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, compliant, and transparent financial reporting across diverse markets, entities, and operating environments. Our Finance teams collaborate across Accounting, FP&A, Treasury, Tax, Legal, Procurement, Real Estate, Operations, and external advisors to ensure financial information is reliable and appropriately controlled.

Our lease accounting function supports the accurate identification, measurement, accounting, reporting, and ongoing management of lease arrangements, while strengthening lease data, financial controls, reporting processes, and compliance with applicable accounting standards.

The Role

We are seeking an experienced Senior Lease Accounting Specialist to lead lease accounting activities across the organization's property, equipment, vehicle, technology, and other lease arrangements.

The ideal candidate will manage lease assessments, accounting calculations, lease modifications, reporting, reconciliations, disclosures, controls, and system administration. The role will work closely with Finance, Legal, Procurement, Real Estate, Operations, and business teams to ensure lease arrangements are accurately captured, appropriately accounted for, and consistently reported.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end lease accounting activities across assigned entities, jurisdictions, and business units.
• Identify lease arrangements and assess contracts for lease-accounting implications.
• Review contracts, amendments, renewals, extensions, termination clauses, and other contractual terms affecting lease accounting.
• Determine whether arrangements contain identified assets and meet applicable lease-accounting criteria.
• Assess lease classification and accounting treatment under applicable accounting standards.
• Determine appropriate lease commencement dates and accounting requirements.
• Calculate and maintain lease liabilities and right-of-use assets.
• Determine appropriate discount rates and document the basis for significant lease-accounting assumptions.
• Assess lease terms, including reasonably certain renewal and termination options.
• Evaluate lease incentives, rent-free periods, variable lease payments, and other contractual considerations.
• Account for initial direct costs, restoration obligations, deposits, and other lease-related balances where applicable.
• Prepare and review lease-accounting calculations for new lease arrangements.
• Maintain accurate lease schedules and supporting calculations throughout the lease lifecycle.
• Process recurring lease accounting entries, including depreciation, interest, lease payments, and remeasurements.
• Prepare and review lease-related journal entries and supporting documentation.
• Perform monthly, quarterly, and annual lease-accounting close activities.
• Reconcile lease sub-ledgers and lease-management systems to the general ledger.
• Investigate reconciliation differences, unexplained movements, and accounting exceptions.
• Review lease balances and perform analytical procedures to identify unusual changes.
• Assess lease modifications, renewals, extensions, terminations, partial terminations, and other changes in contractual arrangements.
• Determine the accounting impact of lease modifications and remeasurements.
• Assess changes in lease payments, lease terms, discount rates, and other assumptions.
• Coordinate with Legal, Procurement, Real Estate, and business teams to identify contractual changes affecting lease accounting.
• Maintain an accurate inventory of leases, leased assets, contracts, counterparties, locations, and relevant contractual information.
• Establish and maintain lease-accounting policies, procedures, controls, and accounting guidance.
• Ensure lease accounting is applied consistently across entities, jurisdictions, asset categories, and business units.
• Monitor changes in accounting standards and regulatory guidance affecting lease accounting.
• Assess the impact of new or amended lease-accounting requirements on existing processes and systems.
• Develop implementation plans for changes in lease-accounting standards.
• Prepare technical accounting memoranda for complex or judgmental lease matters.
• Document significant judgments, assumptions, estimates, and accounting conclusions.
• Assess accounting implications of embedded leases within service, outsourcing, logistics, technology, and other commercial contracts.
• Review service agreements and other arrangements for potential embedded lease components.
• Coordinate with Procurement and Legal to ensure new contracts are appropriately reviewed for lease-accounting implications.
• Support accounting assessments for property, offices, warehouses, retail locations, vehicles, equipment, machinery, technology assets, and other leased assets.
• Coordinate with Real Estate and Facilities teams on property lease portfolios and contractual changes.
• Support Finance teams with lease-related information required for budgeting, forecasting, cash-flow planning, and management reporting.
• Provide lease data and analysis for financial planning and business-case evaluations.
• Analyze lease commitments, future cash flows, and contractual payment obligations.
• Support cash-flow forecasting related to lease payments.
• Prepare lease-related financial statement disclosures and supporting schedules.
• Maintain disclosure checklists and ensure lease disclosures are complete, accurate, and appropriately supported.
• Prepare maturity analyses and other lease-related disclosure information where applicable.
• Reconcile lease disclosures to underlying accounting records and supporting schedules.
• Coordinate with external auditors on lease-accounting matters.
• Prepare audit schedules, lease listings, calculations, reconciliations, contracts, and supporting documentation.
• Respond to auditor queries and resolve lease-accounting issues identified during audits.
• Support internal audits and financial-control reviews relating to lease accounting.
• Monitor lease-accounting controls and identify weaknesses, data-quality issues, and process gaps.
• Establish controls over lease completeness, contract review, data entry, calculations, approvals, modifications, and reporting.

Key Performance Indicators

• Lease-accounting accuracy
• Lease liability accuracy
• Right-of-use asset accuracy
• Lease schedule accuracy
• Lease sub-ledger-to-general-ledger reconciliation accuracy
• Lease completeness
• Lease contract review completion
• New lease setup timeliness
• Lease modification processing timeliness
• Lease remeasurement accuracy
• Lease journal-entry accuracy
• Lease close completion
• Lease close timeliness
• Lease payment schedule accuracy
• Discount-rate assessment accuracy
• Lease-term assessment accuracy
• Renewal-option assessment accuracy
• Embedded-lease identification accuracy
• Lease classification accuracy
• Lease disclosure accuracy
• Lease maturity-analysis accuracy
• Lease reporting completeness
• Lease data-quality score
• Lease-system data accuracy
• Lease-system calculation accuracy
• Lease-system exception rate
• Lease-system availability
• Lease-system issue resolution time
• Lease reconciliation exception rate
• Unrecorded lease identification rate
• Lease accounting control compliance
• Lease control deficiency resolution
• Audit adjustment rate
• Lease audit issue resolution time
• Auditor query response time
• Lease documentation completeness
• Contract-to-system data accuracy
• Lease reporting SLA compliance
• Accounting-policy compliance
• Accounting-standard compliance
• Lease-system automation coverage
• Manual lease-accounting effort reduction
• Process cycle-time improvement
• Lease reporting automation adoption
• Training completion
• Stakeholder satisfaction
• Continuous-improvement implementation

Ideal Candidate

The successful candidate should have strong experience in lease accounting, technical accounting, financial reporting, corporate accounting, property accounting, or accounting advisory, preferably within a multinational, real estate, retail, hospitality, logistics, technology, construction, manufacturing, or other asset-intensive organization.

The candidate should demonstrate:

• Proven experience managing lease-accounting processes across multiple entities or business units.
• Strong knowledge of applicable lease-accounting standards and financial reporting requirements.
• Experience identifying and assessing lease arrangements and embedded leases.
• Strong understanding of lease liabilities and right-of-use asset accounting.
• Experience performing lease calculations, remeasurements, modifications, and recurring accounting entries.
• Strong understanding of lease terms, renewal options, termination options, incentives, variable payments, and discount rates.
• Experience maintaining lease schedules, lease portfolios, and supporting accounting records.