Head of Financial Control in Bedford

If your ideal week involves producing month-end reports and waiting for someone else to decide what happens next, this probably isn't for you.

If, however, you're the type of finance professional who wants a seat at the table, enjoys challenging assumptions, gets a kick out of solving operational problems, and believes finance should help shape decisions rather than simply report them afterwards, we'd like to talk.

We're working with a well-established international engineering and technology business supplying highly regulated, technically complex markets.

The UK operation has grown significantly in recent years and is now entering its next phase of development.

As part of that growth, the business is looking to strengthen its commercial and operational control capability by appointing a new

Head of Finance & Controlling (UK).

What You'll Be Walking Into

The finance basics are in good shape.

There's an experienced transactional finance team in place, reliable reporting processes and a profitable UK operation.

This role has not been created to fix an accounting problem.

Quite the opposite.

The challenge now is helping the business move from

• Looking backwards to looking forwards
• Reporting performance to influencing performance
• Managing activity to managing outcomes
• Good operational execution to scalable growth

The business has ambitious growth plans and wants somebody who can help connect commercial opportunities, operational capability and financial performance into one coherent view of the future.

In practical terms, that might mean

• Building stronger forecasting and planning processes
• Introducing more robust scenario modelling and decision support
• Helping develop a more mature S&OP process
• Creating meaningful KPIs that operational leaders actually use
• Improving visibility of profitability, cost drivers and business performance
• Challenging assumptions around growth, capacity and customer opportunities

The Opportunity

This role sits at the intersection of

• Finance
• Budgeting and forecasting
• Performance reporting
• Variance analysis
• Cash and working capital oversight
• Operations
• S&OP support
• Demand and capacity planning
• Process improvement
• Business performance analysis
• Commercial
• Customer profitability
• Quotation and bid support
• Strategic decision support

Most importantly, you'll become a trusted sparring partner to the UK Managing Director and wider leadership team.

Expect healthy debate, challenge and influence.

The business is specifically looking for someone who can translate numbers into actions.

What Success Looks Like

Within your first 12-18 months, we'd expect you to have

• Embedded yourself into the leadership team as a trusted adviser
• Established stronger forward-looking planning and forecasting processes
• Increased visibility of key operational and commercial performance drivers
• Helped implement a more structured planning and S&OP rhythm
• Improved management reporting so leaders can make faster and better decisions
• Created greater alignment between sales forecasts, operational execution and financial outcomes

What We're Looking For

Technically

You are likely to be

• CIMA, ACA or ACCA qualified
• Operating as a Finance Controller, Commercial Finance Manager, Site Finance Lead, Head of Finance, Finance Business Partner or similar
• Experienced in manufacturing, engineering, industrial, technology or other operationally complex environments
• Comfortable working with forecasting, budgeting, scenario modelling and management reporting
• Able to operate confidently around operations, supply chain, sales and engineering teams rather than remaining solely within finance

Experience of any of the following would be particularly valuable

• Manufacturing or operational controlling
• Business partnering
• S&OP / IBP processes
• Costing and profitability analysis
• MS Dynamics 365 ERP implementation or transformation
• Growth environments where systems and processes are still developing
• The Type of Person Who Will Thrive Here

This is the important bit.

The business doesn't need a corporate finance executive with a large support structure around them.

They need somebody who is prepared to roll their sleeves up. Someone practical. Somebody curious.

You'll probably enjoy this role if you

• Naturally ask "why?" when something doesn't make sense
• Want to understand how the business actually works
• Like being out on the shop floor, in meetings and talking to people
• Enjoy influencing without formal authority
• Prefer building something to maintaining something
• Take ownership of problems rather than waiting for permission
• Are comfortable operating with high levels of autonomy

Conversely, this role is unlikely to appeal if you're looking for

• A highly structured corporate environment
• Large teams and extensive support functions
• Pure accounting or statutory reporting work
• A role focused mainly on governance and compliance

Why Join?

What you'll get in return isn't necessarily the biggest salary in the market.

What you do get is

• Direct exposure to senior leadership
• Significant autonomy and visibility
• Genuine influence over business decisions
• Broad responsibility across finance, operations and commercial activities
• The chance to shape how the business grows over the coming years
• Exposure to a genuinely international organisation
• A role where your impact will be visible and measurable

For somebody who has learned what good looks like in a larger organisation and now wants the opportunity to make a tangible difference in a growing engineering business, this could be an excellent next step.

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