Specialist, Financial Operations

Role overview

Royalty data, reconciliation, and payments

• Analyze royalty data and validate calculation databases, statements, advances, earnings payments, agreement terms, product structures, and payment setups.
• Conduct quality checks, controls, and validation; investigate gaps, anomalies, risks, and root causes, and coordinate corrective action.
• Maintain audit-ready evidence of analysis, decisions, approvals, and adjustments.
• Reconcile supplier accounts, statements, advances, earnings, and balances; maintain accurate records and oversee complex processing.
• Review unusual or high-value payment scenarios and escalate legal, tax, policy, or commercial decisions to accountable owners.

Projects, advice, and stakeholder support

• Lead or support payout projects across geographies, from planning and analysis through validation, controlled delivery, and post-implementation review.
• Define project requirements, dependencies, risks, control points, and acceptance criteria; monitor milestones and communicate progress.
• Advise on royalty payouts, agreements, product structures, and payment setups, and coordinate with Portfolio, Editorial, Rights, Royalties, Finance, Legal, and other owners.
• Respond to complex stakeholder, author, and agent inquiries; prioritize OneCRM escalations and analyze recurring issues.
• Partner with technical teams on defects, data inquiries, testing, root-cause analysis, and sustainable solutions; contribute to automation, reporting, governance, and standardization.

Reporting, controls, and team guidance

• Prepare preliminary transaction, reconciliation, exception, and payout reports; monitor tasks, service levels, risks, backlogs, and project progress.
• Maintain policy, approval, contractual, privacy, and regulatory compliance; prepare documentation for audits, reviews, and control testing.
• Mentor colleagues, provide technical guidance and quality feedback, share specialist knowledge, and support the Manager in prioritizing complex work.

Essential qualifications and experience

• Bachelor's degree in Finance, Accounting, Commerce, Business Administration, or a related discipline, or equivalent relevant experience.
• Substantial relevant experience in royalty operations, financial operations, publishing, rights administration, or a comparable complex transaction environment; publishing, rights, or royalties experience is strongly preferred.
• Expertise in royalty or financial data analysis, reconciliations, payment processing, database validation, and complex discrepancy resolution.
• Experience leading projects, workstreams, or significant operational deliverables across stakeholders or geographies.
• Experience providing technical guidance or mentoring and improving team output quality.
• Strong experience managing stakeholders and communicating complex information, risks, and recommendations.

Preferred experience

• Knowledge of royalty calculations, author agreements, product structures, advances, earnings payments, and intellectual property management tools.
• Experience with supplier account maintenance, OneCRM or comparable case-management workflows, author inquiries, and escalations.
• Experience supporting audits, control testing, system implementation, data migration, automation, or reporting-tool development.
• Advanced Microsoft Excel skills and experience with royalty, ERP, workflow, database, or business intelligence tools.

Workplace

• The posting specifies a hybrid workplace.