About This Role

Dark Matter Labs operates through a portfolio of discovery-driven work that spans across multiple geographies, partners, and funding structures. These projects are not isolated efforts and together they form an evolving body of work that contributes to our mission-led organisation.

Financial health within this system is not simply an accounting matter. It is a core condition that shapes what work becomes possible, the fluidity with which teams can operate, and how new pathways can emerge.

The Project Portfolio Finance & Systems Steward plays a central role in stewarding this financial coherence. This role sits at the intersection of portfolio finance, organisational strategy, and project systems, translating financial insight into decisions about which work the organisation pursues, how projects operate, and how financial learning strengthens the system over time.

Working within the Project Journey Circle, this role bridges across project teams, Finance, Entity Operations, and Mission Pathways. It translates financial signals into insights that inform decision-making, supports teams in navigating the financial dimensions of their work, and helps the organisation maintain financial integrity while remaining adaptive, mission-driven, and discovery oriented.

This role requires someone who can deliver both administrative detail and strategic perspective, interpret patterns across projects, and drive/contribute to conversations that shape how the organisation allocates attention, resources, and funding. A systems-oriented operator who is willing to get their hands dirty in project finance, but is motivated by shaping how the organisation thinks and decides.

Focus Areas

1. Strategic Finance Stewardship (30%)

Steward the financial health of Dm’s global project portfolio by maintaining a clear view across projects, funding streams, and actual delivery conditions.

In this role you interpret and translate financial signals across the portfolio, helping the organisation understand where financial reality, delivery capacity, and strategic ambition intersect. You surface emerging risks and opportunities early and ensure these signals inform decision-making across Project Journey, Finance, and Mission Stewardship. 

This includes:

• Analysing portfolio-wide financial indicators such as day rates, project completion patterns, delivery capacity, and income recognition.

• Identifying emerging tensions between discovery-driven work and financial sustainability.

• Surfacing systemic risks, recurring financial patterns, or delivery pressures across projects.

• Translating financial signals into insights that inform discussions within Project Journey, Finance, and Mission Pathways.

• Supporting the organisation in determining which projects and pathways can be viably supported under current financial conditions.

The emphasis of this work is not simply reporting numbers, but helping the organisation interpret financial reality and acting on it early rather than reacting late.

2. Financial Architecture Stewardship (30%)

Steward the financial systems, tools, and operational rhythms that allow discovery-driven projects to operate with clarity and financial integrity. This role shapes the financial architecture that connects project work, accounting systems, and organisational learning, and also maintains the day-to-day cadence that keeps that architecture running. You will design how financial information flows across the organisation, and you will also help keep that flow clean and current. This includes:

• Leading the design and evolution of financial tools and models that support project budgeting, delivery tracking, completion accounting, and portfolio analysis, while improving how financial data flows across systems such as Streamtime, Xero, Notion, and supporting spreadsheets.

• Driving project finance across the Project Journey, ensuring project teams have clear and up-to-date financial information to make informed decisions about budgets, day rates, delivery stages, and resource allocation.

• Maintaining the operational financial cadence of the project portfolio, including stewarding project budgets, ensuring expenses are accurately reflected within project tracking systems, and supporting teams in keeping financial information up to date across the project lifecycle.

• Ensuring alignment between project financial records and organisational accounting systems, enabling Finance and Entity Ops to steward income recognition, reporting, and compliance processes while maintaining accurate financial data across teams and projects.

This work ensures financial reality and learning remain connected throughout the whole organisation. 

3. Financial Information Flows (25%)

Lead the integration of financial insight across Project Journey, Finance, Entity Ops, and Mission Pathways,  ensuring financial considerations are meaningfully integrated into decisions about projects, pathways, and organisational investment. This role stewards Dm’s cost reporting and co-funding pathway processes, leading the financial analysis that enables the organisation to make sound, transparent decisions about where and how to invest.

This includes:

• Translating project-level realities into financial data and narratives that are usable by Finance and Entity Ops (and vice versa).

• Supporting alignment between Project Journey processes, Finance reporting and forecasting requirements, and entity-level accounting, compliance, and audit needs.

• Flagging systemic risks, capacity pinch-points, or financial patterns early — before they become structural problems.

• In this role, you act as a financial viability analyst and governance steward for Dm’s pathways and projects, providing the analysis that informs funding decisions and ensuring those decisions remain coordinated, transparent, and financially sound across the organisation.

