Sr Associate Transactional Finance

Career Category

Job Description

Job Description

Amgen’s Research and Development (R&D) Business Operations organization addresses complex business challenges with outstanding people, tools, and processes. The team delivers on key initiatives and capabilities to support R&D and key Amgen partner organizations. The senior associate in Transactional Finance is responsible for supporting end to end financial transactions and ensuring the accuracy and efficiency of supplier contracting processes within the Global Business Transactions Center (GBTC). We are looking for talent who have capabilities in resource and expense management, which include but are not limited to, accounting of resources and expenses, data analytical skills to provide insights and enable decision making as well as a strong financial and system acumen. This role requires a solid understanding of Ariba, Anaplan and SAP software and its functionalities, as well as a solid background in general contracting and/or supplier management processes.  The senior associate will collaborate with cross-functional teams, including sourcing, accounts payable, and finance, to ensure smooth and seamless financial operations. We are a team that delivers for our partners!

Required Competencies and Skills:

Key Responsibilities:

• Execute financial transactions including purchase order processing, invoice verification, payment processing, and expense management activities using Anaplan, Ariba, and SAP.
• Partner with business functions to plan and manage resources, budgets, and expenses.
• Maintain budget trackers, line-item records, and monthly actuals reporting.
• Reconcile financial transactions against planned activities and identify discrepancies for leadership review.
• Ensure compliance with company policies, procedures, internal controls, and regulatory requirements.
• Manage master data, vendor information, cost centers, WBS elements, scopes, quotes, and supporting documentation within Ariba and SAP.
• Partner with Responsible Amgen Employees (RAEs) and suppliers to maintain accurate financial and procurement records.
• Review supplier documentation for accuracy, completeness, and adherence to required formats.
• Coordinate supplier onboarding, SIF updates, Ariba enablement, and vendor account maintenance activities.
• Monitor and maintain the status of purchase orders, invoices, ePayments, approvals, tickets, and supplier actions.
• Follow up on routine transactional issues through resolution and provide timely status updates to stakeholders.
• Collect, analyze, and interpret financial data using Smartsheet, OPTS, Tableau, Ariba, and SAP reports.
• Prepare recurring and ad hoc financial reports, dashboards, and analytics to support business decision-making.
• Identify trends, insights, cost-saving opportunities, and process improvement recommendations.
• Support invoice submissions, payment follow-ups, PO maintenance, PO closeouts, accrual documentation, amortization tracking, transfers, and quarterly LE reporting activities.
• Produce reports on budget status, PO and invoice aging, payment status, commitments, and documentation completeness.
• Collaborate with sourcing, accounts payable, finance, and other cross-functional teams to streamline financial processes and resolve transactional issues.
• Build and maintain effective working relationships with internal stakeholders and external suppliers.
• Support audit activities by maintaining accurate, complete, and audit-ready documentation.
• Drive continuous improvement initiatives to enhance process efficiency, accuracy, and operational effectiveness.
• Provide guidance and support to users on Ariba and SAP processes, functionalities, and best practices.
• Develop and maintain process documentation, user guides, and training materials as required.
• Review proposed arrangements through Amgen’s healthcare compliance system of record (C3).
• Provide C3 system support and address healthcare compliance-related questions from Amgen staff.
• Perform activities in accordance with Amgen’s Healthcare Compliance Policy and Standard Operating Procedures.

Knowledge:

• Excellent computer and MS Office skills
• Working knowledge of MyBuy/Ariba, SAP, Anaplan or the approved finance tracker, supplier onboarding requirements and basic financial coding.
• Good writing skills; detail-oriented
• Communicates effectively within and outside department
• Solid understanding of purchasing and supply chain procedures.
• Solid understanding of standard operating procedures (SOPs) and healthcare regulations.
• Solid understanding of standard contracting legal principles. 

Problem Solving:

• Ability to process transactions from end to end, engaging business partners where appropriate.
• Identify routine issues, including missing information, non-compliant supplier documentation, incorrect coding, invoice/payment discrepancies and process delays and escalate business issues needing resolution.
• Review invoice/expenses and triage or escalate any issues.
• Communicate and escalate contractual and/or payment challenges to leadership team.
• Engage with functions to assist with planning and managing resources and expenses.
• Handling financials for assigned expense collections including tracking and reporting.
• Participating in and contributing to initiatives related to resource and expense management.
• Exercises good judgment.
• Interact with business partners to ensure compliance processes and standards are understood and followed.
• Maintain key relationships by communicating and collaborating with cross-functional partners such as Law, Regulatory and other Worldwide Compliance and Business Ethics groups, and the International Healthcare Compliance group.
• Time management and problem-solving skills.
• Manage payment inquiries that are received from HCPs (Healthcare Professional), RAEs (Responsible Amgen Employee), Service Providers etc. Outcome may include further reviews, research and/or triage.
• Other duties as assigned.

As a creative problem solver with a get it done approach, responsibilities include:

• Handling financials for assigned expense collections including tracking and reporting.
• Participating in and contributing to initiatives related to resource and expense management.
• Administrative tasks such as maintaining external and internal facing SharePoint sites and intake request tools.
• Perform data entry (i.e. for Study Planning), administrative coordination, compliance checks, and document management for business related activities. 
• Provide support as required for Planisware and financial systems, such as Ariba/MyBuy.
• Provide support to resolve issues and ensure compliance with departmental playbook.
• Generation of Purchase Orders and Change Orders within internal system.
• Support for budget confirmation and PO-tracking.
• Resolution of invoice issues and escalations as required.
• Communicate clearly with RAEs, Finance, GSS, Procurement and suppliers to gather information, confirm next steps and ensure requests do not stall.
• Assists with urgent/high profile requests and projects as needed, onboarding and training of new hires.
• Initiation of CDAs, MTAs and other requested agreements.
• Controlled substance requisition approvals.
• Attends meetings as required and support the resolution of procure-to-pay technical issues.
• Supplier onboarding and vendor account updates

• Appropriate document management for business related activities to enable requisition creation to invoice payment.
• Appropriate business administration coordination per playbook
• Data entry into study planning systems per playbook, including study number generation and support of ad hoc inquires.

Require Qualifications:

Master's OR Bachelor’s degree and 5 - 9 years years of related resource management, paralegal, contracting and/or financial accounting experience.

Preferred Requirements

• Familiarity with research and clinical development in biopharmaceutical industry as well as medical and scientific terminology.
• Finance, resource, and budget management experience including cost analysis and reporting.
• Experience with analytics software (Microsoft Access, Spotfire, Tableau, Smartsheet), document management applications, portfolio planning tools, supply chain and financial systems (Planisware, Veeva, SAP, Ariba).
• Intermediate Microsoft Office user (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Outlook).
• Experience working with virtual teams and using collaborative tools and platforms.
• Exceptional interpersonal, organizational, critical thinking and verbal/written communication skills
• Ability to work in a highly cross matrixed environment
• Strong planning and project management skills with the demonstrated ability to work effectively in a fast-paced environment with multiple high priority projects and minimal supervision.