Senior Finance Manager (18-month FTC) in Colchester

We’re looking for an experienced and commercially minded Senior Finance Manager to play a key role in supporting major programmes of change across our Distribution Division at our office in Frating, Essex. This is an exciting opportunity to bring your financial expertise to a project-focused environment, working at the heart of significant business initiatives and ensuring strong financial management and insight are embedded throughout their delivery.

Role Summary

As Senior Finance Manager, you’ll take ownership of all aspects of financial management across a portfolio of projects and programmes, partnering closely with Programme and Project Delivery Leads and other key stakeholders. Representing Distribution Finance within programmes of change, you’ll provide financial insight, guidance and constructive challenge to support effective decision-making. This is an influential role for someone who enjoys combining strong financial expertise with collaboration, stakeholder management and the delivery of meaningful business change.

Key responsibilities:

• Ownership for tracking and control of project costs at each phase in accordance with the project plan.
• Pro-actively challenging any over commitment if necessary and understanding and monitoring any delays v plan or necessary overspends as they arise.
• Production of regular executive reports showing costs versus plan.
• Such reporting to be prepared for Steer Co meetings and in other circumstances as required (e.g for reporting to the UK Leadership team, to US or to Bertelsmann).
• Financial planning for inclusion in budgets/forecasts through the programme life cycle.
• Ensuring the necessary financial arrangements are in place for new suppliers who may be appointed for projects.
• Ensuring that group policies are being followed in respect of individual supplier appointments and contractual arrangements.
• Maintain a financial risk and opportunities log for the project.
• Regular cash flow projections required for projects (e.g regular reporting of CAPEX spend to the US is an established requirement).
• Support the creation of new business cases for all projects across Distribution.
• Plan and undertake post project financial review with respect to delivery of benefits against business case.
• Providing the required information for project capitalisation at the appropriate point.
• Involvement as Distribution Finance representative on those programmes and projects where Distribution Finance is a stakeholder.
• Provide support in the budget/forecasting process where necessary and appropriate.

What you’ll bring

Essential criteria:

• Qualified accountant with post-qualification experience working in a commercial finance or project accountant role.
• Experience of analysing and modelling complex commercial scenarios.
• Experience of communicating and operating with senior/board level stakeholders.
• Experience of working as part of a project team on high profile projects.
• Experience of using SAP and Anaplan and a good level of Excel skill is required.

Preferred criteria:

• Experience using Power BI.
• Distribution sector experience.

Salary

Circa £70,000 dependent on how your skills and experience align to the role, plus bonus and benefits.

Hybrid working

While our offices across the UK are places to connect, collaborate and celebrate with colleagues, we recognise that flexibility around where you work is just as important. For this role we expect that you will work from our office in Frating, Essex, two days per week.