BlackLine System Administrator

Athene•West Des Moines, IA

About The Position

We are driven to do more. More for our customers and the financial professionals who offer our products. If you are driven to do more and love the challenge of pursuing more, Athene is your kind of company. You will find we offer more than the basics to create an inclusive and dynamic work environment at our various locations. Purpose: The BlackLine System Administrator acts as a primary owner and global administrator for the Blackline reconciliation and close management tool, providing day to day support, governance and oversight of the application and ensure adherence to architectural design, data management, certification controls and risk management of the company’s balance sheet exposure. Additionally, the BlackLine System Administer will assist business users with identifying and implementing process improvements that produce quantifiable benefits.

Requirements

System administration experience with Transaction Matching, Accounts Reconciliations, Journals, and Task Management modules
Experience developing reporting, analytics, and dashboards
Experience configuring match sets rules, approval workflows, risk ratings and provisioning user access
Ability to manage time commitment amongst multiple projects simultaneously
Must possess both outstanding written and oral communication skills
Expert in building and maintain relationships with leadership, stakeholders, and delivery teams
Must be proficient using Microsoft Office products including Word, Power Point, Excel, and Outlook.
4+ years of experience as a BlackLine, Trintech or Oracle ARCS system administrator
Working knowledge in Finance Systems, particularly around reconciliation tools like Blackline, Cadency or Oracle ARCS, BlackLine preferred (Account Reconciliation, Transaction Matching, Journal Entry, Task Management)
Possess a good understanding of Core Financials processes, accounting practices, and SOX compliance
Experience with multi basis of accounting (e.g., GAAP and STAT)
Experience gathering requirements, probing into problems, facilitating meetings, documenting specifications, and coordinating projects
Experience with process improvement projects and continuous improvement methodologies
Experience with Windows 10, MS Word, Excel, Access, Power Point, Business Objects, SmartView
Bachelor’s Degree in Accounting, Finance, or Information Technology, or equivalent professional experience required
Drive. Discipline. Confidence. Focus. Commitment.

Responsibilities

Act as the global system administrator and subject matter expert for any issue relating to Blackline, as well as ensuring timely and accurate processing of all Blackline requests from global users.
Provide hands-on, ongoing cross functional end-user support to ensure that BlackLine is operating efficiently across the organization.
Coordinates and supports process changes due to ongoing business changes (onboarding transactions, fielding change requests from process owners)
Performs necessary administrative functions of the Account Reconciliation, Transaction Matching, Journal Entry and Task Management modules, including but not limited to account setup, match rule construction, metrics, journal entry management, task management, communications to users and leadership and other functionality configurations.
Training global users on Blackline functionality
Manages and enforces business policies related to reconciliations and works to ensure users complete reconciliations in a timely manner.
Utilize the close management and variance analysis tool set to monitor and predict issues or areas for concern.
Liaison with IT on user issues, application upgrades, system maintenance and projects as it relates to BlackLine and other integrations to/from the tool.
Performing ongoing application maintenance; coordinate upgrade, development, testing and implementation of application enhancements with users and IT.
Testing BlackLine software to ensure newly implemented and existing functionality is working as intended.
Collaborate with internal and external business partners to identify inefficient processes and drive the implementation of solutions that deliver improved efficiencies and processes using technology as an enabler.
Work with business users to develop and track quantifiable metrics to drive process improvements.
Serve as a source of expert advice, influence change, frame information in a broader organizational context
Provide leadership guidance, make recommendations, and collaborate with business to ensure solutions meets the business needs
Stay abreast of new functionality becoming available and drive the deployment of feature releases
Metrics Dashboards
Process Improvement recommendation and implementations
Training Documented application adoption and process recommendations
Best practice recommendations