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For Companies Together we are Trusted to Serve Scotland.
Lead Finance Business Partner (Customer Service)
We’re looking for an experienced and influential Lead Finance Business Partner to work with the Customer Service Director and Senior Leaders. This role provides the opportunity to influence Senior Stakeholders bringing strong financial advice, informing different ways of thinking to drive value and improvement which can make a positive contribution to our Strategic Ambitions of Great Value and Financial Sustainability, Service Excellence and Beyond Net Zero, and helping deliver for customers across Scotland. This will be achieved through a period of significant organisational change.
About the role
Accountable to the Head of Finance Business Partnering in Finance Directorate, the role operates as a trusted adviser to the Customer Service Director and their Management Team to shape plans, budgets and forecasts, inform and challenge investment choices, and steer delivery toward outcomes. The role works through a technically qualified team and the shared analyst pool, developing talent and sustaining a collaborative, outcome‑oriented culture during a period of organisational change. It collaborates closely with the Finance Business Partnering team on enterprise standards and cross‑Directorate trade‑offs, and with Reporting & Controls team to ensure integrity of actuals, allocations and compliance while the FBP remains focused on decision support.
About the Customer Services Directorate
The Customer Service Directorate delivers critical services to both Internal and External customers across Scotland, achieving industry-leading satisfaction levels (c.94%). Operating 24/7, the directorate spans customer engagement, intelligent control, resilience and operational services, ensuring reliable service delivery and rapid response to incidents. With a workforce of over 1,300 colleagues and an operating budget in excess of £100m, it drives performance through data-led insight, continuous improvement and strong safety performance, while acting as the voice of the customer across the organisation and supporting long-term service excellence and resilience.
This is a broad and varied Directorate covering our Scientific Laboratories that test 1.3m samples a year, the teams that collect those samples across Scotland, our maintenance teams that keep our assets working, customer contact with 30k contacts per month and the management of our fleet of over 700 EV’s and other vehicles.
What you’ll do
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Act as the trusted financial adviser to the Customer Service Director and Management Team, ensuring robust financial and commercial insight informs strategic and operational decisions.
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Lead the Directorate’s financial performance management, integrating service performance, cost drivers, risks and opportunities into a clear, action‑focused narrative.
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Own the Directorate budgeting and reforecasting processes using driver‑based models, aligning assumptions with enterprise targets and ensuring cash, headcount and delivery implications are explicit.
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Sponsor, challenge and / or assure business cases, ensuring options are compared on value for money, affordability and risk, and that benefits are tracked post‑approval.
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Identify and support delivery of efficiency and productivity opportunities, working with Operations, Digital, Supply Chain and PMO to secure outcomes.
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Deliver scenario and sensitivity analysis on material risks, recommending mitigations, reprioritisation or re‑phasing as required.
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Coordinate Directorate inputs to organisation‑wide planning and regulatory processes, including pricing and performance submissions.
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Shape and maintain a prioritised insight backlog and direct work through the analyst pool to ensure outputs are decision‑ready.
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Work closely with Reporting & Controls to ensure compliant allocations and reporting, protecting Business Partnering capacity for value‑add insight.
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Model and embed the Finance Business Partnering playbook, contributing to continuous improvement across the community.
What you’ll bring
You’ll bring experience as a Finance Business Partner or equivalent, ideally gained within complex, asset‑intensive or regulated environments. We are open to you telling us how you will do it and where your experience is transferable. Alongside this, you’ll have a proven ability to influence major operational and investment decisions at Director and senior leadership level, supported by strong commercial judgement and experience of business case development, cost/benefit analysis and scenario modelling.
You’ll be highly financially and analytically literate, with the ability to translate complexity into clear, actionable insight and compelling commercial narratives for non‑finance stakeholders. Your experience will include shaping planning, budgeting and forecasting across evolving finance models, processes and ways of working, as well as business case development, scenario analysis and performance insight. A sound understanding of regulatory finance and cost allocation principles will also be important, complemented by exceptional communication skills and the ability to build deep, trusted relationships with non‑finance leaders.
Personal attributes
You’ll bring a trusted‑adviser mindset, able to balance constructive challenge with support. You’ll be a strategic thinker with strong operational empathy and a clear customer focus, remaining resilient, outcome‑oriented and credible even under pressure and ambiguity. Collaborative in your approach, you’ll demonstrate a leadership style that is committed to developing capability and continuously improving ways of working.
Looking out for you
While the work we do is important, we know it’s not the only thing that matters. That’s why we make sure you have everything you need to find a good work-life balance.
You’ll get plenty of time to recharge with 38 days of holiday every year (including public holidays). And you can even buy five more if you need a little extra time. You can also take paid time off to volunteer in your community.
When it comes to major life events we have family-friendly policies around adoption, maternity, and parental leave. And for the everyday? We embrace flexible working.
For your future, there’s our pension (the ‘know-what-you’ll-get-when-you-retire’ kind), as well as life assurance.
As for some nice extras? You can expect an annual company bonus. Not to mention access to SW Splash – handy rewards that can save you money on holidays, bills, and shopping.
The not-so-small print
This role will be at M2 Level. A competitive package (including a car allowance) is on offer and a salary starting from £79,204, with the ability to advance based on consistent out-performance.
Please include with your application a role specific covering letter (maximum 500 words) outlining your reason for applying and why you believe you are suitable for the role.
If you’re interested in this role – or know someone else who might be – we will be accepting applications until the 25th May 2026
We operate Balanced Hybrid working at Scottish Water and we encourage people to work half their time in a Scottish Water location.
Job offers at Scottish Water are conditional, and will be confirmed on completion of our pre-employment screening, e.g. referencing, criminal record checks, license checks, etc. Screening is conducted on our behalf by a third party, and must be completed before your start date. Don’t worry – we’ll only start these checks once you’ve accepted an offer.
A few final things worth knowing…
Research shows that some people avoid applying for jobs unless they can meet every single criteria. If you’re interested in this job, but don’t tick all the boxes, apply anyway! We hardly ever hire people who can do every part of a job from Day One. Everyone has a learning curve. So don’t rule yourself out!
Let us know if there are any changes we can make to our recruitment process to help you perform at your best. Lots of our people have disabilities or neurodiverse conditions (including some of our recruiters!). We’re also aware that some people might be experiencing temporary challenges because of life events, like menopause. We’re very used to making adjustments, so please don’t be afraid to ask.
As part of our commitment to developing a flourishing Scotland, it’s important that all our employees are Scottish taxpayers. If you join us, your home address will need to be in Scotland. If you don’t already live here, you’ll need to commit to moving here within your first three months.
Please note, Scottish Water takes the safety, health and wellbeing of our employees, colleagues and customers very seriously and as such you may be subject to Drug & Alcohol testing in line with our policy.
Finally (finally!), candidates who haven’t submitted an application in the last 12 months will have their records removed from our recruitment database. You won’t need to do anything. Your data will be automatically deleted.
We’re here to help. Ask us anything at SWRecruitment@ScottishWater.co.uk
Contact Detail:
Scottish Water Recruiting Team