Head of Finance & Operations - Remote / Work from Home

High Impact Athletes (HIA) was founded by Olympians to mobilise the sports community behind evidence-based giving. Our flagship platform, Race for Impact, runs in partnership with HYROX and turns racers into fundraisers for the world's most effective charities.

Over the past 12 months we have raised $8MUSD+ through Race for Impact across 50+ events in 15 countries, with 100,000+ unique donors, on top of $3M+ influenced from athlete donations in our lifetime. This year we expect to move $10M to $20M in donations across three legal entities, with a UK charity launching in 2026. We are aiming for over 5% of all HYROX participants to become Impact Racers within three years, generating $25M to $50M annually for effective charities.

The opportunity: the finance and operations function has outgrown its current part-time shape. We need a senior operator who can take the back-of-house off the Managing Director's desk and build the institutional finance and ops function our organisation needs. This is HIA's first formal Finance & Operations seat, and for the right person it grows into our first Finance or Operations Director role.

The Role

You will own the entire finance and operations function across HIA's two existing legal entities (US and NZ), and the UK entity currently in creation, plus our Australian payroll arrangement via Effective Altruism Australia. You will also manage the reporting and disbursement of funds via our regional processing partners such as Myriad Australia and King Baudouin Foundation, and with our ~20 partner charities, across both Race for Impact and our athlete-led giving and major-gift income. You will design the systems, run them, and grow the team that supports them.

Our stack aims to run autonomously on modern tooling and AI agents rather than spreadsheets and email chains. We do partner with some legacy charity organisations to increase our global coverage, so manual elements still come up from time to time.

What You'll Own

Financial leadership across the group

• Consolidated reporting, forecasting, and inter-company reconciliation across HIA Inc (US, Delaware), HIA NZ Charitable Trust, partner-hosted funds, our Australian payroll arrangement, and any future entities.
• Board reports prepared alongside the MD, with monthly reports and re-forecasts.
• Subsidiary structuring work with Deloitte and DLA Piper is in motion and you will help shape it.
• Cash flow, treasury, and FX management across USD, GBP, EUR, NZD, and AUD.
• Annual budget and rolling forecasts tied to the org's headline goals.
• Restricted vs unrestricted fund accounting, grant compliance, and donor fund tracking.
• You set the brief and own the relationships with our external accountants and compliance partners.
• Athlete and major-gift giving flows: tracking and reconciling athlete-led campaign income, regular athlete giving, and major gifts, separate from Race for Impact.

The payment processor and platform stack

• Stripe, PayPal, Raisely, Airwallex and Deel are live commercial relationships, not just utilities we pay invoices to. You will open non-profit rate conversations, negotiate flat-fee structures, and push for regional entities where it saves real money. Fees compound at our scale.
• Co-own the Raisely commercial relationship with our Director of Technology. We are mid-renegotiation and you will inherit that work.
• Run expense audits. Cut, consolidate, or renegotiate cost drivers. Allocate cost cleanly between HIA and Race for Impact.

Compliance, risk, and the policy stack

• 990 preparation, US state charitable registrations, UK Charity Commission filings, NZ Charities Services, and Australian fundraising obligations.
• D&O, cyber, and any future liability cover, with an annual broker review.
• Build out and maintain the policy library, much of which still needs writing: expense and reimbursement, equipment provisioning, travel and card limits, payment verification and anti-phishing hygiene, onboarding and offboarding, data handling, signatory matrix, conflict of interest.

People and HR operations

• Contracts, payroll, benefits, and leave tracking across four jurisdictions (US via Deel, NZ via Xero Payroll, AU via Effective Altruism Australia, UK still to be confirmed).
• Onboarding and offboarding workflows.

Operational backbone

• Vendor management and contract reviews. Calendar of obligations. Renewals tracker. Insurance schedule. Audit calendar.
• Working alongside our existing finance contributors and our bookkeeper. You will lead the ongoing finance support model that scales with us.

What Success Looks Like

90 days. You know the books, have met the team and some of our external partners, and produced a 30-60-90 day systems audit and improvement plan. You have taken supplier payments, reimbursements, payroll, and routine compliance and ops off the Managing Director's desk.

