Finance and Operations Analyst

About This Role

Location: Abu Dhabi

Type: Full-time

About Us

The Centre for Finance, Technology and Entrepreneurship (CFTE) is on a mission to empower the financial industry with the knowledge and skills required to thrive in a rapidly changing world. We operate at the intersection of finance, emerging technology, and education, working with central banks, governments, and financial institutions across the globe.

We believe the skills of tomorrow need to be built today. We apply that belief to everything we do, including how we build our own team.

What Makes CFTE Special

We bet on people. This is not a motto. It is how we operate. We move fast, take on ambitious work, and build things that matter. The team is small, so your contribution is visible. The work is real, so your impact is immediate.

Job Summary

We are looking for a Finance and Operations Analyst to join our Abu Dhabi office. This is a role for someone who is equally comfortable building a process from scratch and executing it with precision. You will own the financial infrastructure of the business: tracking, forecasting, improving, while also being the person who gets things done when it matters.

The operational side of this role is just as important as the financial side. We want someone who is genuinely obsessed with making things work better. If a process is slow, manual, or unclear, you will not leave it that way. You will find a better approach, build it, and make sure it sticks.

We also expect you to be a confident and innovative user of AI tools. Not someone who has heard of them. Someone who uses them daily, thinks creatively about where they apply, and brings that thinking into how we work as a team.

This is not a back-office role. You will be a key operational partner to the leadership team, and your work will directly shape how we grow.

What You'll Do

Finance

• Own accounts receivable and payable. Follow up on payments, manage invoices, and keep our financial position accurate and up to date.
• Produce financial reports, forecasts, and projections that give leadership a clear picture of where we stand and where we are heading.
• Manage financial documentation including contracts, purchase orders, and expense records with the rigour of someone who knows that detail matters.
• Support budgeting cycles and contribute to financial planning across programmes and projects.
• Maintain compliance with local financial regulations and keep our records audit-ready.

Operations and Systems

• Identify where processes are broken, slow, or missing and build something better. You will be the person who sees a recurring problem and fixes it at the root.
• Design and implement operational workflows that make the team faster and less reliant on manual effort.
• Work across programme delivery, client management, and internal operations to streamline how things get done.
• Manage vendor and supplier relationships to ensure we get the right value and that payments and contracts are handled correctly.
• Support onboarding and internal operations as the team scales.
• Actively identify and deploy AI tools to automate repetitive tasks, improve output quality, and free up the team to focus on higher value work.
• Stay ahead of new tools and approaches. If there is a smarter way to do something, you will find it and implement it.

What You'll Bring

• Strong accounting foundation. You are comfortable with the numbers and confident in your ability to keep them straight.
• A genuine obsession with improving how things work. You do not accept inefficiency. You diagnose it, fix it, and build something that scales.
• A builder's mindset. You have experience not just managing processes but creating them, and you take pride in leaving things more structured than you found them.
• The ability to be hands-on. This is not a team of dozens. You will be doing real work, not just overseeing it.
• Deep comfort with AI tools and a track record of using them in practice. You think creatively about where AI applies and bring that into your daily work.
• High attention to detail and the discipline to maintain it under pressure.
• Clear, direct communication with leadership, with clients, and with external partners.
• Experience in fast-paced environments: startups, consulting, financial services, or similar.
• A drive to improve constantly. If you see a better way, you say so.

Why Join Us

• Be part of a driven, ambitious team building something at the edge of finance and technology.
• Take real ownership from day one. Your work shapes the business, not just a corner of it.
• Work directly with senior leadership and gain exposure to clients that include central banks, regulators, and major financial institutions.
• Build and lead processes that will serve us for years. Your fingerprints will be on how this company operates.
• Significant opportunity for growth as the organization scales in the Middle East and globally.