Head of Finance & Legal (Board Member)

*Important note: we require a level of C1 in Dutch for this position.

There it is!

Your new challenge as financial board member at Rel, a scaleup in the energy transition. A mission-driven company full of young, driven people. You will share responsibility for the company-wide strategy and be independently ultimately responsible for the finance and legal domains within the leadership team (which we call 'Koers').

Do you recognise yourself in our ideal profile?

You are an entrepreneurial financial professional. Someone who was already interested in entrepreneurship at a young age. In building, in creating. Someone who, for example, sold things at the flea market during King's Day. Maybe you even started a small business during your student days. Successful or not. Naturally, you gravitated towards the financial side. Later, you turned your hobby into your work and were (or are) responsible for finance and/or business control at a growing company. Ideally, you have already been ultimately responsible for company-wide finances. You are the lightning-fast thinker who quickly puts a finger on the sore spot. You smell 'bullshit' from miles away and keep probing until topics are crystal clear. But your sharpness does not turn into nitpicking or bluntness. You know how to combine your sharpness with the ability to build warm relationships with your colleagues, where humour and positive energy are central. What makes you unique is that you gain energy both from getting the financial and legal basics in order (and keeping them that way!) and from the question of where the company needs to go. You are looking for a new job at a (sustainable) company that you want to commit to for the long term, where you face many complex puzzles that help you grow a lot. Recognisable? Then we really should have a cup of coffee!

Your mission has two parts:

1. Define company-wide strategy. Together with Fleur and Loes, you are jointly responsible as the Koers circle for strategic (portfolio) choices: which services should we fully invest in? What should we actually stop doing? How do we ensure we (continue to) win tenders, now and in the future? You are a driver of strategic thinking and coach the leads of the various services to a higher level. As a team, Koers is ultimately responsible for the company-wide EBITDA of the current and upcoming financial year.

2. Domain responsibility for finance & legal. This means you are ultimately responsible for our financial and legal processes. Concretely, you coach the finance circle, oversee the month-end and year-end closing process, challenge the service leads on their assumptions, manage the company-wide budget, develop business cases for tenders and new propositions, and ensure that all our agreements (and there are quite a few) are substantively robust and important risks are covered.

This role exists for two reasons. Co-founder Joppe, who built the Finance circle, is shifting his focus, together with co-founders Paul and Reinier, towards developing new initiatives. You therefore have plenty of room to further develop the domain as you see fit; Joppe remains available as a sparring partner and for the handover. In addition, we see that the energy transition increasingly requires legal expertise, and we are looking for someone within Koers to take the lead on that.

This makes the financial side special

The substantive challenges that make this role different from an average finance function.

• Other people's money. Subsidies that municipalities pay to residents and businesses through us partly run through a separate foundation. That money is not ours and must be accountable down to the individual home every month.

• Public clients. A large part of our revenue comes from tenders. Pricing models, ratios, guarantees and accountability requirements from municipalities directly affect finance, often even before the bid is submitted.

• Project administration at scale. Large numbers of homes, dozens of programmes, each with its own budgets and conditions. Making margin and cost price per proposition visible requires real work.

• Two system worlds. Operations run in Salesforce, administration in Exact Online. Getting those two to tell the same story is a structural theme in this role.

When are you successful?

If, in a year:

1. Strategy. Rel has a broadly supported multi-year strategy with a financial translation. Koers visibly steers on it. Because you stay on top of things, we achieve our margin targets company-wide.

2. Steering. The leads of all our services have reliable insight into margin, cost price and the levers to improve them, monthly, and weekly where it matters.

3. Control. Over the year, the month-end closing of all entities (including the foundation for third-party funds) has been accelerated from 'ready in 10 working days' to 'ready in 5 working days', and all annual accounts are in place before 31 March 2027.

4. Legal. The most important legal files are identified, assigned and in order. New contracts and tenders are reviewed in advance rather than repaired afterwards.

5. Team and processes. The Finance team functions so independently that you are not needed operationally and primarily act as a sparring partner for difficult questions. You have also made 2 processes considerably simpler: the invoicing process and the expense claim process, so that we spend about 50% less time on them.

In addition, (senior) colleagues experience you as a valuable sparring partner, and together with Loes and Fleur you form a leadership team that provides direction, solves problems effectively and pushes Rel forward.

These will be your new colleagues

You will work closely with your fellow Koers members Loes and Fleur, the founders Joppe, Paul and Reinier, and the various team leads of the operational teams. The Finance circle also consists of Bart (financial controller), Nora (accounts payable) and Asana (accounts receivable). You lead and coach.

