Head of Commercial Finance - UK in Bury

Following an internal promotion, we are seeking a high‑calibre Head of Commercial Finance to lead the commercial finance agenda across the UK and Ireland business. Reporting to the Group Commercial Finance Director, this role will drive trading performance, influence strategic decision‑making, and ensure financial discipline across a fast‑paced, multi‑channel retail operation.

Key responsibilities include:

• Lead delivery of weekly and periodic trading insight, clearly articulating performance drivers across sales, margin and costs.
• Provide actionable recommendations to improve trading performance, identifying and tracking risks and opportunities across channels and categories.
• Act as a trusted finance partner to UK leadership, providing robust challenge and commercial insight.
• Support key commercial decisions including on retail estate development, deployment of new technology, wage models and overheads.
• Lead UK budgeting, forecasting and reforecasting processes with clear ownership of assumptions.
• Drive accountability for financial performance with greater focus on retail, but with close alignment with other functions across the business including merchandising, digital and other business partner teams.
• Identify underperforming areas and lead targeted action plans to improve store and operational performance.
• Provide financial evaluation and decision support for investments.
• Ensure initiatives are supported by robust business cases with clear return metrics and tracking, including making recommendations on project prioritization.
• Lead and develop a high‑performing team of 6 part and qualified commercial accountants driving capability, consistency and continuous improvement.
• Work with retail teams to target, monitor and evolve store bonuses to provide appropriate incentive and stretch.
• Drive consistency in outputs and approach across teams supporting multiple fascia (JD, Size?, Foot Patrol and Mainline Menswear) and operating models (own stores and franchise partners).
• Leading Commercial Finance support for the development, rollout and monitoring of International franchise partnerships.
• Challenging spend to ensure demonstrable returns on investment and acting as a champion for efficiency initiatives, including AI adoption.
• Coordination with Group Procurement teams to ensure that significant areas of third‑party spend are regularly benchmarked and renegotiated with negotiated savings factored into forecasts, budgets and long‑term planning.
• Ensuring join‑up between Brand, Merchandising and Finance teams with clarity on assumptions and impacts on EPOS and non‑EPOS margins in forecasts and budgets.
• Support the development of finance talent in the organization.
• Identify cross‑fertilization opportunities across group functions and businesses.
• Helping to drive improved financial literacy across the business.
• Role will continue to evolve as the successful candidate becomes established – with high probability of ad‑hoc project work.

Required qualifications and experience:

• A qualified accountant (ACA, CIMA or ACCA) with significant and demonstrable post‑qualification experience.
• Significant commercial and strategic exposure with evidence of positively impacting business performance, ideally within a consumer‑focused business (e.g. retail/ FMCG/ leisure).
• Accustomed to leading financial planning, monitoring and business partnering in a large and complex business, encompassing multiple business units and territories.
• Deep understanding of retail KPI’s and trading dynamics.
• A visible, inclusive and highly engaged leader with evidence of building and developing teams.
• Passionate about team development and performance – providing effective challenge, guidance and mentoring to advance career prospects of team.
• Able to apply knowledge of multi‑disciplinary principles and practices to achieve successful outcomes in cross‑functional projects and activities.
• The ability to operate and deliver change and improvements in a complex organizational environment.
• Evidence of providing challenge and bringing new perspectives to established projects and strategies.
• Able to identify and unlock synergies across different business units.
• Self‑motivated with an enquiring mind – able to seek out and explore opportunities fully.
• Highly analytical and data literate with the ability to translate into actionable insight.
• Exceptional attention to detail and presentation standards.
• Gravitas and the ability to articulate thoughts clearly and concisely – verbal and written – including at senior leadership and Board level.
• Collaborative approach and able to inspire confidence and respect of teams.
• A mindset of continuous improvement.
• High emotional intelligence.
• A team focused mentality and comfortable to take on additional tasks, based on the requirements of the role.
• At ease working with ambiguity across a wide network of stakeholders.
• Capable of managing workload and to deadlines across multiple workstreams at any one time.
• Proven excel modelling skills.

Benefits:

• Staff discount on JD Group and other brands within the organisation.
• Personal development opportunities to learn and develop at work.