Finance Business Partner - Commercial & Strategic Projects

This is a high-impact role for an ambitious and driven finance professional. Reporting to the Head of Business Partnering, the Finance Business Partner for Commercial and Strategic Projects plays a pivotal role in supporting value-driven decision making across a diverse portfolio of commercial, growth and strategic initiatives. The role provides financial insight, challenge and leadership to ensure that investment, growth and change initiatives are underpinned by robust financial appraisals, strong governance and align with EDI's strategic objectives.

While the primary focus is on commercial and growth-related activity, the role also supports non-commercial, business-critical projects of a similar scale and complexity where strong financial discipline and decision support are required. You will work closely with the Chief Commercial Officer and support other senior stakeholders, project sponsors and delivery teams across the business to translate strategic objectives into clear financial outcomes and support informed prioritisation and investment decisions.

We are looking for someone that has strong interpersonal and communication skills who can influence at senior levels, build trusted relationships across functions and collaborate effectively with project sponsors.

What you’ll be doing

• Financial appraisal and investment decision support
• Lead financial appraisals and business case development for commercial, growth and strategic projects
• Assess costs, benefits, risks and returns including IRR, payback, NPV and scenario modelling
• Provide clear, evidence-based recommendations to support investment and prioritisation decisions

Strategic business partnering

• Act as the finance business partner to Commercial teams and sponsors of growth and strategic initiatives
• Provide financial leadership and challenge across both commercial and non-commercial projects
• Build trusted relationships with senior stakeholders across the organisation

Financial Planning and forecasting

• Hold accountability for and contribute to financial planning (budget, periodic reforecast and long-term planning processes) across the revenue base, ensuring plans are well understood, supported by stakeholders and aligned to growth and strategic objectives
• Fully support P&L collation of financial plans, ensuring accuracy, timeliness and clear variance analysis
• Work closely with the Finance Business Partners to ensure full alignment of financial planning assumptions
• Support the Financial Planning and Analysis Manager to prepare Board Packs for each financial plan including development of a clear, coherent analysis and narrative to support business plans and decision-making in conjunction with the Finance Business Partners
• Input into the quarterly Fast Close process to ensure P&L forecasts closely align with financial performance

Reporting, Systems and Performance Management

• Lead and support the preparation of high-quality, accurate, timely and insightful reports to update the Finance Leadership Team, Executive team, Sub-Committees and Board, ensuring financial information is clear, well-structured and decision-focused
• Track financial performance and benefits realisation for approved initiatives and projects
• Maintain a close relationship with the Finance Business Partnering Team and Management Accountants to understand monthly financial performance
• Support governance and approval processes, ensuring transparency and strong financial control
• Support the development and roll-out of Vena for reporting and financial planning
• Maintain a continuous development mindset pro-actively identifying opportunities to improve systems and processes to optimise productivity and efficiency

What we’re looking for

• Fully Qualified Accountant (e.g. CA, ACCA, CIMA), ideally with 3 years post-qualified experience
• Degree qualified with a strong academic track record
• Proven commercial experience influencing senior stakeholders and decision making
• Strong financial modelling, analytical and problem-solving skills
• Confidence influencing and challenging senior stakeholders
• Ability to operate effectively across both commercial and non-commercial environments

Key strengths

• Attention to detail: Consistently produces accurate, high-quality data, analysis and reports that are tailored to the needs of the end user.
• Problem solving: Excellent analytical skills with the ability to interpret diverse financial and operational data and deliver clear recommendations and high-quality reporting
• Relationship building: Able to communicate and influence effectively at senior levels and across varied stakeholder groups
• Decision making: Capable of distilling complex financial information to guide business-critical decisions
• Team player: Motivated to contribute to the wider Finance team and support collective success
• Self-starter: Able to work independently, manage competing priorities and deliver under pressure
• Technical ability: Strong knowledge of MS Office and accounting systems within large organisations

If your experience looks slightly different to what we’ve listed here, we encourage you to still apply. You could add something we didn’t know we needed.

What we’ll offer you

• Pension scheme- employer contributions can be up to 7%
• 32 days holiday, based on full time roles, increasing with service
• Annual discretionary bonus
• Supporting your health and wellbeing- private healthcare after 1 years’ service, access to our Employee Assistance Programme and occupational health services
• Free car parking on site and when you go on holiday

We offer a range of other benefits, find out more here.

Why EDI?

We are Edinburgh Airport, where Scotland meets the world. The success of the airport comes down to our people, and you can help us deliver even more big days for our passengers and colleagues. The development of your career is important to us, and we’ll support and encourage this every step of the way. We offer in-house and external training, both role specific and based on your objectives. As a business we’re driven by our values - they’re at the core of our culture and everything we do. We will ask questions based on our values during your interview, as we’re looking for people who will demonstrate these values day-in, day-out. So if this sounds like you, apply now and get ready for your career to take off.

As a Disability Confident Leader, we are committed to ensuring applicants with a disability can participate fully in our recruitment process. Please let us know in your application form if you require any adjustments, such as parking arrangements or alternative methods of communication.

We work with Inclusive Employers, who are a leading organisation for employers committed to prioritising inclusion. We are supported by them through leadership workshops, a variety of resources and webinars, demonstrating our commitment to an inclusive workplace and ensuring all our employees feel valued.

This partnership is part of our wider Diversity and Inclusion strategy. We give colleagues the opportunity to engage with different people and projects, within our business and beyond. You can get involved in a variety of different employee groups, including Diversity, STEM, Wellbeing, or create your own community - it’s important to us that you can share your interests and be yourself at work.