Senior Manager Accounting & Controlling (m/w/d)

Role Summary

In medium-sized companies, accounting is broken down into parts and passed on: one person makes the bookings, one prepares the financial statements, one speaks to the entrepreneur. In the end, no one really knows the company - and the owner gets numbers that he can't control.

Vogel is one of the most successful medium-sized consulting companies in Germany - several thousand medium-sized companies entrust us with their tax, commercial and strategic issues. We take over the entire accounting for these companies: ongoing processing with a high degree of automation, commercial accounting and, based on this, evaluation, planning and controlling. You will be responsible for this route from a technical point of view and will expand it.

You are an auditor or have been responsible for commercial law financial statements for years - in an auditing or tax consulting company or in the accounting department of a medium-sized company. You know the point at which your work ends: the degree is finished, the certificate is available - and the actual business question will be decided afterwards, without you. At Vogel you will find the opposite: structures that support - established clients, long experience, strong growth base - and at the same time a setup that moves forward every day. No review cycle that starts from the beginning with every mandate. No corporate corset.

You manage your mandates completely through the numbers - from ongoing accounting through the closing to the conversation in which the entrepreneur makes his decisions. There is no interface where you hand over. You lead a team and report to management. The natural progression leads to a director role with responsibility for accounting and controlling across multiple locations.

What you delivered after 6 months

• You have completed around ten commercial law degrees on your own responsibility and have set the standard by which the others are measured.
• You have defined when a deal can be concluded and the four-eye regime in your line is in operation.
• You conducted the first management discussions with your clients yourself and know your team personally.

What you delivered after 12 months

• You have made at least five medium-sized clients around 20 percent more efficient in their ongoing accounting - measurable in terms of throughput time and the proportion of manual work.
• You have established at least one control topic beyond financial accounting and is in operation for several mandates - planning, forecasting, contribution margin or liquidity management.
• You have coordinated the tax-critical accounts and the query pattern with the tax advisor so that tax issues become apparent early on and not only in the final discussion.

What you delivered after 24 months

• You have established a level of quality that can be measured across the entire portfolio and does not depend on individual people.
• The control and consulting services in accounting are a recurring revenue line that several clients pay.
• You are a technical escalation endpoint for accounting and controlling, have expanded your team beyond the first level and are a candidate for the director level.

Where the position is developing

The next step is Director Accounting & Controlling (management career) - but this requires a line that carries the standard independently, not just additional years of professional experience. We don't know the automaticity of "more experience equals higher level". The Director level opens up the VP path along our career framework.

Responsibilities

YOUR RESPONSIBILITY

Accounting and accounting

1. Responsible for the ongoing accounting of your mandates with a high level of automation - and drive this level further instead of managing manual work. Your benchmark is not whether the numbers are correct in the end, but rather how little manual effort was necessary.
2. Responsible for the commercial annual financial statements including appendix and report - as an independent result for the entrepreneur, not as a preliminary stage of the tax return. You prepare the commercial law part, our tax advisor is responsible for the tax part and the declaration.
3. Define when a deal is ready to be concluded and turn it into a standard that supports deadline pressure - including four eyes within the line and the accounting policy decisions that you make together with the client.

Control and advice for the entrepreneur

1. Conduct the monthly or quarterly conversation with the entrepreneur and translate the numbers into a line of action. Your benchmark: He can then make a decision, not just repeat a number.
2. Build planning and control on current accounting - earnings, balance sheet and liquidity planning with scenarios, forecast, target/actual comparison, cost and performance accounting, contribution margin.
3. Accompany financing and bank discussions, prepare them for ratings and show the liquidity reserves that lie in working capital and receivables management - the most common unused source in medium-sized companies.
4. Tailor these services so that they are recurring and scale with mandate volume, rather than being reinvented for each mandate.

Team leadership and standards

1. Lead your team professionally and disciplinarily — reviews, escalation decisions, performance discussions, participation in hiring.
2. Continue to develop the experience levels within the line: Who builds which degree and who conducts which management discussion is a question of ability and aspiration, not of seniority.
3. Set the tone in the team: hierarchical in decision-making, flat in communication, autonomous in execution. We celebrate performance, not hide it - anyone who is good will find the space for it here, without political camouflage and without consensus theatre.

WHAT YOU WON'T FIND WITH US

1. No review cycle that starts from the beginning for every mandate. You support the same companies for years and see what happens to your work - instead of testing once a year and leaving.
2. No pure controlling without responsibility for the balance sheet. You are responsible for the conclusion yourself. If you only want to interpret the numbers but not take responsibility for them, you are sitting at the wrong desk.
3. No accounting back room without design input. Recording and coordination are largely done by machine. What remains is assessment, standards and a conversation with the entrepreneur.
4. No ready-made set of rules that you just apply. You help shape what the standard looks like, how far the automation goes and what control services we offer.
5. No partnership with competing interests. We are a company with one-firm logic — one brand, one culture, one hiring bar. No management by committee, no consensus as an end in itself.

FAQ

1. WHAT IS BIRD — AND WHERE DO YOU WORK?

Vogel is one of Germany's leading medium-sized business consultancies - a family business since 1959, based in Aalen - and is building the leading consulting platform for medium-sized businesses. We are growing at several locations: in Aalen/East Württemberg as an established headquarters and in Munich as a new hub. In both, we look across functions — from tax advice to consulting to the strategic teams that build the platform.

