Global Tax Manager

Your Role

• ZURU is building a high-performing global tax function to proactively manage risk, reduce complexity, and create commercial advantage across more than 20 countries.
• You will play a critical role in delivering key outcomes that protect and enable the business, particularly in areas of tax compliance, reporting, efficiency, and cross-border tax strategy.
• In this role, you will be accountable for leading tax compliance, reporting, and governance deliverables, working closely with our finance team in Shenzhen and external advisors.
• You will drive automation, simplify processes, and act as a trusted partner on global structuring and tax planning projects. This role is performance-focused: success is defined by accuracy, speed, scalability, and your ability to influence the way tax is operationalised across the group.
• The role is truly international, ZURU has entities in over 20 countries, and you will be exposed to all aspects of the business.  This is a very rare opportunity in New Zealand and no day is the same!

How You Will Make An Impact

• You will play a key role in managing a small high performing team, providing valuable coaching and leadership. 
• You will instil a high-performance culture, building out templates and frameworks that the team will use and follow. 
• You will support the team in ensuring that the group’s tax compliance and reporting activities are completed accurately and on time. 
• You will manage various projects to support the Global Tax Manager in a variety of areas; constantly challenge the way we do things and look for ways to improve our process through automation. 
• You will build strong relationships with other members of the finance team, as well as stakeholders of the business. 

Core Roles And Responsibilities

• Deliver all global tax compliance requirements (including income tax, indirect tax, and international tax) on time and with full audit readiness.
• Prepare tax provisions, tax accounting journals, and financial statement disclosures in accordance with appropriate accounting standards and group reporting deadlines.
• Drive and implement automation tools and scalable processes within the tax function, in collaboration with the operational finance team.
• Provide reporting and forecasts to improve tax performance and mitigate surprises for the business by getting in front of the business needs.
• Ensure the quality and accuracy of ZURU’s tax policies, processes and governance (including an initial audit of SharePoint structure and documentation management).
• Act as an internal tax adviser, offering commercially practical support on cross-border matters impacting finance, legal, or operations.
• Lead by example in setting performance expectations, delivering frameworks, and mentoring junior team members to standardise best practices.
• Provide assistance on other non-tax related matters as required.

Skills & Experience Required

• You will have a minimum of 5 years of tax experience within a professional services firm or a similar inhouse function
• Proven track record leading complex tax compliance and reporting for multinational groups across multiple tax types and jurisdictions.
• Experience building or re-engineering tax reporting processes, governance structures, and cross-functional tax operations.
• Demonstrated ability to manage and deliver structuring or entity reorganisation initiatives with tax sensitivity and stakeholder buy-in.
• Evidence of partnering effectively with remote or offshore teams to deliver coordinated tax outcomes.

Key Skills

• Strong work ethics and the ability to seamlessly move from the ‘macro’ to ‘micro’
• Ability to succinctly and clearly communicate complex tax concepts
• Strong project management skills.  Ability to push transactions forward in an effective way, working cooperatively with various parts of the business with a view to closing projects efficiently and quickly.
• Curiosity and desire to learn and engage with tax jurisdictions outside of NZ.  NZ tax compliance and advisory is only a very small part of this role: it is predominantly international facing
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills
• Sound written and verbal communication skills and ability to liaise with a range of staff across all business units and leadership levels
• Ability to communicate and work effectively with teams based in different jurisdictions and time zones
• Your ability to speak and/or understand Mandarin is an advantage.  Whilst not critical, the Group finance team is primarily based in Shenzhen and regular interactions will be necessary for this role
• Capacity to travel to China periodically