Sr Specialist Payments - 8 months

Purpose & Overall Relevance for the Organization: At adidas, we have a clear purpose: “Through sport, we have the power to change lives.” This guiding principal shapes how we operate as a company, how we collaborate with our partners, how we create our products, and how we connect with our consumers. Our values represent essential behaviours and mindsets, reflecting the “You Got This” attitude we strive to see in every team member. This same purpose and mindset are at the heart of Global Business Services (GBS) the team that delivers consistent, end-to-end business solutions across adidas. By driving process excellence and operational efficiency, GBS enables our partners to focus on what matters most: creating impact. Within GBS, the Senior Payments Specialist plays a critical role in overseeing complex payment operations and ensuring end-to-end accuracy, compliance, and efficiency across all company payment processes. This role acts as a subject matter expert, providing guidance to the Payments team and partnering with key stakeholders to ensure timely, accurate, and compliant execution of payments to vendors, employees, and other entities. By combining strong analytical and problem-solving skills with a deep understanding of financial controls and banking operations, the Senior Payments Specialist maintains visibility on payment performance, interim accounts, and exceptions. The role ensures timely resolution of discrepancies and drives process improvements that enhance accuracy, compliance, and transparency. As part of the company’s operational excellence framework, this position also contributes to KPI achievement, process standardization, and automation initiatives that strengthen the company’s financial integrity and vendor relationships. Location: Bogota Key Responsibilities: • Oversee and execute payments, ensuring full compliance with internal policies, controls, and local regulations. • Review and approve payment proposals processed by the team, verifying accuracy and completeness prior to execution. • Act as the main point of contact for escalations, payment rejections, or exceptions, coordinating with Treasury, Accounting, external auditors and banking partners. • Oversee the monitoring and reconciliation of interim and clearing accounts, ensuring prompt identification and resolution of open items, and provide comprehensive analysis and reports to GBS Leaders and market stakeholders. • Analyze payment trends and key performance indicators to identify risks, gaps, and improvement opportunities. • Provide operational and technical guidance to Payment Specialist and local markets, ensuring adherence to process standards and controls. • Act as a backup for other peers to ensure process continuity and quality. • Support internal and external audits by preparing evidence, documentation, and detailed process explanations. • Collaborate with cross-functional teams to drive automation, efficiency, and process harmonization initiatives. • Partner with key stakeholders to support accurate cash flow forecasting and ensure compliance with policies and financial security requirements. Key Relationships: • Internal: Corporate Treasury, Accounting, Local Market Finance teams, Internal Controls, Procurement, and GPO/IT support teams. • External: Banks, financial entities, and external auditors. • Operational Partners: Accounts Payable delivery team (for payment proposals and posting validations) and business users (for issue resolution and payment-related inquiries). Requisite Education and Experience / Minimum Qualifications: • University degree in Accounting, Commerce/Business Administration/Finance. • 3+ years of relevant experience in Payments, Treasury, or Accounts Payable operations. • Strong knowledge of SAP, banking platforms, and other tools such as Concur, Ariba, FIP, APWF. • Fluent in English and Spanish. • Demonstrated ability to analyze data, identify trends, and implement process improvements. • Excellent stakeholder management, communication, and leadership skills, with the ability to collaborate effectively across functions, levels, and geographies. • Highly driven results and self-motivated team player with compassion, integrity, trust and perseverance. • Experience in a GBS or Shared Service environment is a plus