UK Financial Controller (UK FC) in Surrey

You’ll report to the UK CFO & Group Commercial Finance Director, working closely with the rest of the Woking Finance team and the Commercial team. This role is based at our Woking Office but may require some travel into London. The UK FC is a senior finance leader who knows what “great” looks like in financial control — and has the drive and experience to build it. This is not a steady-state role. ATG has recently gone live with Microsoft Dynamics 365 (D365), and the UK FC will be at the centre of a major finance transformation programme: embedding the platform, redesigning processes, and materially reducing the time and effort required to close the month-end. You will need to onboard quickly in a complex environment, earn trust fast, and lead a team through a period of genuine operational and cultural change.

Key responsibilities

• Financial Reporting & Control
  • Oversee the preparation of monthly and annual financial statements in accordance with applicable accounting standards.
  • Own the month-end close process end-to-end: set the timetable, hold the team to it, and drive a continuous reduction in close duration through process discipline and D365 capability.
  • Preparation of annual statutory accounts.
  • Own the balance sheet review process, ensuring all accounts are reconciled and substantiated monthly.
  • Coordinate statutory audit processes, acting as primary point of contact for external auditors.
  • Assist the Commercial Finance team in balance sheet budgeting and variance analysis.
  • Build strong relationships with external parties including auditors, tax advisers, banks, and regulatory bodies.
• Finance Transformation Lead post-implementation
  • Work closely with the Finance Transformation Lead to optimise Microsoft Dynamics 365, ensuring ATG realises the full value of the platform — including automated workflows, integrated reporting, and a material reduction in manual processing.
  • Champion adoption of automated processing to enhance the finance team's capacity for value-added work.
  • Define and embed data quality and governance standards, establishing D365 as the single source of truth for financial data across the organisation.
  • Lead cultural and capability change within the finance team, fostering a continuous improvement mindset and building digital literacy.
• Team Leadership & Development
  • Lead, coach, and develop a finance team navigating significant change — providing clarity, stability and support through the transformation programme while maintaining high performance and clear objectives aligned to business priorities.
  • Foster a culture of ownership, continuous learning, and operational excellence within the finance function.
• Governance, Risk & Compliance
  • Maintain and continuously enhance the internal control framework, identifying and remediating control deficiencies.
  • Ensure adherence to all relevant regulatory and legislative requirements.
  • Support the Audit & Risk Committee with relevant reporting and governance activities.

Your skills, qualities, and experience

• Essential
  • Fully qualified accountant (ACA, ACCA or equivalent) with significant post-qualification experience.
  • Demonstrable track record in a senior financial control or FC role within a large, complex, multi-entity organisation — with a clear sense of what best-in-class financial control looks like and the ability to build it.
  • Strong IFRS technical accounting knowledge.
  • Proven track record leading and developing finance teams through periods of change — system implementations, transformation programmes, or significant process redesign.
  • Hands-on experience with at least one major ERP platform (e.g. SAP, Oracle, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics).
  • Experience of UK statutory accounts preparation.
  • A proven track record of reducing month-end close timelines and delivering measurable process efficiencies.
  • The ability to onboard quickly in a complex, multi-entity environment and operate at pace from the outset.
• Desirable
  • Background in a high-growth, private equity-backed or listed environment.
  • Exposure to RPA tools (e.g. UiPath, Power Automate) and data visualisation platforms (e.g. Power BI, Tableau).
  • Proven involvement in a significant Finance Transformation programme including process redesign/automation and change management.

About Us - Our values ATG Entertainment’s values set the tone for how we work, how we treat one another, and the culture we continue to build across the UK and the wider organisation.

• THRIVE doing what we love (with passion and dynamism)
• CONNECT through every act (with collaboration and kindness)
• DARE to do different (with curiosity and courage)
• PERFORM at our best (with customer focus and ownership)

Our Corporate Social Responsibility pillars

• Inclusion: Committing to creating and upholding a positive, inclusive culture that nurtures potential and supports well-being.
• Sustainability: Playing your part in reducing our environmental impact and finding more sustainable ways of working.
• Next Generations: Encouraging the next generation in live entertainment by contributing to our outreach and training programmes, including mentoring students and trainees, and supporting our Creative Learning and Community Partnerships work.

Our culture

You’ll help us uphold a positive culture around meeting our obligations, by having a positive attitude to health and safety, legal and insurance requirements and take care to understand our policies and procedures. We are all expected to participate actively in the life of the company, and opportunities will arise for you to collaborate with others across the business. Everyone at ATG Entertainment is expected to be flexible and adapt as the needs of the business change, taking on new or different responsibilities as the need arises.

Our Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Access Mission Statement - A Stage for Everyone

Our stages are a platform for compelling stories – stories that are for all, by all, and of all. We shine our spotlight on our differences and believe that understanding and celebrating these differences makes us better global citizens. We are passionate about the pursuit of true diversity and equality. We strive to make our venues beacons of these ideals in our communities. Onstage and off, we hold ourselves accountable for nurturing an inclusive culture, one in which everyone can bring their authentic selves. At ATG entertainment, we provide a stage for everyone. We recognise that we do not have all the answers; but we strive to listen, to learn and to change in order to ensure ATG Entertainment becomes a truly inclusive organisation. We therefore welcome and encourage applications from individuals from the widest possible range of backgrounds and particularly welcome applications from those currently underrepresented in our workforce.

We are a Disability Confident Committed Employer, which means that we are taking action to ensure that people with disabilities and long-term health conditions feel supported, engaged, and able to fulfil their potential in the workplace. We will offer an interview or recruitment event to disabled candidates who tell us they wish to participate in the scheme and who demonstrate in their application that they best meet the essential criteria for the role. Where we receive more applications than we are reasonably able to interview for any given role, we will retain applications for the next available interview opportunity wherever possible.