Service Work Controller in Worthing

Southern Water is collaborating with hackajob to connect with exceptional professionals for the role of Cost Controller.

Contract Type: Permanent

Salary: From £45k depending on skills and experience

The Cost Controller is responsible for the end-to-end financial control of the Smart Metering Programme, ensuring accurate forecasting, reporting and governance across Opex and Capex.

• Maintain a single source of financial truth, reporting consistently and on time at all levels.
• Provide end-to-end financial management, including tracking, reporting and analysis; purchase order and invoice processing; and finance system updates.
• Identify and report budget risks and opportunities, with clear actions and mitigations.
• Month-end / period close alignment: ownership of timetable, cut-off, accruals/prepayments, and reconciliation steps.
• Capex governance & accounting compliance: ensuring correct treatment of Capex vs Opex, retaining evidence, and meeting policy approvals.
• Maintain an audit trail of budget approvals and subsequent changes.
• Change control impact on budget: formal linkage between scope change requests and budget movements.
• Vendor/contractor cost control: checking invoices against contract/SOW/milestones, rate cards, timesheets, and ensuring correct cost coding.

Significant experience in a project finance, management accounting, or finance co-ordinator role, supporting programmes/projects is required.

Proven experience managing detailed Opex/Capex budgets, including actuals, forecast and variance analysis.

Hands-on experience with purchase order and invoice processing, cost coding and resolving exceptions, along with maintaining a clear audit trail of budget changes.

Strong Excel skills (e.g., pivot tables, lookups, basic data modelling) and experience maintaining data quality across financial trackers are essential.

Experience using finance systems (e.g., SAP) and project cost structures is beneficial.

Experience partnering with Finance Business Partners and coaching non-finance stakeholders to improve forecast accuracy is also valuable.

Southern Water is at the forefront of transforming Britain’s water industry, investing significantly to enhance resilience, sustainability, and service excellence. With £7.8bn planned investment for 2025-30, this is an unparalleled opportunity to join a business committed to delivering a generational shift in the way water services are managed.

We offer an environment where senior professionals can make a meaningful impact, influence major strategic decisions, and drive long-term value creation.

At Southern Water, we believe diverse perspectives drive innovation. We do not discriminate based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, or any other protected characteristic.

In line with Southern Water’s security requirements, successful candidates will be required to provide evidence of their identity, eligibility to work in the UK, criminal record check (DBS) and verification of their employment and/or education history for the past three years. Please note that if a candidate does not meet the required security standards or fails to pass the vetting process, Southern Water reserves the right to withdraw the offer of employment.