Senior Financial Accountant
Formentera Operations · Brisbane, Australia ·
- Seniority
- Senior
- Category
- Finance
- Experience
- 5+ years
Position
Senior Financial Accountant
Date
September 2025
Reports to
Finance Manager
Position location
Brisbane, QLD — with periodic travel to Darwin, NT and field operations
Direct reports
Financial Accountant (1); team will grow as DWE scales
Approx. travel
<5%
Company Overview
Daly Waters is a leading upstream company focused on the Beetaloo Sub-basin, backed by Formentera Partners, an Austin, Texas based energy private equity firm. Daly Waters entered the Beetaloo Basin in 2022 through a 50/50 joint venture with Tamboran Resources (NYSE: TBN). Formentera Partners is an independent energy private equity platform managing four funds (>US$2.5B). Formentera’s expansive development and production experience across all major US shale basins is leveraged to deliver reliable, efficient, and technically driven operations to optimize value and performance across diverse assets.
Daly Waters is poised to take over operatorship of some of the most prospective acreage within the Beetaloo and has an exciting growth trajectory for 2026 and beyond.
Position Overview
The Senior Financial Accountant is the accounting backbone of DWE's Australian Finance function and the Finance Manager's principal support for financial control, accounting and compliance.
The role owns DWE's core accounting processes across the Australian group, including financial close, balance sheet integrity, statutory reporting, tax compliance, JV accounting, AFE and asset accounting, audit readiness and financial controls.
This is not a maintenance accounting role. The successful candidate will help build and improve the Finance function while the underlying business is itself growing. The role spans technically complex accounting judgements through to hands-on financial operations. The Senior Financial Accountant is expected to move comfortably between interpreting an accounting standard or JV agreement, reviewing a balance sheet reconciliation, investigating an unusual transaction, improving a process and coaching the Financial Accountant.
The position provides meaningful exposure to ERP implementation, joint venture operations, drilling and appraisal activities, private equity ownership and the development of a significant Australian upstream gas business. The natural growth path from this role is Financial Controller or Head of Finance as DWE scales through FID and into production.
Success requires more than technical competence. DWE is seeking someone with intellectual curiosity, sound judgement, low ego, high personal accountability and the capacity to operate effectively where not every process or answer has already been established.
Position Job Duties
Financial Control and Month-End
- Own the end-to-end monthly close across the Australian group and deliver accurate management accounts to agreed timelines.
- Maintain the integrity of the general ledger and balance sheet, ensuring reconciliations are complete, supported, reviewed and exceptions resolved.
- Review journals, accruals, prepayments, intercompany balances, payroll accounting and other close adjustments.
- Establish and continuously improve close procedures, responsibilities and controls.
- Identify unusual transactions, trends and accounting issues and ensure they are investigated rather than simply processed.
Technical Accounting and Financial Reporting
- Prepare and maintain accounting position papers and supporting documentation for material or judgemental accounting matters.
- Apply Australian Accounting Standards, including accounting for exploration and evaluation expenditure, leases, employee benefits, provisions, financial instruments and joint arrangements as relevant.
- Identify accounting issues early and provide the Finance Manager with a clearly framed issue, analysis, recommendation and supporting evidence.
- Support preparation of annual financial statements and associated statutory reporting.
Joint Venture Accounting
- Own the financial accounting processes for DWE's operated and non-operated joint venture interests.
- Review JV cash calls, partner billing statements, expenditure statements and reconciliations.
- Maintain JV accounting records and ensure expenditure is appropriately classified by entity, JV, AFE/project and account.
- Investigate partner queries and support JV audits and financial information requests.
- Develop scalable JV accounting processes as DWE's operatorship responsibilities increase.
AFE, Project and Asset Accounting
- Maintain financial integrity across AFE/project accounting, exploration expenditure, work in progress and fixed assets.
- Apply appropriate capital versus expense classification and ensure significant judgements are documented.
- Review AFE cost coding and support budget-to-actual and commitment reporting.
- Ensure financial records remain aligned with underlying commercial agreements and operational activity.
Tax and Statutory Compliance
- Coordinate DWE's Australian tax compliance activities with external advisers.
- Own internal preparation and review of BAS/GST, payroll tax, FBT and income tax supporting workpapers.
- Maintain statutory and compliance calendars across DWE's Australian entities.
- Ensure information provided to advisers is complete, reconciled and audit-ready.
Audit and External Reporting
- Own financial audit readiness and the annual PBC process.
- Ensure accounting records and supporting documentation are maintained continuously at an audit-ready standard.
- Coordinate audit requests, investigate queries and drive timely resolution.
- Seek to minimise audit adjustments, control findings and unnecessary external adviser cost through strong internal preparation.
Financial Systems, Processes and Controls
- Become a Finance subject matter expert and super-user as DWE's ERP and supporting systems mature.
- Translate accounting and control requirements into effective workflows, systems and reporting.
- Identify inefficient or weak processes and implement proportionate improvements.
- Support development and operation of DWE's internal financial control framework.
- Maintain appropriate segregation of duties, delegations and supporting documentation.
Team Leadership and Development
- Direct, review and develop the Financial Accountant.
- Establish clear expectations for quality, timeliness and ownership.
- Provide constructive feedback and progressively delegate responsibility as capability develops.
- Create an environment where errors and concerns are surfaced early, understood and addressed at their root cause.
- Build capability rather than creating dependency on review.
Essential Skills and Experience
Essential
- CA or CPA qualified.
- Approximately 5–8 years' relevant accounting and finance experience, with demonstrated progression in responsibility.
- Strong financial accounting fundamentals and demonstrated ownership of month-end close and balance sheet integrity.
- Experience supporting statutory financial reporting and external audit.
- Experience with Australian GST/BAS and broader tax compliance processes.
- Strong Excel and financial systems capability.
- Experience in resources, energy, extractive industries or another capital-intensive operating environment.
- Demonstrated ability to independently analyse accounting issues and develop well-supported conclusions.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills.
Highly Regarded
- Upstream oil and gas experience, particularly Australian onshore exploration, appraisal or production.
- Joint venture accounting experience including cash calls, partner billing and cost statement reconciliation.
- AFE/project accounting experience.
- AASB 6 exploration and evaluation accounting experience.
- ERP implementation or finance systems improvement experience.
- Exposure to private equity-backed or rapidly growing organisations.
- DWE values capability, judgement and learning agility and will consider strong candidates from adjacent resources or capital-intensive industries who can demonstrate the ability to learn upstream oil and gas accounting quickly.
DWE employment may require background checks and/or other testing.
Daly Waters Energy is an equal opportunity employer. We welcome applications from all backgrounds and do not discriminate on the basis of race, colour, religion, sex, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or any other attribute protected under applicable Australian law.