Operations & Finance Lead

Polysense is scaling fast. We build operational intelligence software that's reshaping how food manufacturers work. Customers like Agristo, Lotus Biscoff and La Lorraine already run on it, and the engine powering that growth needs to keep up. Our finance and operations backbone needs to be tight, automated, and built to scale.

To make that happen, we're hiring an Operations & Finance Lead. Not a back-office role. A builder role. You'll own Polysense's finance and business operations, find what's slowing us down, and replace it with lean, AI-native processes that don't need an army to run. You report directly to the Chief of Staff and keep us scaling without bloating overhead.

Take every finance and business process at Polysense to the next level: build what's missing, and get everything else ready for the next phase of growth.

What you'll be doing

1. Finance ownership

• Build and own the financial reporting layer, from cash flow forecasting to board-level dashboards and KPI tracking, so leadership always has clear, reliable visibility on where we stand. Monthly reporting cadence is yours.

• Drive FP&A across the organisation. Build the yearly budget with functional Heads and give teams clear insight into their cost base so they can make better decisions.

• Spot subsidy and grant opportunities and own the full application process, from identification to submission. We've run FIT and R&D tracks before; you build a structural approach so we never leave money on the table.

• Own bookkeeping end to end, from quarterly VAT returns to annual closing. You drive this in-house for the Belgian entity, and coordinate with our external accountant for the US entity (Polysense Solutions Inc.) to keep compliance covered.

1. Operations & business infrastructure

• Lead cross-functional projects with no clear owner. When something important needs to happen across teams, you scope it, drive it, and see it through — this is a core part of the role, not an occasional ask.

• Own RevOps. Partner with sales leadership on forecasting and pipeline management, and build the reporting and process infrastructure that gives the team better visibility and helps them sell more.

• Drive AI enablement across the team. Spot where manual work can be replaced with AI-native tooling and workflows, build it, and help other functions adopt it — this is how the rest of your scope stays lean as we grow.

• Own general company operations: admin, documentation, and SaaS/vendor management (tracking subscriptions, flagging renewal risk, making sure we get value for what we pay).

• Work alongside our legal counsel on contract management, GDPR compliance, and corporate filings — you're the internal point of contact making sure nothing gets dropped.

Key point: Finance comes first: it has to run reliably before anything else does. But this role isn't capped at finance. Once it runs itself, expect the operations side to keep expanding into whatever Polysense needs built next.

What you bring

Background & Experience

• 5 to 8+ years in finance, operations, or a role combining both. The more relevant the experience, the less those years matter either way.

• A finance background is preferred, but we care more about what you've built than which box you tick.

• Experience running finance inside a high-growth, venture-backed company is a strong plus. Ideally you've seen a company scale from one stage into the next (joined around seed, built through Series A/B) and know how to build your way out of processes that can't keep up. What stage you're at today matters less than having lived that curve.

• You build with AI, not just use it. That means going further than chatting with Copilot or ChatGPT day to day. We don't expect you to ship code, but your default should already be automate this, not do this by hand.

Skills & Mindset

• High ownership, low handholding. You set your own priorities, manage your own calendar, and take initiative without being asked. You don't wait for a brief, you write it.

• Resourceful. When you hit something you don't know, you find the answer yourself before it becomes a blocker. You don't get stuck, and you don't wait for someone to unstick you.

• AI native, not AI curious. You don't just use AI tools, you build with them. Whether that's Claude, Claude Code, or whatever gets the job done, your default is to automate. Manual work is a last resort.

• Comfortable in the weeds. Some of what this role needs is genuinely repetitive before it's automated. That doesn't wear you down. Y