Finance Director in Cambridge

Build the finance function for the next chapter of a successful manufacturing business

A well-established manufacturing business in Cambridgeshire is seeking a commercially minded, hands-on Finance Director to join its Executive Leadership Team at a pivotal point in its development.

This is not an opportunity to simply inherit and maintain an established Finance function.

It is an opportunity to shape one.

The business has a strong financial foundation, an established market position and ambitious plans for its next phase of growth, including operational improvement, increased profitability, international expansion and future acquisition activity.

As the organisation evolves, so too must its financial infrastructure.

The incoming Finance Director will have significant autonomy to modernise the Finance function, improve management information, strengthen commercial decision-making and create the systems, insight and capability required to support a larger and increasingly sophisticated organisation.

This is a broad, highly influential role spanning financial leadership, manufacturing finance, commercial performance, systems, people and growth.

The opportunity

Reporting directly to the Managing Director and operating as a key member of the Executive Leadership Team, you will work closely with the wider leadership team to help shape and deliver the future direction of the business.

You will inherit a fundamentally healthy organisation, but one where some financial systems, reporting and processes have not evolved at the same pace as the business.

That creates considerable opportunity.

You'll be encouraged to challenge legacy ways of working, reduce manual processes, improve the quality and accessibility of information and determine what a high-performing Finance function should look like for the next stage of growth.

Your remit will include

• Leading and developing the Finance function, maintaining strong financial control while building greater commercial and analytical capability.
• Transforming management information to provide timely, forward-looking insight rather than predominantly retrospective reporting.
• Strengthening budgeting, forecasting, cash-flow forecasting, FP&A and longer-term financial planning.
• Developing meaningful profitability reporting across products, customers, markets and channels.
• Improving manufacturing cost visibility, including product costing, Bills of Materials, inventory, WIP, labour, overhead allocation and factory performance.
• Taking greater financial ownership of pricing, margin analysis and commercial decision support.
• Working closely with Operations, Sales, Engineering and other functions to identify opportunities to improve profitability and business performance.
• Maximising the capability of the existing ERP environment and reducing unnecessary spreadsheet and manual reporting dependency.
• Developing the business's approach to data, analytics, business intelligence and automation.
• Building a pragmatic systems roadmap to support future growth.
• Identifying and delivering measurable cost savings and efficiency improvements.
• Supporting the evaluation, financial due diligence and integration of future acquisition opportunities.
• Coaching and developing the existing Finance team and shaping the future structure and capability of the function.
• Acting as a trusted, commercially astute and appropriately challenging partner to the Managing Director, Board and wider leadership team.
• What success could look like

This appointment is about impact, not simply responsibility.

Within your first 12 months, we would expect to see a Finance function that is becoming materially more efficient, commercial and forward-looking.

The leadership team should have significantly greater visibility of performance, profitability, cash and future outlook.

Month-end and recurring reporting should be more efficient and less reliant on manual intervention.

Product and customer profitability should be better understood, and pricing decisions increasingly supported by robust financial insight.

You should be able to point to tangible commercial improvements and demonstrable savings resulting from the work you have led.

Just as importantly, you will have established yourself as a trusted leadership partner, someone who can operate independently, challenge constructively and turn insight into action.

About you

We are looking for a qualified accountant,

ACA, ACCA, CIMA or equivalent , who combines strong financial leadership with genuine commercial curiosity.

Manufacturing experience is important.

You'll understand the financial mechanics behind a manufacturing operation, not simply its P&L.

You'll be comfortable getting underneath product costing, Bills of Materials, inventory, WIP, labour and overheads, factory performance, pricing and margin.

You'll also bring

• Senior finance leadership experience within a manufacturing or engineering environment.
• Strong commercial finance and business-partnering capability.
• Experience improving profitability, pricing, margins and management information.
• Strong budgeting, forecasting, cash-flow and financial planning capability.
• Experience improving finance systems, processes and reporting.
• Strong ERP capability, with the ability to understand what good looks like and challenge how systems are being used.
• A track record of delivering business improvement and transformation rather than simply maintaining established processes.
• Strong people leadership, coaching and team-development skills.
• The confidence and credibility to operate at Board level while remaining close to the detail.

Exposure to acquisitions, due diligence and post-acquisition integration would be advantageous, as would international trading, foreign currency, business intelligence and automation experience.

The person behind the CV

This role will suit someone who is strategic enough for the Boardroom but hands-on enough for the factory floor .

You'll be comfortable walking into an environment where not everything has already been built for you. In fact, that should be part of the attraction.

You'll naturally ask why, challenge whether there is a better way and then take ownership for making it happen.

We are looking for someone who is

• Commercially curious and interested in what drives the numbers.
• Pragmatic, hands-on and delivery focused.
• Comfortable operating with significant autonomy.
• Confident enough to challenge constructively.
• Collaborative and low ego in their approach.
• Excited by systems, data, automation and better ways of working.
• Able to create structure from ambiguity.
• Equally comfortable engaging with Board stakeholders and colleagues across the factory floor.

Why consider this opportunity?

This is a rare chance to join a successful manufacturing business with a strong foundation and significant untapped potential.

The new Finance Director will have the backing of the Managing Director and Board, substantial freedom to shape the Finance function and the opportunity to influence how the organisation grows over the coming years.

#J-18808-Ljbffr