Senior Finance Manager (18-month FTC)

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 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. Such projects may be Distribution led or they may be company-wide projects.
• Provide support in the budget/forecasting process where necessary and appropriate.

What you’ll bring

• 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.

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

Use of AI tools

Here at Penguin, we believe in the power of authenticity and human creativity. When you apply for a position, we want to encourage you to showcase your unique voice. Throughout our recruitment process, please share your own thoughts, experiences, and skills. This helps us get a true sense of who you are and what you might bring to our team.

We celebrate creativity and diverse perspectives, so please be yourself! While we recognise AI tools can be helpful, we recommend using them thoughtfully to ensure your responses reflect you.

Disability Confident

As a Disability Confident Committed organisation, we offer interviews to candidates with a disability who meet the essential criteria for the role, and opt-in on their application form. The essential criteria for this role are listed as part of the ‘What you’ll bring’ section. There may be times when the volume of applications means we cannot take all eligible candidates to interview.

We encourage you to tell us about any reasonable adjustments you may need by emailing PRHCareersUK@penguinrandomhouse.co.uk. Remember, you only need to share what you are comfortable with, for us to support your request.

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.