1. HOW TO UNDERSTAND THE SALARY BANDS?

Deliberately wide - and identified at every point. We differentiate based on track record and market value, not on degree: scarce, highly sought-after profiles at the top end, less scarce ones at the bottom. We calibrate exclusively to the market - two people with similar experience can earn different things with us.

1. HOW MUCH — AND HOW — DOES VOGEL WORK?

It's measured by what you move, not by hours. But it's also honest: If you're looking for 9-to-5, we're not the first place to go. We are looking for people who work intensively on their own initiative because the tasks are worth it. How you distribute your time is largely up to you. What we share: We work together face-to-face - culture, sparring and the best ideas arise in daily proximity. We are not a remote company and do not have major home office policies; Individual remote days are no problem.

1. HOW DOES THE APPLICATION PROCESS?

Slim, fast, transparent — and graded according to profile. For entry-level roles (internship, work study, career entry), two interviews and a short work sample are usually sufficient; experienced roles are a little more detailed. For selected senior roles, we are looking into incorporating a joint working day in the future so that both sides get to know each other better. The following always applies: scheduled deadlines, quick decisions, substantial feedback - regardless of the outcome.

1. HOW DOES VARIABLE PAY WORK?

Linked to performance on a quarterly basis and assessed qualitatively. The scale increases with the level: up to 20% Associate, 27.5% Manager, 35% Senior Manager, 42.5% Director, 50% VP. Expected value with good performance - you meet the requirements, set your own accents, pass the keeper test - is around 50% of the maximum; the maximum bonus is not the norm. The focus is on a holistic assessment by your manager: ownership, quality, learning curve, collaboration, impact.

1. HOW DO I DEVELOP MYSELF - WHAT CAREER PATHS ARE THERE?

Two active paths: Mastery (technical depth, expert career) and Pioneer (leadership, management). You choose the direction after onboarding, usually in years 1-3. Starting a career is not a special path, but rather the early part of the same route - from working student or intern to associate, for the best ones without having to reapply.

1. TEAM, CULTURE, HOLIDAY?

A shared lunch is an open daily option - not an obligation; If you like, you can join us; anyone can eat at any time. Plus dinners, social events and offsites on a regular basis - not as a mandatory program, but because a good team also shares time outside of work. Benefits: thoughtful and substantial, not symbolic. Vacation: 28 days.

1. I KNOW SOMEONE - IS THERE A REFERRAL BONUS?

Yes — EUR 2,500 for each successfully filled position (no internships). A short context is enough: who you are thinking about, for what role, why. Doesn't have to fit perfectly, but has to be substantial.

Requirements

THIS IS WHAT YOU BRING WITH YOU

Experience & track record

• You have passed the auditor exam or are about to do so - alternatively, you have been responsible for the commercial law financial statements of medium-sized corporations and partnerships for several years.
• You come from an auditing or tax consulting company focused on medium-sized businesses, from the medium-sized business audit of a Big Four (KPMG, EY, PwC, Deloitte) or from the management of the accounting department of an upper medium-sized company with direct contact to management.
• You have not only checked financial statements, but also prepared them - and know the difference between a formal financial statement and one that makes a statement about the company.
• You have already brought economic expertise directly to the entrepreneur and not just reported to a manager. The two belong together: whoever is responsible for the deal can also lead the conversation about it.
• Profiles that do not fit into the above grid, but have substantial final responsibility of their own, are expressly invited - we judge on the contribution, not on the label. Specifically: an accountant who has been responsible for financial statements for many years and who has actually already conducted the management discussion; Tax consultant with a focus on accounting and controlling; Auditor from the network area with medium-sized company depth. The range shown above applies to the primary profile. Anyone who brings a different background starts at a different market price and converges to the role level after twelve months of proven performance - the logic behind this is in our compensation principles https://www.vogel-beratung.com/culture/verg%C3%BCtungsgrunds%C3%A4tze.

Skills & way of working

• You have mastered HGB accounting in medium-sized businesses with its real points of contention - inventory valuation, work in progress, provisions, shareholder accounts - and can represent your position to an entrepreneur and a professional.
• You master the mechanics of planning and financing: integrated multi-year planning, scenarios, investment calculations, working capital leverage, rating logic for banks.
• You think in standards, not in individual cases - you can describe when something is finished so precisely that someone else works according to the same rule.
• You know the follow-up tax questions well enough to recognize when a commercial law decision becomes tax-relevant - you don't have to know the solution yourself.
• You work with AI as a natural tool - plausibility checks, anomaly detection in account movements, setting up planning and reporting logic, research, drafting. Repetitive evaluations are an incentive for automation, not a fate.

Mindset & personality

• You are a numbers person and a relationship person in one person - you gain the trust of an entrepreneur and back it up with reliable analysis.
• You maintain a quality standard, even when the deadline is tight - and you can explain why without hiding behind formalities.
• You have the humility to learn from practitioners. The colleague with twenty years of client knowledge knows things about the business that are not included in any audit program - you build on that rather than over it.
• You aspire to set the highest standard in everything you deliver — not because someone controls it, but because mediocrity bothers you personally.