infrastructure

• Partner with CFO on evaluation, deployment and evolution of Finance systems – ERP, tax engines, billing and 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 to keep data clean and safe.

Technical Fluency & Behaviors

• Tool proficiency – 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 to automate workflows and build reusable datasets.
• AI Readiness – leverage LLM tools, RPA platforms and orchestration of AI agents for reconciliation, reporting and augmentation of Finance capability.

Core Competencies & Behaviors

• Strategic Thinking – connect dots across business, systems and outcomes; anticipate needs and plan for scale.
• Technical Leadership – demonstrate depth in tools, payments, automation and risk while lifting team capability.
• Operational Excellence – design repeatable, robust processes that improve accuracy, transparency and speed.
• Influence & Collaboration – lead through influence across technical and business teams; earn trust and drive alignment.
• Change Leadership – champion adoption, training and behavioural shifts toward automation and data‑driven decision‑making.
• Customer Empathy – design systems, reports and payment experiences with end‑user value and experience in mind.

Success Factors

• Transformation Execution – roadmap milestones achieved with measurable impact (cycle time, adoption, scalability).
• Payments Optimization – improved authorization rates, reduced involuntary churn and lowered cost‑to‑collect.
• Data Enablement – Finance has structured, governed data and reduced reliance on manual workarounds.
• Systems Maturity – ERP, billing and reporting tools deliver consistent, automated and governed outputs.
• Fraud & Risk Management – effective control frameworks 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 a 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 (Recurly, Adyen, Stripe, PayPal, Power BI, BigQuery, 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, and driven culture.
• A competitive compensation package.
• Autonomy and flexibility.
• Remote onboarding and hybrid remote work setup.
• Pension contribution.
• Flexible working hours.
• Buddy program and social company events (virtual and in‑person).
• Equity program.

About Kahoot!

As Kahoot! is on a mission to make learning awesome, we empower everyone – students, teachers and employees – to unlock their full learning potential. Our learning platform allows any individual or organisation to create, share and host learning sessions that drive compelling engagement. Launched in 2013, Kahoot! now hosts over 13 billion sessions with participants in more than 200 countries. Our group includes the leading US K‑12 EdTech platform Clever, and learning apps DragonBox, Poio, Drops, Actimo, Motimate and Whiteboard.fi. The Kahoot! Group is headquartered in Oslo, Norway, with offices in the US, UK, France, Finland, Estonia, Denmark, Spain and Poland.