Senior Lease Accounting Specialist

We're Hiring: Senior Lease Accounting Specialist
Location: United Arab Emirates (Remote)
Employment Type: Full-Time
Experience Level: Senior
Work Arrangement: Fully Remote
About Us
We are a globally focused organization committed to maintaining accurate financial reporting, strong accounting governance, effective asset management, and transparent financial performance across diverse markets.
Our Finance teams collaborate across Accounting, Treasury, Procurement, Real Estate, Facilities, Legal, Operations, Tax, FP&A, and external auditors to ensure lease arrangements are properly identified, assessed, accounted for, monitored, and reported throughout their lifecycle.
The Role
We are seeking an experienced Senior Lease Accounting Specialist to lead lease accounting, contract assessment, lease portfolio management, financial reporting, reconciliations, technical accounting analysis, and lease-related controls.
The ideal candidate will provide specialist guidance on lease arrangements, ensure compliance with applicable accounting standards such as IFRS 16 or equivalent requirements, maintain accurate lease records, manage right-of-use assets and lease liabilities, and support business stakeholders with the accounting implications of new, modified, renewed, or terminated lease arrangements.
Key Responsibilities
Lead lease-accounting activities across the organization's entities, locations, business units, and lease portfolios.
Ensure lease arrangements are identified, assessed, recorded, and reported accurately.
Apply applicable lease-accounting requirements, including IFRS 16 or equivalent accounting standards.
Review contracts and agreements to determine whether they contain leases or lease components.
Assess lease terms, commencement dates, renewal options, termination options, purchase options, and other contractual provisions.
Determine appropriate lease classifications and accounting treatment under applicable standards.
Calculate and maintain right-of-use assets and lease liabilities.
Determine appropriate lease-payment schedules and accounting treatment throughout the lease lifecycle.
Assess lease payments, fixed payments, variable payments, incentives, deposits, and other contractual consideration.
Determine appropriate discount rates for lease-liability calculations in accordance with applicable accounting requirements.
Coordinate with Treasury, Finance, and other stakeholders to obtain appropriate borrowing-rate information.
Assess lease modifications, extensions, renewals, remeasurements, terminations, and reassessments.
Analyze changes in lease terms and determine their accounting impact.
Maintain complete and accurate lease registers and supporting documentation.
Ensure lease data is complete, accurate, current, and appropriately supported.
Reconcile lease-accounting records to the general ledger and financial reporting systems.
Perform monthly lease-accounting calculations, reconciliations, journal entries, and reporting activities.
Prepare right-of-use asset depreciation schedules and lease-liability amortization schedules.
Review lease interest expense, depreciation expense, remeasurement adjustments, and other lease-related accounting entries.
Support month-end, quarter-end, and year-end financial close processes.
Prepare lease-accounting schedules and supporting documentation for financial reporting.
Analyze lease balances and movements and investigate unusual or unexpected changes.
Monitor lease liabilities, right-of-use assets, and related financial statement balances.
Support financial statement disclosures relating to leases and lease commitments.
Prepare lease-related disclosures, reconciliations, maturity analyses, and supporting schedules.
Review lease-related disclosures for completeness, accuracy, and consistency with accounting records.
Provide technical accounting guidance on complex lease arrangements.
Prepare technical accounting papers and accounting conclusions for significant or unusual lease transactions.
Assess embedded leases and lease components within service, outsourcing, property, equipment, transportation, technology, and other commercial contracts.
Work with Legal and Procurement teams to identify lease clauses and accounting-relevant contractual terms.
Collaborate with Real Estate and Facilities teams to maintain accurate property and occupancy information.
Work with Procurement and business stakeholders to ensure new lease arrangements are identified and communicated to Finance promptly.
Establish procedures for capturing new leases, renewals, amendments, modifications, and terminations.
Monitor lease commencement and expiry dates and ensure timely accounting actions.
Establish controls over lease data, contract amendments, approvals, calculations, and accounting entries.
Perform periodic reviews of lease portfolios to identify missing, duplicate, expired, or incorrectly recorded arrangements.
Investigate lease-accounting discrepancies and implement appropriate corrective actions.
Maintain documentation supporting significant lease judgments, assumptions, estimates, and accounting conclusions.
Assess lease-related accounting judgments, including renewal and termination assumptions where relevant.
Review management assumptions relating to reasonably certain renewal or termination decisions.
Support impairment assessments relating to right-of-use assets where applicable.
Coordinate with FP&A on lease-related forecasting, budgeting, and financial planning.
Provide lease data and financial analysis for business cases, property decisions, relocations, and operational planning.
Support cash-flow forecasting by providing accurate information on lease payments and contractual commitments.
Work with Tax teams to assess relevant tax implications of lease arrangements where required.
Support internal and external audits by providing lease contracts, calculations, reconciliations, accounting papers, and supporting documentation.
Respond to audit queries relating to lease accounting, lease judgments, calculations, and disclosures.
Coordinate with external auditors on significant lease-accounting matters and technical conclusions.
Monitor changes in accounting standards and assess their impact on lease-accounting policies and processes.
Support implementation of new or amended lease-accounting requirements.
Develop and maintain lease-accounting policies, procedures, guidelines, and process documentation.
Establish consistent lease-accounting methodologies across entities and jurisdictions.
Provide training and guidance to Finance, Procurement, Legal, Real Estate, Facilities, and other relevant stakeholders.
Support lease-management and accounting-system implementations and enhancements.
Review lease-management system configurations, data interfaces, calculations, and reporting outputs.
Identify opportunities to automate lease calculations, reconciliations, reporting, and control activities.
Maintain strong lease-accounting governance and ensure appropriate segregation of duties and review controls.
Conduct periodic lease-accounting process reviews and identify opportunities for standardization and efficiency.
Mentor junior accounting professionals and provide technical guidance on lease-accounting matters.
Provide senior management with regular reporting on lease portfolios, accounting balances, risks, compliance, and improvement opportunities.
Key Performance Indicators
Lease-accounting accuracy
Lease register completeness
Lease register data accuracy
New lease identification timeliness
Lease commencement processing timeliness
Lease modification processing accuracy
Lease remeasurement accuracy
Right-of-use asset accuracy
Lease liability accuracy
Lease payment schedule accuracy
Discount-rate assessment accuracy
Lease depreciation calculation accuracy
Lease interest calculation accuracy
Lease journal-entry accuracy
Month-end lease close timeliness
Lease reconciliation accuracy
General-ledger reconciliation completion
Lease-accounting adjustment rate
Lease-related audit adjustment rate
Lease disclosure accuracy
Lease disclosure completion timeliness
Contract-to-lease-record reconciliation accuracy
Embedded lease identification rate
Lease modification identification timeliness
Lease renewal tracking accuracy
Lease termination processing accuracy
Lease portfolio completeness
Lease data quality
Accounting-policy compliance
Lease-control effectiveness
Lease documentation completeness
Technical accounting conclusion quality
Audit query resolution time
Audit issue remediation completion
Lease-accounting compliance rate
Lease-system data integrity
Lease-system automation effectiveness
Lease reporting timeliness
Lease forecast accuracy
Lease commitment reporting accuracy
Lease cash-flow information accuracy
Stakeholder satisfaction
Lease-process improvement completion
Finance training completion
Accounting-policy implementation timeliness
Lease-accounting risk identification and remediation
Ideal Candidate
T

Work arrangement
Yes