Head of Finance & Operations - Job DescriptionOverview

- Salary: up to $100,000 USD depending on experience + cost of living adjustment (up to 25% for costly locations) + bonus scheme
- Contract: Full-time, permanent
- Reports to: Hugo Inglis, Managing Director
- Location: Remote (Global). Asia-Pacific preferred. Will require some overlap with APAC timezone.

About Us High Impact Athletes (HIA) was founded by Olympians to mobilise the sports community behind evidence-based giving.

Our flagship platform, Race for Impact, runs in partnership with HYROX and turns racers into fundraisers for highly effective charities.

The scale: High Impact Athletes have influenced over $3M+ from athletes donations in our lifetime and over the past 12 months we have raised a further $8M+ from Race For Impact across 50+ events in 15 countries, with 100,000+ unique donors. We are aiming for over 5% of all HYROX participants to become Impact Racers within three years, generating $25-50M annually for effective charities. This year we expect to move $10M-$20M in donations across three legal entities, with a UK charity launching in 2026.

Our Values

1. Extreme Integrity. We really, really care about the work, each other, and trust. Trust is our most precious asset. It is the foundation everything else is built on.
2. Hustle and Heart. We are a mission-led team, not just high-performance. We ground ourselves in stories, not just stats. We are optimists who take action.
3. Stack the Firewood. Everyone pitches in. Everyone carries the load. If someone is swamped, we step in. It is not about job descriptions, it’s about getting it done together.
4. Highlight Reels. World-class craft. We are committed to work that drops jaws and creates movements.

Why Join HIA

- Mission that matters. Your work directly funds life-saving charities. We have moved millions to avert many lives being lost, protect animals from lives of constant torture and fight climate change - we are just getting started.
- Work with Olympians and a high performing team. Our founders, team, and partners include world-class athletes and world-class people who drive our standards forward.
- Senior ownership from day one. This is the org’s first formal Finance & Operations seat. You get to build and own it.
- A path to becoming a director. For the right person, this seat grows into our first formal Finance or Operations Director role.
- Remote and async-first. Work from anywhere. We care about output, not hours logged.
- Small team, big ownership. No bureaucracy.

Your impact is visible. You can lead from day one.

The Role You will own the entire finance and operations function across HIA’s two existing legal entities (US and NZ), and the UK entity currently in creation, plus our Australian payroll arrangement via Effective Altruism Australia (EAA). You will also manage the reporting and disbursement of funds via our regional processing partners such as Myriad Australia and King Baudouin Foundation, and with our ~20 partner charities, across both Race for Impact and our athlete-led giving and major-gift income. You will design the systems, run them, and grow the team that supports them.

Our stack aims to run autonomously on modern tooling and AI agents rather than spreadsheets and email chains. We do partner with some legacy charity organisations to increase our global coverage, so manual elements still come up from time to time.

What You’ll OwnFinancial leadership across the group

- Consolidated reporting,



forecasting, and inter-company reconciliation across HIA Inc (US, Delaware), HIA NZ Charitable Trust, partner-hosted funds (e.g. Myriad and King Baudouin Foundation), our Australian payroll arrangement via EAA, and any future entities.
- Board reports prepared alongside the MD, monthly reports and re-forecasts prepared for the MD.
- Subsidiary structuring work with Deloitte and DLA Piper is in motion and you will help shape it.
- Cash flow, treasury, and FX management across USD, GBP, EUR, NZD, and AUD.
- Annual budget and rolling forecasts tied to the org’s headline goals.
- Stripe optimization and management.
- Restricted vs unrestricted fund accounting, grant compliance, donor fund tracking.
- You set the brief and own the relationships with our external accountants and compliance partners (Nexia NZ, Blacksmith CPA, Clearly Compliant, Cooley & Darling, and the UK partners as we launch).
- Athlete and major-gift giving flows. Track and reconcile athlete-led campaign income, regular athlete giving, and major gifts, separate from Race for Impact.

This means restricted fund tracking, donor acknowledgement, and clean reporting back to the team running those campaigns. Tax-effective receipting across jurisdictions is largely handled by our regional partners (Myriad, Prism, EAA), so you own the reconciliation and the reporting view rather than the local compliance.

The payment processor and platform stack

- Stripe, PayPal, Raisely, Airwallex, Deel and the rest are live commercial relationships, not just utilities we pay invoices to. You will open non-profit rate conversations, negotiate flat-fee structures, and push for regional Stripe entities where it saves real money.

