Senior Finance Manager

This is a pivotal role at the heart of a small, ambitious organisation, working closely with the Director of Operations and Chief Executive to ensure strong financial management, governance, and sustainability. As Senior Finance Manager, you will be the organisation’s financial lead – providing clarity, insight, and challenge to support strategic decision‑making. You’ll balance hands‑on delivery with a strategic overview, ensuring robust financial planning, effective controls, and proportionate governance in a lean and fast‑paced environment. Working in partnership with an external finance provider, you’ll oversee financial systems, reporting, and compliance, while building confidence and capability across the organisation. This is a role with real influence, where your work will directly enable impact for children and young people.

About the Centre for Young Lives: Founded by Baroness Anne Longfield, a former Children’s Commissioner for England, the Centre for Young Lives exists to tackle systemic barriers and create better futures for children and young people. We want this country to be the best place to grow up and bring up children. We work with national and local leaders to remove barriers to opportunity and deliver innovative, evidence‑led solutions that create lasting change. Our approach is rooted in collaboration, systems thinking, and amplifying the voices of children and young people.

What You’ll Do:

• Lead budgeting, forecasting, and financial planning to support organisational priorities
• Monitor financial performances, including income, expenditure, and cashflow
• Provide clear financial insight and analysis to inform decision‑making
• Maintain robust financial controls, ensuring risks are identified and managed
• Oversee financial reporting, including management accounts and board reports
• Support audit processes and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements
• Partner with colleagues on funding, grants, and financial planning
• Maintain oversight of financial systems and processes, working with external providers
• Build financial confidence and capability across the organisation
• Provide matrix management and professional support to the Business Support Adviser, coordinating finance‑related administration and priorities
• Act as the key internal point of contact for finance

What We’re Looking For:

We’re looking for someone who combines strong financial expertise with a proactive, solutions‑focused mindset – someone who takes ownership, brings energy, and gets things done. You’re comfortable operating in a small, agile organisation, where you balance strategic thinking with hands‑on delivery and thrive on making a tangible difference. Confident and credible, you’re able to translate financial information into clear, meaningful insight, influencing and constructively challenging senior leaders and trustees. You remain calm and composed under pressure, using sound judgement to navigate complexity and manage risk effectively. Highly collaborative and pragmatic, you build strong relationships across teams and with external partners and adapt your approach to get the right outcomes. You bring integrity, discretion, and professionalism to everything you do, and take pride in delivering high‑quality work that supports the organisation to succeed. Above all, you’re motivated by purpose – driven by the opportunity to play a key role in improving outcomes for children, young people, and families.

Why Join Us?

• Be part of a mission‑driven organisation tackling systemic barriers for young people
• Help shape national conversations on social innovation and systems change through evidence and insight
• Deliver meaningful, lasting improvements to outcomes for children and young people in local communities

As part of the package, you will also benefit from:

• A generous holiday allowance, starting at 25 days per year (plus 8 Bank Holidays)
• Flexible, hybrid working arrangements
• Family‑friendly policies that support wellbeing

We actively encourage applications from people of all ethnic backgrounds and from underrepresented groups. We are committed to building a diverse team that brings a wide range of perspectives and experiences, and we particularly welcome applications from racially marginalised communities. We encourage applicants to complete our Equality and Diversity Monitoring form. This is anonymous and cannot be linked to your application, and helps us to better understand the diversity of candidates applying to join us. We expect all staff to undergo appropriate checks, including enhanced DBS checks. Candidates must have the right to work in the UK. The Centre for Young Lives cannot assist with sponsorship or visas.