Head of Finance

Karlstads kommun · Full-time

Kontaktcenter Västra Torggatan 26, Karlstad, Sweden

Karlstadsregionen's water begins operations on January 1, 2027. We are a municipal water and wastewater company owned by Forshaga, Hammarö, Karlstad, and Kil. Our mission is to deliver drinking water, treat wastewater, and manage stormwater in our four owner municipalities. We work toward sustainable community development and a future with clean lakes and watercourses. We are Karlstadsregionen's water – a new company that brings together the strength of four organizations to manage one of society's most important tasks: delivering crystal-clear drinking water, treating wastewater, and managing rainwater. We do this every day of the year for over 120,000 people in our four owner municipalities—Forshaga, Hammarö, Karlstad, and Kil. We keep society functioning and make our customers' daily lives a little easier, but our mission is greater than that. We lay the foundation for a sustainable future for both people and the environment. Join us on an exciting journey where we not only build something new together, but also create sustainable water and wastewater solutions for future generations. Here you have the space to grow, make an impact, and contribute your ideas while doing work that is truly important to society. Description We are now seeking a Head of Finance who wants to be part of the journey from the start and build a modern and operationally integrated finance function. You will have the opportunity to combine financial leadership with operational work while shaping processes, approaches, and collaboration in a brand new organization. Together with your team, you will create conditions for stable finances, well-founded decisions, and sustainable investments in an operation with an important societal mission. As Head of Finance, you will be responsible for leading and developing the company's finance function and will be part of the company's management team. The unit is responsible for financial management and monitoring, accounting, billing, and rate-setting. You will initially lead six employees, several of whom will be newly hired. The first years will largely involve establishing a well-functioning finance function and building good collaboration with the owner municipalities' finance functions. Therefore, the role is operationally oriented and requires you to be actively involved in operational financial work while driving development forward. An important responsibility is to further develop financial management, strengthen forecasting work, increase the organization's financial awareness, and lead the development of the rate model and long-term rate analyses. Key Responsibilities You are responsible for the company's budget, forecasting, monitoring, and financial statement processes, and you ensure good financial control and reporting. You prepare analyses and decision documents for management, the board, and owners, and provide the business with support on financial matters. Your responsibilities also include accounting, billing and revenue processes, water and wastewater rates, liquidity planning, and finance-related procurement processes. You support planning and monitoring of investments, including investment calculations and fixed asset accounting, and participate in financing matters. You coordinate financial reporting, audit, and rate matters with the owner municipalities. Qualifications We are looking for someone with an academic degree in finance or equivalent education combined with relevant work experience. You have several years of experience in qualified financial work and broad competence in budgeting, forecasting, financial statements, and financial monitoring. You have strong analytical abilities and can translate financial information into clear decision documents for both management and operations. You express yourself very well in Swedish, both orally and in writing, and thrive in a role that combines operational work with strategic and long-term development perspective. If you have experience with water and wastewater finance and a good understanding of the specific economic conditions that apply to water and wastewater operations, where the business is governed by the Water Services Act and its principles, we consider that a strong advantage. It is meriting if you have: experience from water and wastewater operations, other rate-financed operations, municipality, or municipal company experience with development and change work within the finance field Personal Qualities We place great importance on your personal qualities. You are analytical, structured, and solution-oriented, and you naturally build trust and good relationships. You enjoy developing work approaches together with others and feel confident taking responsibility and driving matters forward. Previous management experience is meriting, but not required. What is more important is that you have a natural leadership ability and the capacity to create engagement and get people to work toward common goals. Other Information Information about salary levels can be found here (select "See salary statistics"). This recruitment pertains to AID code 101011. Warm welcome with your application! When you apply with us, you will be asked to provide your CV and answer several questions where we ask you to describe your competence in the requested areas. This means you should not attach a cover letter as part of your application.