Permanent Joint Headquarters (PJHQ) Finance Military Operations Costing Cell Team Leader

Location

Northwood Headquarters

About the job

Job summary

The Permanent Joint Headquarters (PJHQ) is a multi-disciplinary 3* military headquarters that deploys, commands, sustains and recovers UK personnel from current operations around the world.

Within PJHQ, J8 (Finance) works closely with other PJHQ divisions, Strategic Finance and Treasury to cost options and then secure appropriate funding for the Chief of Joint Operations (CJO). We then manage the regular and proper use of budgets and ensure spend can be properly accounted for.

The Costing Cell sits at the heart of the J8 financial process, responsible for the initial costing of options by working with a wide range of stakeholders to understand planning assumptions and calculate associated costs. The J8 Costing Cell also leads on the division response to crisis (e.g. Humanitarian Assistance Disaster Relief (HADR) response), attending any crisis meetings and providing financial advice and costings to support the response.

This position is advertised at 37 hours per week.

Job description

Undertake line management, mentoring and countersigning tasks as required by the role. This role has 2 direct reports.

Lead the J8 Costing Cell by:

• Promoting visibility of the team and encouraging Divisions to engage early if they have likely costing requirements.
• Producing detailed costings for an activity on request, within the required timescale given, ensuring that costs provided are realistic and requirement owners are fully aware of any limitations or risks associated with the costs provided.
• Liaising with relevant divisions and Commands to obtain the correct level of information to support costings.
• Support the development of Financial Review / Approval Notes, ensuring they capture all known planned spend and represent value for money.
• Attend relevant meetings to understand costing requirements and associated assumptions.
• Drive improvements to the costing process, including developing improved way to capture planning assumptions and present costs including risks.
• Develop options for aligning costing process with IYM and forecasting.
• Manage allocation of costing tasks between Costing Cell team members.

Lead on J8 Crisis Response / Contingent Operations by:

• Review contingency plans on a regular basis to ensure all financial assumptions and costings are up to date.
• Providing financial guidance during the planning response process including liaising with Head Office to identify appropriate funding source.
• Producing detailed costings for planned responses.
• Scrutinising financial requests and providing guidance where needed.
• Liaising with relevant lead authority (if not PJHQ) to oversee associated expenditure ensuring costs are captured and managed appropriately.
• Reporting on final costs of crisis response and where required prepare invoice for charging costs back to other government departments as required.

Provide wider support across the division and drive forward change and improvements to the following cross-cutting areas:

• Manage J8 funding tracker, tracking the status of costings, approvals, leads and values.
• Oversee the management of Salary Misbookings and Allowances across operations, liaising with J8 desk officers and relevant FLCs to ensure they are accounted for correctly.

Deliver financial scrutiny of expenditure proposals by:

• Ensuring financial scrutiny of expenditure proposals is carried out against the basic criteria of minimum military requirement, propriety, regularity, affordability, and value for money and is compliant with MOD policy and guidelines.
• Assess spend proposals against expenditure plans to ensure that unplanned spend can be accommodated within allocated budgets.

Person specification

The ideal candidate will be very well organised and a strong communicator, who is able to quickly build good working relationships with a variety of stakeholders within the organisation and externally, use their initiative to solve problems and can deal with a wide range of people.

Job holders need to be familiar with a number of finance specialisations including forecasting, financial planning, governance, requirement scrutiny and transactional processes (invoice payments, accruals, prepayments etc.).

The role requires a high standard of IT skills including the use of Excel and Word and a familiarity with Oracle-based systems.

There is potential for the post holder to periodically visit operational theatres to conduct assurance checks, with the possibility of observing operational activity first-hand. This would be subject to successful completion of training and a medical.

Behaviours

We\’ll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Leadership
• Changing and Improving
• Communicating and Influencing
• Working Together

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £44,590, Ministry of Defence contributes £12,917 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme.Find out what benefits a Civil Pension provides.

• Learning and development tailored to your role
• An environment with flexible working options
• A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
• ACivil Service pensionwith an employer contribution of 28.97%
• 25 days paid annual leave rising (1 day per year) to 30 days upon completion of 5 years’ service. For those with previous service in the Public Sector in the past 5 years, you may be eligible to request 30 days leave immediately. (Evidence will be required)

Apply before 11:55 pm on Wednesday 3rd September 2025

For further information, and to apply, please visit our website via the “Apply” button below.

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