Fees compound at our scale.

- Co-own the Raisely commercial relationship with our Director of Technology. We are mid-renegotiation on the contract and you will inherit that work.
- Run expense audits. Cut, consolidate, or renegotiate cost drivers.

Allocate cost cleanly between HIA and Race for Impact.

Compliance, risk, and the policy stack

- 990 preparation, US state charitable registrations, UK Charity Commission filings, NZ Charities Services, Australian fundraising obligations.
- D&O;, cyber, and any future liability cover. Annual broker review. Test and managing cover against the things that have actually happened to charities our size.
- Build out and maintain the policy library, much of which still needs writing: expense and reimbursement, equipment provisioning, travel and card limits, payment verification and anti-phishing hygiene, staff onboarding and offboarding, data handling, signatory matrix, conflict of interest.
- Own the correspondence address, mail handling, and registered agents.

People and HR operations

- Contracts, payroll, benefits, and leave tracking across four jurisdictions (US via Deel, NZ via Nexia and Xero Payroll, AU via EAA, UK still to be confirmed).
- Onboarding and offboarding workflows.

Operational backbone

- Vendor management and contract reviews.

Calendar of obligations. Renewals tracker. Insurance schedule. Audit calendar.





- Working alongside our existing finance contributors and our bookkeeper (who designed and led our current financial structure).

You will lead the ongoing finance support model that scales with us.

You Might Be a Fit If

- You have 5+ years of hands-on finance experience: commercial, startup, fund, or non-profit. You can personally run a close, a consolidation, and a board pack, and you genuinely understand the financial statements. Multi-entity non-profit exposure (restricted funds, 990s, charity commission filings, intercompany reconciliation) is a strong bonus, not a requirement.

What matters is the appetite to learn it fast.

- You have held senior finance or finance-plus-operations roles in $5M to $25M organisations, ideally in a small team where you owned more than one function.
- You use AI tools every day and have strong technical skills. Our stack assumes fluency in Claude, Notion, Xero, Airwallex, Deel, Slack, Make or other automation software, and are comfortable working with AI agents.
- You are commercially literate. You read a contract and spot the cost centres other people miss, and you are comfortable asking payment processors and software vendors for better terms or negotiating alongside the MD on key contracts.
- You can write a clean expense policy in an afternoon.

You know which rules genuinely matter for an org our size and which are overhead.

- You move quickly, default to action, and have a high bar with documentation and process.
- You can translate financial reality into plain language for founders, board members, funders, the team, and partners.
- You want this role to grow into a director seat, and are happy to work hard to achieve it.

Bonus Points

- You have run a multi-jurisdiction non-profit through an audit cycle.
- You have negotiated payment processor terms (Stripe, PayPal, regional rails).
- You have stood up a UK charity structure or worked with one of the umbrella infrastructure providers (Prism, CAF, Myriad).
- You have managed a fractional or external accounting service.
- You understand donor-advised funds (DAFs) and how high-net-worth donors structure tax-effective gifts. Not essential on day one, but valuable as we grow this side of our giving.

What We’re Not Looking For

- Pure controllers who want a deep-finance specialist seat.
- People who need a playbook handed to them.
- People who prefer daily check-ins to async, written, fast-moving collaboration.
- People who are uncomfortable with a tech-and-AI-heavy operating model.
- People who see non-profit work as a step down from “real” finance.

Compensation & Benefits Base salary: Up to $100,000 USD

Cost of living adjustment: up to 25% for expensive locales

Performance bonus: Incremental % of salary, based on organisational performance.

Other benefits:

- Fully remote, async-first culture
- Generous leave policy
- Health insurance (in jurisdictions without public healthcare)
- Equipment stipend
- Work in a mission-driven team that is in growth mode

Hiring Process

1. Application review. HIA team reads every application.
2. Screening call (30-45 min). We do a mutual fit assessment.
3. Deeper interview (90 min). Topgrading-style, walk through your relevant past roles.
4. Paid work sample. A real task relevant to the role, compensated.
5. Reference calls. Two or three, ideally including a recent manager.
6. Final decision and offer.

We review applications weekly and move rapid with strong candidates.

📌 Head of Finance & Operations (Melbourne)
🏢 High Impact Athletes
📍 Melbourne