Head of Finance - Argos Trading in London

Location: London, Coventry or Manchester Store Support Centre & Home. Colleagues go into the office 2 days per week on average.

Why join us

Joining the Argos team as the Head of Finance for Argos Trading offers a unique opportunity to play a pivotal role in driving financial performance and strategic decision-making within a dynamic and evolving retail environment. As a key partner to the Argos Commercial Leadership team, you will lead a talented finance team, influence senior stakeholders, and shape the future of the business through data-driven insights and collaborative leadership. With a focus on continuous improvement, innovation, and personal development, this role provides a platform to make a significant impact, drive growth, and shape the financial landscape of one of the UK's leading retail brands.

What you'll do

You will play a crucial role in proactively partnering with the Argos Commercial Leadership team to oversee financial performance, including sales, gross margin, and stock. Your responsibilities will involve providing strategic leadership and operational oversight to drive profitability and growth, while leading the Electrical & Toys, Supplier Planning, and Supplier Funding finance teams. You will act as a Finance Business Partner for Argos Buying and Merchandising Directors, providing financial analysis and challenging the business on strategic initiatives and opportunities. Additionally, you will be responsible for budgeting, forecasting, and long-term financial planning across buying areas, focusing on sales, margin, and stock, while setting direction for your team and driving continuous improvement in how Finance adds value through simplification, automation, and effective use of data and AI.

Who you are

You are a professionally qualified accountant with a proven track record of business partnering and influencing senior commercial leaders to drive financial performance and strategic decision-making. Your strong financial acumen, commercial awareness, and analytical skills enable you to interpret financial performance, identify strategic opportunities, and drive continuous improvement within the organisation. As an inspiring and inclusive leader, you lead through change, develop your team, and foster a collaborative working environment to ensure high-quality work delivery and team engagement.

Essential Criteria

• Professional accounting qualification (ACA, ACCA, CIMA or equivalent) with demonstrable commercial finance experience, ideally within GM, digital or retail.
• Proven experience leading and developing teams and cross-functional collaboration, including setting direction, driving performance, and constructively challenging stakeholders to improve outcomes.
• Demonstrable ability to business partner, influence and appropriately challenge senior stakeholders, including providing financial insight that has influenced business decisions.
• Applies financial and commercial analysis to assess risks and opportunities, including interpreting complex data to inform business priorities.
• Demonstrates knowledge of the general merchandise (GM) or retail market, including awareness of market dynamics and external trends impacting performance.

Responsibilities

We’d all like amazing work to do, and real work-life balance. That’s waiting for you here at Sainsbury’s. For a FTSE business, we move incredibly fast. When we’re not leading projects, we’re supporting teams across the wider group to achieve their goals. And here, you can see the impact of your work as soon as you walk into a store, giving you a real sense of purpose and responsibility. Better still, the team around you will listen to your ideas and opinions, and you’ll have every chance to try something new. The scale and complexity of our business mean there’s always something new to learn, and we’ll support you every step of the way. We’re trusted to get on with it. So get ready to make things happen.

Qualifications

We are committed to being a truly inclusive retailer so you’ll be welcomed whoever you are and wherever you work. Around here, there’s always the chance to try something new — whether that’s as part of an evolving team or somewhere else across the business - and we take development seriously and promise to support you. We also recognise and celebrate colleagues when they go the extra mile and, where possible, offer flexible working. When you join our team, we’ll also offer you an amazing range of benefits. Here are some of them:

• Starting off with colleague discount, you'll be able to save 10% on your shopping online and instore at Sainsbury's, Argos, TU and Habitat, and we regularly increase the discount to 15% at points during the year.
• We've also got you covered for your future with our pensions scheme and life cover.
• You'll also be able to share in our success as you may be eligible for a performance-related bonus of up to 20% of salary, depending on how we perform.
• Your wellbeing is important to us too. You'll receive an annual holiday allowance, and you can buy up to an additional week's holiday, and we provide private healthcare.
• We also offer other benefits that will help your money go further such as season ticket loans, interest free car loan of up to £10k, cycle to work scheme, health cash plans, salary advance (where you can access some of your pay before pay day) as well access to a great range of discounts from hundreds of other retailers.
• And if you ever need it there is also an Employee Assistance Programme.
• Moments that matter are as important to us as they are to you which is why we give up to 26 weeks’ pay for maternity or adoption leave and up to 4 weeks’ pay for paternity leave.

Please see www.sainsburys.jobs for a range of our benefits (note, length of service and eligibility criteria may apply).