  • On a quarterly basis, analysing the current and forecasted average day rate and related portfolio signals, providing recommendations that inform how pathways and projects can be viably supported in the coming period.

  • When needed, coordinating with Core Funding Budget Holders to analyse whether matched or supplementary funding is available for pathway requests — providing financial input that informs rather than replaces collective decision-making.

  • Surfacing structural tensions between discovery-led ambition and financial sustainability, helping circles & teams identify emerging imbalances before they compound.

  • Ensuring that funding recommendations and outcomes are transparently documented and logged, enabling organisational learning and pattern recognition across circles over time.

This work reduces friction, ambiguity, and information loss between operational systems and discovery-driven project work.

4. Finance Processes Steward - Documentation and Improvement(15%)

Lead the stewardship and evolution of the systems, practices, and shared knowledge that underpin project finance, with an eye toward resilience and learning.

This includes:

• Leading the documentation and maintenance of core financial workflows and system structures (e.g. expense flows, tracking category logic, completion accounting assumptions) so that project finance practices remain legible, reliable, and reproducible across teams.

• Acting as a “financial librarian” for the global project portfolio, holding knowledge of how different patterns across our ecosystem emerge.

• Driving improvements to financial systems and processes, particularly where clearer conventions, automation, or tool integration can reduce manual work and strengthen system integrity.

• Translating financial signals and operational learning into process improvements that strengthen how Project Journey, Finance, and project teams interact with financial systems over time.

• Providing ad-hoc support and adapting processes to real project needs rather than enforcing rigid templates.

The aim of this work is to ensure that operational financial practice continually strengthens the intelligence, resilience, and coherence of the system.

How This Role Works

• The role is held at ~4 days per week, recognising both its ongoing operational cadence and its coordination demands.

• The role sits primarily in the Project Journey Circle, with regular touchpoints into Finance and Entity Ops spaces.

• Decision-making is exercised through distributed stewardship, clarity, and follow-through rather than hierarchy.

• Financial intelligence becomes a strategic capability across the organisation, with system-level signals surfaced early and translated into insight that informs project, pathway, and funding decisions.

• Mission Pathways, Project Journey, Finance, and project teams operate with shared financial understanding, enabled by clear translation between strategic ambition, delivery realities, and financial constraints.

• Project teams are able to navigate budgets, day rates, delivery stages, and financial trade-offs with confidence, supported by clear financial tools, guidance, and portfolio insight.

• Financial realities are integrated into pathway and investment decisions, allowing the organisation to pursue discovery-driven work while maintaining financial sustainability.

• Patterns across projects, funding structures, and delivery models are actively identified and translated into improved financial practices, tools, and governance processes.

• The organisation increasingly learns from its financial experience, strengthening how it designs projects, allocates resources, and navigates future opportunities.

You Might Thrive in This Role If…

• You are comfortable working at the intersection of systems, finance, and organisational decision-making.

• You are comfortable translating between strategic ambition, operational realities, and financial constraints.

• You can hold detail and see patterns across multiple projects at once.

• You are curious about how financial systems shape organisational behaviour and are motivated by making those systems smarter through practice and learning.

• You are patient with evolving structures and motivated by making them more legible.

• Outcomes, not just tasks, motivate you: you see the big picture, you think in systems. Deadlines are essential, yes, but what truly ignites your passion is the enduring impact of quality work. You don’t just participate; you dive in, sometimes sharing the responsibility helm, to steer projects to completion.

• You’re not just a teacher; you’re a storyteller: numbers, for you, narrate tales. You’re the person who deciphers these tales, breaking down intricate fiscal terminologies into palatable pieces. With your affable demeanour and boundless patience, you make financial comprehension an engaging journey for all.

• Discernment is your compass: in the dynamic realm of projects, your innate ability to strike a balance between overarching visions and granular details shines bright. You’re not just about making decisions; you’re about making the right ones that foster collective growth and integrity.

• You are comfortable making a call under uncertainty — particularly in co-funding reviews where there is no perfect answer, only the best available judgment given the data.

• The Boring Revolution captivates you: you find allure in crafting those incremental steps that pave the way to a resounding future.

• Learning isn’t just an act; it’s an adventure for you: diving headfirst into uncharted territories, figuring things out on the fly, and emerging enlightened is your modus operandi.

We are aware that this is an ambitious list and that you might not check all the items on it, but please still apply if you recognise yourself in a majority of them.

