Strategic Finance Director | Hybrid - FMCG Growth

Jackson's Bakery, part of the William Jackson Food Group, is now looking for a Finance Director to join the senior leadership team at an important time for the business. You will be partnering closely with the new Managing Director, one of the most experienced leaders in the Bakery industry, and will take on a truly end-to-end Finance Director role.

Managing a team of experienced finance professionals as well as supporting and enhancing the work of commercial and operational colleagues alike. Founded in 1851 by William Jackson, you will be joining a sixth generation Group with exceptional heritage that is still in family ownership today. The Group has grown, changed and evolved over the years but its values remain firmly at the core of how it operates - looking after its people and working in partnership with its customers and suppliers. For the third year running the Group was recognised in The Sunday Times Best Places to work.

As Finance Director of Jackson's Bakery you will be a key member of the senior leadership team, supporting the Managing Director in driving profitable growth, operational efficiency, and disciplined capital allocation, while acting as the primary interface with Group Finance and being a member of the Finance senior leadership team.

Key Responsibilities of the role:

• Act as a trusted finance business partner to the Managing Director and senior leadership team
• Provide clear, actionable financial insight to support pricing, margin management, capacity utilisation, and investment decisions
• Keeping a constant and disciplined grip on key financial levers and operational and customer KPIs ensuring they are being fully optimised.
• Lead the budgeting, forecasting, and medium‑term planning processes in line with Group requirements
• Provide an ongoing run-rate EBITDA for the Managing Director and Group to assist in decision making on an ongoing basis
• Support the development and execution of Jackson's strategic plan
• Maintain strong financial control, ensuring timely, accurate monthly management accounts
• Oversee working capital management, including inventory, debtors, and payables
• Ensure robust cost control across manufacturing, supply chain, and overheads
• Own standard costing methodologies, variance analysis, and bill‑of‑materials integrity
• Partner with operations to improve yield, efficiency, labour productivity, and waste reduction
• Oversee capital discipline and provide financial insight on capex proposals, production investments, and make‑or‑buy decisions.
• Manage cash flow forecasting at subsidiary level
• Drive continuous improvement in finance processes, systems, and reporting
• Foster a culture of commercial awareness, accountability, and collaboration
• Ensure the business meets compliance requirements to legal and group requirements relevant to financial matters e.g. legal contracts oversight, tax requirements, group policies, accounting standards

Profile

The successful candidate must be a qualified accountant (ACA/ACCA/CIMA) with senior finance leadership experience (very likely already at Director level). You will ideally have experience of the FMCG sector, or another related, fast paced manufacturing, high volume, lower margin product-based industry.

You will very likely have worked in a business similar in scale to Jackson's Bakery where you have held full end-to-end responsibility for the Finance function and can evidence positively where you have influenced company performance as a result.

To be successful in the role you will need to show strong leadership and collaboration across the business, being able to demonstrate core personal attributes such as:

• Commercially astute and hands‑on
• Clear communicator with the ability to influence with integrity at senior level
• Pragmatic, resilient, and comfortable operating in an agile and dynamic organisation
• Strong attention to detail without losing strategic perspective
• Humble and low ego with high emotional intelligence; possessing the intellectual and interpersonal dexterity to advise and work alongside a driven executive management team

Job Offer

On offer is competitive six figure salary plus attractive benefits package with hybrid working opportunity (3 days on-site in Hessle, Hull and Corby as a minimum) - as well as getting to work for a company with an exceptional values driven culture.