Finance Lead in Leeds

We are at a pivotal stage in our growth as a regulated healthcare / life sciences business, moving from early-stage foundations into a phase of greater scale, maturity, and operational rigour. As we move towards product-market-fit and grow the organisation, we are strengthening our team to ensure we have the financial insight, discipline, and processes needed to support good decision-making.

The Finance Lead will play a central role in this next phase, helping to deepen the financial understanding of our business, mature our financial operations, and support future growth ambitions, including potential fundraising or investment activity. This trusted role will work closely with the executive team to ensure the company is financially robust, compliant, and well positioned for the next stage of growth.

The Role

The Finance Lead is responsible for the overall financial health of the company, with end-to-end ownership of financial processes, planning, analysis, budgeting, and reporting. The role oversees outsourced accounting services, while ensuring that financial processes, controls, and insights are fit for a growing, regulated organisation. As a key contributor to the company's strategic direction, the Finance Lead supports data-driven decision-making across the business, works closely with other functions and the senior management team (including the CEO on fundraising activity), and drives continuous improvement in financial operations. This is a hands-on role, combining strategic leadership with practical execution in a lean environment. The role reports to the COO and will be part of the broader Ops team. It is supported by outsourced bookkeepers and by a part-time contractor. This role will not be right for you if you want to manage a large team. The role is hybrid (Leeds) or fully remote. It is a full-time role, but we are open to candidates who would prefer 80% FTE. We cannot sponsor visas to work in the UK.

What you will do

• Running an effective, scalable and compliant finance function
• Own day-to-day financial operations, including payroll, invoicing, A/P and A/R, bookkeeping, VAT and tax, ensuring transactions are accurate, timely, and well controlled across both the UK business and the US subsidiary.
• Ensure financial, corporate, and regulatory compliance, including timely statutory reporting, adherence to UK and US regulatory requirements, and oversight of audits, tax planning, and financial risk management.
• Lead cash flow, working capital, and treasury management, maintaining liquidity, forecasting cash requirements, and ensuring the business is well positioned to fund operations and strategic investment.
• Manage outsourced bookkeeping partner and external advisors (as needed)
• Improve finance processes, systems and controls, improving the quality, speed, and usefulness of financial information as the business scales.

Supporting business strategy, growth and reporting

• Own financial planning, budgeting, forecasting, and analysis, providing forward-looking insight to support strategic planning, growth initiatives, and operational decision-making.
• Deliver high-quality financial reporting and analysis, including monthly management accounts, board reporting, financial modelling and scenario planning, improving understanding of unit economics and key financial levers.
• Act as a trusted finance business partner to the senior management team and departmental leaders, translating financial data into clear insights, challenging assumptions where appropriate, helping teams grow their financial understanding and ensuring cost controls.
• Support capital strategy and fundraising activity, working closely with the CEO and COO on fundraising (including financial modelling, and investor due diligence support), investor reporting, and debt or equity financing.

Requirements

Required

• Proven experience in a senior finance role (e.g. Finance Lead, Head of Finance), with end-to-end responsibility for the finance function in a growing business at a similar stage (Start-up Series A / B)
• Strong experience in financial planning, forecasting, management reporting, budgeting, and cash flow management, with clear ownership of outputs and quality
• Experience supporting a B2B business, ideally with exposure to both recurring revenue and project-based income models
• Demonstrated ability to define, analyse, and improve profitability, including developing a clear understanding of margins, unit economics, and financial performance across different parts of the business
• Track record of producing high-quality board-level reporting, including clear narrative, insight, and recommendations to support strategic decision-making
• Professional accounting qualification (ACA, ACCA, CIMA) or equivalent experience

Desirable

• Experience operating across multiple entities and jurisdictions, particularly UK and US
• Experience working as finance leader for a PE/VC portfolio company
• Exposure to fundraising, investor reporting, or financial (and customer) due diligence, supporting senior leaders through investment processes
• Track record of improving finance processes and reporting in a scaling business
• Background in healthcare, life sciences, SaaS, or adjacent B2B sectors

Capabilities and behaviours we are looking for

• Highly collaborative, working effectively across teams and functions to build strong relationships and trust
• Excellent communicator, able to explain financial concepts clearly to non-financial colleagues and adapt style for different audiences
• Credible and confident with senior stakeholders, including the Board and investors, with the ability to challenge constructively and influence outcomes
• Comfortable moving between strategic leadership and hands-on execution, taking ownership of outcomes and stepping into the detail when needed in a lean environment
• Detail-oriented, pragmatic, and resilient, maintaining accuracy and sound judgement while operating at pace and managing competing priorities
• Able to introduce appropriate structure, controls, and discipline, improving clarity and robustness without creating unnecessary complexity

Benefits

• Gross salary: £85-92K per year for FTE
• 28 days annual leave pro-rata (plus public holidays) on fulltime FTE
• £500 annual training budget
• £200 home working budget (one-off)
• Flexible working with core hours
• Enhanced (family & parental) leave policies
• Up to 6% pension match (salary sacrifice)

About Little Journey

Little Journey was founded by Dr Chris Evans, a paediatric anaesthetist and researcher who witnessed first-hand the impact that procedural anxiety, poor preparation, and inconsistent communication can have on patient experience, engagement, and clinical outcomes. Partnering with Sophie Copley, an expert in human-centred product design, the healthcare platform was developed and demonstrated significant benefits in improving care efficiency, compliance and patient experience. It was rapidly adopted across the NHS supporting children undergoing surgery, before being expanded to support a wide variety of common procedures. Building on this initial success, Little Journey expanded into clinical trials, applying the same principles of personalised education, emotional support, and engagement to research settings. Our Life Science platform supports trial participants and their families across therapeutic areas, to alleviate the burdens they face as they navigate participating in a clinical trial. The platform is now a global solution, and we work with major pharmaceutical companies. Little Journey is a Series A HealthTech start-up, and we are a highly collaborative, mission-driven organisation with a team of about 30 (including Product & Tech, Sales & Marketing, Operations & Delivery). We aim to change the future of personalised paediatric care, one empowered family at a time. We value honesty and integrity, trust and accountability, reflection and learning, proactive thinking, and a deep commitment to helping others.

Diversity & Inclusion

We encourage people from all walks of life to apply and strive to eliminate unconscious bias in our recruitment process. We do not discriminate on ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran or parental status or disability. We encourage candidates from underrepresented groups to apply. If you need adjustments made to our application process, to help accommodate any disabilities, please let us know on hr@littlejourney.health