What This Role Enables

At its best, this role allows Dark Matter Labs to:

• Run discovery-driven projects without financial blind spots.

• Support project teams in navigating financial realities without burdening them with administrative complexity.

• Maintain financial integrity while remaining adaptive and exploratory.

• Make timely and well-informed decisions about pathways, funding opportunities, and portfolio investment.

• Compound learning across projects rather than repeatedly re-solving the same problems.

Your Background

Essential Criteria

• A solid foundation in numbers, financial analysis, and budgeting.

• Hands-on experience with project-based financial organisation or complex programme portfolios.

• Mastery in Excel/Google Sheets, going beyond typical functionalities to deliver precise financial models and insights.

• Comfort translating financial analysis into insights that inform group decision-making, particularly in situations with incomplete data or competing priorities.

Assets

• Experience with tools such as Notion, Streamtime, or Xero.

• Experience tracking budgets across multiple teams, partners, or geographies.

• Experience working with distributed or remote teams in different geographies and timezones.

• Familiarity with bookkeeping processes or accounting systems.

• Experience producing grant/cost reports — including variance analysis, burn rate monitoring, and forecasting for internal teams and external funders

We’re particularly interested in people who have:

• Grappled with the unique demands of diverse funding sources and understand the intricacies of their reporting requirements.

• Participated in cross-functional financial review processes, particularly where financial analysis informed strategic or investment decisions.

• Experience translating between strategy, mission, operational realities, and financial systems.

• Familiarity with funder grant/cost reporting requirements, including eligible cost frameworks, audit trail maintenance, and financial compliance reporting.

Some areas of experience that might make the learning curve easier:

• A history of working in innovative organisations similar to Dm, understanding the challenges of melding traditional and avant-garde financial practices.

• Dealt with the complexities of cross-border finances, including the nuances of transfer pricing.

• Managed or dealt with finances in multiple currencies, understanding challenges and strategies involved.

Who You Might Work Closely With…

Jason Brown — Project Journey Holder: Jason stewards the direction and ongoing evolution of the Project Journey Circle, shaping the tools, information architecture, and technical infrastructure that enable coherent data flows, discovery-driven work, and coordination across projects, mission, circles, and entities.

Alizé De Buck — Entity Holder, Dm Sweden & Dm UK: Manages Dm’s financial and operational processes, applying her background in Politics, Sociology, and Philosophy to improve planning and operational structures.

Andrea Fernandes — Group Accountant: Chartered Accountant with experience at Deloitte, De La Rue Plc, and Estée Lauder Companies. Andrea focuses on financial reporting and using data to support Dm’s business growth.

Pay

Our approach to pay has always been a participatory and collective process involving the entire team. Over time, we’ve experimented with different models, and we’ve recently launched our new Base Pay Formula, which is composed of the following elements:

• Geographic living costs

• Starting assets each individual brings into their Dm role upon joining. For this role, we recognise one type (additional assets might be recognised if the candidate can demonstrate how they would apply to the role):

  • Must-have: applied technical skills of project portfolio management, knowledge of operational practices, governance and financial analysis and budgeting.

• Tenure at Dm

You can estimate your pay using this calculator.

We recognize that no formula can fully reflect the unique context of every individual. That’s why we also have a Pay Rebalancing process in place, reviewed annually, to accommodate individual circumstances.

In addition, we offer Shared Benefits and Leave Budgets, which are added to the gross salary. These were set collectively by the team and vary based on statutory provisions in different geographies. We’ll be happy to confirm the specific approach relevant to your location and contract type.

Our holiday policy includes a minimum of 28 days per year (pro-rata), but we encourage you to take as much time as you need to truly rest and recharge.

Your Hiring Journey at Dark Matter Labs

This page outlines how the process will look if you apply. We recommend checking it, and if you have any questions, please reach out at join@darkmatterlabs.org.

For this role, we do not require a CV, as we aim to focus more on your potential than your past experience. In saying that, we are confident this isn’t an entry level role. Instead, you will be asked to answer four sift questions (250 words max each) related to the role, which will hopefully also help you determine if this role truly interests you. We expect to hold up to three rounds of interviews for this role with the first round commencing between April 20th - May 3rd, depending on the number of applicants.

Applications will be reviewed and called for interviews on a rolling basis. We are expecting a high number of applications, therefore the sooner you apply the better.

Thank you for your time and energy!