Business Operations Associate

SUMMARY:
A water resilience consultancy in Pretoria is looking for a Business Operations Associate: BCom Graduate / 1-3 years' experience / AI-proficient / Project & Business Administration / Accounting Support.

Must have:
- BCom degree (or closely related business degree) from the University of Pretoria, University of Johannesburg, Wits, or Akademia — completed. Majors in accounting, financial management, business management, informatics or similar all fit.
- 1–3 years' work experience in an administrative, finance-support, project support or operations role — a structured graduate programme, internship-to-permanent, or a small-firm all-rounder role all count.
- Demonstrable AI proficiency. AI tools (ChatGPT/Claude/Copilot-class, plus spreadsheet and document AI features) as a normal part of work.
- Basic accounting competence. Comfortable with debits and credits, invoicing, reconciliations and VAT at a bookkeeping level; Excel to at least pivot table standard. Xero/Sage/Pastel exposure is a plus.
- Process temperament. You build and follow checklists.
- Integrity. This seat touches money, client information and confidential records.
- Own transport and based in Pretoria.

Strongly preferred:
- Exposure to project-based or professional services businesses (engineering, consulting, construction, legal, accounting practices) - milestone billing, retentions, document control.
- Evidence of self-taught capability: a workflow you automated, a tracker you built, a process you documented that others then used.
- Good written English and Afrikaans; a professional, warm client-facing manner on phone and email.

The role: The Business Operations Associate is to keep the business engine running so that engineers engineer, and the Managing Director leads. You will sit across three workstreams and use AI tooling as your
multiplier in all of them:

POSITION INFO:
1. Project & business administration (±40%) - Document control on live projects: keeping project folders to our standard, registers and transmittals current, correspondence filed (dated and initialled), meeting minutes and action registers maintained. - Billing-milestone tracking across projects and monthly programme contracts, so that nothing invoiceable is missed. - Tender and proposal administration: compliance packs, certificates, CVs and formatting to house style, so engineers only contribute technical content. - General business administration: supplier and subscription management, office coordination, travel and sitevisit logistics, calendar support to the MD. 2. Accounting support (±30%) - Invoicing and debtors under our external accountant's oversight: raising milestone and recurring invoices, statements, and running the collections follow-up ladder. - Capturing supplier invoices and expenses; preparing payment runs for MD approval; basic bank reconciliation prep. - Keeping the compliance calendar (VAT, PAYE, provisional tax, CIPC) with external providers so nothing is filed late. - Assembling the month-end pack for the accountant and a simple management dashboard for the MD (cash, debtors, invoicing against plan). 3. AI-enabled operations (woven through everything, ±30%) - Using AI tools proficiently and responsibly to draft, summarise, structure and check: proposal and report assembly from templates, meeting minutes from recordings, correspondence, first-draft case studies and LinkedIn content, data clean-up in spreadsheets. - Building and documenting simple repeatable workflows (prompt libraries, templates, checklists, light automations) so the team's routine work gets faster every quarter. - Guarding confidentiality: client data, HR and commercial information never leave approved tools.