6 months. Month-end close is on a published cadence with no surprises. The policy library is meaningfully populated and documentation is updated. We have an agreed plan for the bookkeeping model. You have negotiated at least one meaningful saving against payment processor or platform costs.

12 months. The Managing Director does not handle any supplier payment, reimbursement, payroll change, insurance renewal, or forecast. You have taken on increased people and operations coverage. We pass our first full external audit cleanly when triggered. You have a clear path to growing your role.

You Might Be a Fit If

• You have 8+ years of hands-on finance experience: commercial, startup, fund, or non-profit. You can personally run a close, a consolidation, and a board pack, and you genuinely understand the financial statements. Multi-entity non-profit exposure (restricted funds, 990s, charity commission filings, intercompany reconciliation) is a strong bonus, not a requirement. What matters is the appetite to learn it fast.
• You have held senior finance or finance-plus-operations roles in $5M to $25M organisations, ideally in a small team where you owned more than one function.
• You use AI tools every day and have strong technical skills. Our stack assumes fluency in Claude, Notion, Xero, Airwallex, Deel, Slack, Make or similar automation software, and comfort working with AI agents.
• You are commercially literate. You read a contract and spot the cost centres other people miss, and you are comfortable asking payment processors and software vendors for better terms.
• You can write a clean expense policy in an afternoon. You know which rules genuinely matter for an org our size and which are overhead.
• You move quickly, default to action, and have a high bar for documentation and process.
• You can translate financial reality into plain language for founders, board members, funders, the team, and partners.
• You want this role to grow into a director seat, and are happy to work hard to achieve it.

Bonus points

• You have run a multi-jurisdiction non-profit through an audit cycle.
• You have negotiated payment processor terms (Stripe, PayPal, regional rails).
• You have stood up a UK charity structure or worked with an umbrella infrastructure provider (Prism, CAF, Myriad).
• You have managed a fractional or external accounting service.
• You understand donor-advised funds and how high-net-worth donors structure tax-effective gifts.

What We're Not Looking For

• Pure controllers who want a deep-finance specialist seat.
• People who need a playbook handed to them.
• People who prefer daily check-ins to async, written, fast-moving collaboration.
• People who are uncomfortable with a tech-and-AI-heavy operating model.
• People who see non-profit work as a step down from "real" finance.

Our Values

• Extreme Integrity. We really, really care about the work, each other, and trust. Trust is our most precious asset.
• Hustle and Heart. We are a mission-led team, not just high-performance. We ground ourselves in stories, not just stats.
• Stack the Firewood. Everyone pitches in. If someone is swamped, we step in. It is not about job descriptions, it is about getting it done together.
• Highlight Reels. World-class craft. We are committed to work that drops jaws and creates movements.

Compensation & Benefits

• Base salary: up to 150k AUD (100k USD / 170k NZD) depending on experience.
• Cost of living adjustment of up to 25% for expensive locales.
• Performance bonus based on organisational performance.
• Fully remote, async-first culture. Work from anywhere. We care about output, not hours logged.
• Generous leave policy.
• Health insurance in jurisdictions without public healthcare.
• Equipment stipend.

Location: remote (global), Asia-Pacific preferred. The role requires some overlap with APAC time zones. Australian-based hires are employed through our payroll arrangement with Effective Altruism Australia.

Hiring Process

1. Application review. The HIA team reads every application.
2. Screening call (30 to 45 minutes). A mutual fit assessment.
3. Deeper interview (90 minutes). Topgrading-style walk through your relevant past roles.
4. Paid work sample. A real task relevant to the role, compensated.
5. Reference calls. Two or three, ideally including a recent manager.
6. Final decision and offer.

We review applications weekly and move fast with strong candidates. We are a small team. Your application will be read by humans who care.

Next steps

Click Apply Now to submit your application. 

High Impact Athletes is an equal opportunity employer. We actively encourage applications from candidates of all backgrounds, particularly those underrepresented in finance and non-profit leadership.

Learn more at https://highimpactathletes.org/finance-ops-jd