Overview
Location: Full Onsite. Berlin Mitte, Germany.
About The Company
The company is the AI-driven trade platform transforming industrial supply in infrastructure, energy, and construction materials. It connects vetted suppliers across Asia, Europe, and the GCC region with local demand through a single integrated platform. Its proprietary AI stack digitizes and automates the full lifecycle of materials trade — from procurement and pricing to inventory, logistics, and embedded financing — replacing thousands of manual, relationship-driven processes with real-time orchestration. Buyers gain instant quotes, reliable availability, and predictable delivery through a unified operating system. Suppliers benefit from accurate forecasting, disciplined demand management, and seamless integration into cross-border fulfillment networks. The company partners with leading brands to run both dropship and cross-dock fulfillment motions for large-scale transactions, turning global supply chains into predictable, repeatable, software-like workflows. Backed by top-tier investors and institutional financing partners, the company has scaled to triple-digit-million GMV, operates across six international markets, and is rapidly expanding toward profitability. With a team of 80+ people across Berlin (HQ) and Asia, it is building the world’s first industrial-grade AI operating system for materials — redefining how global trade works in one of the world’s largest and most essential industries.
Role Overview
As Chief Financial Officer, you own the financial architecture of the company. You are a core member of the executive leadership team and a close sparring partner to the CEO. Your mandate is to design, operate, and continuously evolve a financial system that enables scale, resilience, and capital efficiency in a complex, capital-intensive operating environment. This role blends capital markets rigor, company-building execution, and strategic M&A leadership. You will oversee equity and debt, accounting and governance, cash and risk – while shaping a financing and acquisition model that is tightly interwoven with the company’s technology platform and long-term growth strategy. This is a system-building CFO position with active M&A responsibility. This is not a reporting role. The role is on-site in Berlin.
Key Responsibilities
* Own the end-to-end financial operating system of the company, including P&L, balance sheet, cash flow, and working capital.
* Translate operational reality – orders, logistics, supplier payouts, financing flows – into accurate, decision-ready financial insight.
* Design financial structures that scale with transaction volume, geography, and organizational complexity.
* Ensure financial transparency, accuracy, and speed without introducing unnecessary bureaucracy.
* Own and continuously evolve the company’s capital structure across growth phases.
* Design and implement a scalable financing model that supports both organic growth and selective M&A, combining:
o venture and growth equity
o senior and subordinated debt
o working capital, inventory, and structured finance instruments
* Develop a layered, modular capital stack that can flex between organic scaling and acquisition activity without destabilizing the business.
* Evaluate trade-offs between growth, dilution, leverage, and acquisition optionality.
* Build and maintain trusted relationships with banks, institutional lenders, and investors to ensure transaction readiness at all times.
* Partner with the CEO on defining the company’s M&A strategy, including target profiles, strategic rationale, and capital allocation priorities.
* Lead the financial workstream across the full M&A lifecycle:
o target evaluation and financial diligence
o valuation, structuring, and deal economics
o financing strategy (equity, debt, or hybrid)
o integration planning from a financial and operational perspective
* Ensure acquisitions strengthen the platform, improve capital efficiency, and integrate cleanly into the company’s financial and technological systems.
* Establish repeatable M&A processes that allow the company to execute opportunistically without losing financial discipline.
* Ensure financing and capital deployment are treated as core systems embedded into the technology platform, not standalone functions.
* Work closely with product and technology leadership to integrate financing and acquisition logic into:
o pricing and quoting
o order flows and approvals
o risk assessment and exposure limits
o working capital allocation and post-acquisition integration
* Translate financial and M&A requirements into system logic, automation, and controls.
* Build a financing and acquisition architecture that scales automatically with transaction volume and data density.
* Own statutory accounting, audits, and compliance across multiple entities and jurisdictions.
* Ensure audit-ready, institutional-grade financials at all times.
* Design internal controls that scale with the company while preserving operational speed.
* Work closely with legal and external advisors on contracts, transaction structures, and financial risk exposure.
* Establish governance structures that support fast decision-making without sacrificing control.
* Own and continuously improve financial models, including operating and long-range plans, scenario, downside, and stress cases, and acquisition and integration models.
* Translate strategy into numbers and numbers back into decisions.
* Support pricing strategy, market expansion, partnerships, and M&A evaluations.
* Act as a strategic sparring partner to the CEO and leadership team on all major decisions.
* Build and lead a high-performance in-house finance organization (Accounting, FP&A, Treasury, Risk).
* Hire, develop, and retain top-tier talent capable of supporting both scale and M&A activity.
* Set clear standards for ownership, precision, and accountability.
* Create a finance culture that is trusted by operators and respected across the organization.
Profile We Are Looking For
* Strong background in investment banking, structured finance, private credit, or private equity (growth equity, infrastructure, industrials, or special situations preferred).
* Hands-on experience in company building or scale-ups, ideally with exposure to acquisitions or integrations.
* Proven track record across equity, debt, and M&A transactions.
* Demonstrated ability to design and evolve capital structures over time.
* Deep understanding of accounting, audits, financial controls, and risk frameworks.
* Excellent financial modeling skills, including scenario-based and acquisition modeling.
* Experience in working-capital-intensive or transaction-heavy businesses is a strong plus.
* Proven track record in Germany, France, and the UK, with experience working across local markets, cultures, and regulatory jurisdictions.
* Fluent in English and either German or French at native or near-native level.
* You think in systems, not spreadsheets.
* You are an operator who wants proximity to the business.
* You are comfortable with ambiguity and enjoy building structure where none exists yet.
* You combine strong conviction with intellectual honesty.
* You see M&A as a strategic tool, not a vanity exercise.
* You want to build and scale a team, not remain a solo CFO.
* You are committed to the long-term journey.
* This is not a pure reporting or compliance-only CFO role.
* You are not a back-office administrator detached from operations.
* You are not expected to paper over structural issues with accounting fixes.
* You will not outsource ownership of capital or M&A decisions to advisors or consultants.
* The company operates with financial clarity under uncertainty, across organic growth and acquisitions.
* A scalable financing and M&A model is in place, allowing the company to deploy capital opportunistically without compromising stability.
* The capital stack is diversified, resilient, and optimized across equity, debt, and structured instruments.
* Financing and acquisition logic are embedded into the technology platform, enabling automation, speed, and disciplined execution.
* Acquisitions integrate cleanly, strengthen the platform, and improve return on capital.
* Investors and lenders view the company as institutional-grade, acquisitive, and financeable at scale.
* The finance function is a strategic system builder and deal partner, not merely a control function.
We are an equal-opportunity employer and welcome applicants from all backgrounds, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability, or any other characteristic. We believe that diversity drives innovation, creativity, and collective strength.
#J-18808-Ljbffr