This is what you (ideally) bring

This is what we really need

• Experience in strategy formation at board level: you have previously helped shape the direction of a company and translated it into plans and figures that teams can move forward with.

• Experience in a financial role (CFO, finance director, head of finance) in an organisation with more than 50 colleagues.

• A solid foundation in accounting, P&L management, cash flow management and business modelling. You can read a balance sheet and build a model, and you are not above making a journal entry yourself.

• You are available 36 or 40 hours per week, with one work-from-home day per week.

Nice to have

• Experience with multiple entities and consolidation.

• Knowledge of Exact Online and/or Salesforce.

• Demonstrable affinity with legal and compliance: you read contracts and regulations with a sharp eye for what really matters.

• Hands-on experience with automation and AI in finance or legal workflows. You use it yourself and see where it truly changes processes.

• Experience with municipalities, tenders or public-private partnerships.

• Experience with subsidy programmes and the related accountability.

• Experience with bank financing and covenant reporting, or with foundation and steward ownership structures.

• Experience with strategic People & Culture policy. This domain does not belong to this role; within Koers we are still deciding who will take it on, but if you have experience with it and enjoy it, it is certainly worth a conversation.

And this is who you are

• Finisher. You complete files fully: not 90%, but airtight, documented and transferable.

• Calm and reliable. You keep a cool head in complex questions and look at all relevant angles with a helicopter view.

• Warm and people-oriented. Open, empathetic and focused on the development of colleagues. Honest in your feedback.

• Forward-thinking. You spot risks and opportunities at an early stage, and act on them.

• Simplifier. You make complex matters workable and challenge existing structures when that delivers scalability.

• Energetic. You focus on what is possible and give energy to the team.

What we offer

Fair is fair!

• The salary range for this position is € 6,900 to € 8,800 gross per month based on 40 hours, excl. 8% holiday allowance. The holiday allowance is paid out monthly. Placement depends on your track record and on how quickly you can fill the role with a high degree of independence. You might earn a lot more elsewhere. That's true. It applies to everyone who works at Rel, and yet our engagement score is 89%.

• Personal vitality budget of €250 per year via Alleo, to spend on something that makes you happy (e.g. sport, good meals, massages).

• Collective green pension scheme via DoenPensioen from ASR. Rel contributes 4.5% and you contribute 3%. You can adjust your own contribution upwards yourself.

• 100% paid parental leave.

• Travel allowance for commuting by public transport outside Amsterdam. (Amsterdammers cycling, then! Just as sustainable 😉)

Holidays & public holidays

• Unlimited holiday days with a 'fair use policy'. So a extra day off on your birthday is perfectly fine!

• Flexible public holidays. You may use National Holidays as you wish. It's fine to swap, for example, Whit Monday for Eid al-Fitr.

Growth & development

• 1:1 guidance from your personal Rel coach and, for those who want it, a professional external coach via OpenUp.

• Rel Academy with a relevant training every month, to which we also ask you to contribute.

• Training budget for those who want to follow a specific training that is not in the Rel Academy.

• Weekly reflection via the 15Five tool and regular feedback from colleagues.

• Because we work holacratically at Rel, you can at any time make your own proposal on how to adjust your role, take on an additional role, or grow.

Positive energy

• Plenty of freedom and autonomy in how you shape your work (including through holacracy), but always together with each other (#samensterk).

• Four company-wide strategy days per year, so you are closely involved in the organisation's strategy.

• Regular drinks and once a year a weekend away together.

• Working with our core values as a compass at an organisation that chooses the mission as boss.

Great workplace

• New sustainable office, a 5-minute walk from Amsterdam Zuid station and next to Beatrixpark (for a lovely walk!).

• Hybrid working after your first year. We consider good onboarding very important, and presence during the first year is therefore expected. That is why we usually start with a maximum of 1 work-from-home day per week.

• A (refurbished) MacBook.

Last but not least: impact

• A meaningful job in which you make a daily impact on accelerating the energy transition. Thanks to our work in 2025, every full-time Rel employee saved as much CO₂ as the average annual emissions of 14 (!) Dutch people.

Application process

After your application, we will call you for a short introductory phone call.

After that, there are 3 interviews in which you will speak with Koers colleagues, founders and finance colleagues. Practical case studies are a major part of the interviews and may require preparation time. We deliberately have 3 interviews because we know that 'spending a bit more time at the front end' always pays off. Especially for this role.

Questions about this vacancy?

Feel free to send Joppe a message, he likes that!

Joppe Out Co-founder

werkenbij@regionaalenergieloket.nl

Ready to make an impact?