Group Finance Director

Shape and drive the vision for our financial accounting, reporting, controls, and tax strategy; playing a pivotal role in delivering outstanding financial outcomes for Arqiva. You’ll set the strategic direction, elevate financial governance, and empower teams to deliver, instilling a high performance culture. This is an impact leadership role at the heart of our organisation, where your expertise will influence decision‑making at the highest level and ensure our financial excellence. Reporting directly to the CFO, you must be able to travel to our Crawley Court (Winchester) and Newman Street (London) offices 2 or 3 times per week.

The Role

• Set and lead execution of the vision and strategy for finance operations.
• Be the senior point of contact for finance operations, liaising with the CFO and other key stakeholders.
• Provide financial insights and reporting to senior leadership, informing decision‑making.
• Support the business in ensuring the financial and commercial performance required to meet targets and its long‑term business plan.
• Identify and implement operating model, process and system improvements, and automation opportunities, as well as best practices in governance and reporting, to drive greater financial efficiency and effectiveness, working in partnership with the Head of Finance Transformation.
• Ensure the accuracy, integrity and timeliness of financial reporting for Arqiva and its subsidiaries and ensure compliance with all relevant reporting and regulatory standards.
• Plan and communicate the reporting cycle, executing it to first‑class standards.
• Lead the compilation of the Annual Report, statutory and regulatory accounts.
• Ensure the preparation of comprehensive documentation for the annual audit and participate in the Audit produce detailed financial reports; and to inform strategic decision‑making.
• Define and drive the Finance data strategy, aligned with business priorities and reporting needs.
• Establish and maintain a Finance data lake, whilst ensuring scalability, traceability, and alignment with enterprise architecture.
• Lead the design of enterprise‑grade Finance data models and semantic layers to support analytics, regulatory and statutory reporting, and operational Finance needs.
• Establish and enforce data governance standards, policies, and stewardship processes for Finance data.
• Work closely with Finance, Audit, and Technology leaders to align on priorities and data needs.
• Work closely with the Directors of Business Finance and Corporate Finance to establish KPIs, dashboards, and operating mechanisms to measure data quality, controls effectiveness, and team performance.
• Oversee tax strategy, compliance, planning and reporting for the entire Group, ensuring timely filing and payment of all taxes.
• Working alongside the Head of Tax, liaise with tax authorities and provide high‑level advisory on commercial and M set a high‑performance bar and challenge the team to deliver sustainable results, by developing the skills and capabilities of the team and focusing on outcomes.

Qualifications

Experienced finance leader in a business of commensurate scale.