Planning & Performance Manager

About us:

King’s College London is consistently ranked one of the top seven Universities in the UK, has a turnover exceeding £1.3bn, is the fourth oldest university in England, and is based in the heart of London. The Senior Vice President (Operations), Jeremy Cook OBE, is responsible for the smooth conduct of the operations of the University, including overall services and operations strategy, structures, processes, and delivery along with continuous quality improvement and innovation.

We are seeking a highly organised and proactive professional to lead the operational management and delivery of the university’s quarterly review process for Professional Services, including support for the Integrated Planning Process (IPP). The successful candidate will play a key role in monitoring financial performance, tracking service efficiencies and ensuring alignment with Strategy 2030 objectives.

About the role:

The Planning & Performance Manager sits within the Vice-Chancellor''s Office, reporting to the Director of Planning & Performance, and is central to how King''s plans, measures and improves the performance of its central professional-services directorates. The role provides the performance monitoring, financial and operational analysis, and management reporting that allow senior leaders to hold delivery to account and to make well-evidenced decisions on resources and priorities. It plays a key part in the University''s Integrated Planning Process (IPP) and in maintaining the framework of key performance indicators through which directorate performance is assessed. Working closely with colleagues in Finance, Transformation and across the professional-services community, the postholder helps ensure that agreed targets are met, that the benefits of improvement and transformation activity are realised and sustained in business as usual, and that opportunities to improve productivity and service efficiency – supported by modern reporting tools – are identified and acted upon.

This is a full-time post (35 hours per week), and you will be offered an indefinite contract.

About you:

To be successful in this role, we are looking for candidates to have the following skills and experience:

Essential criteria

• Educated to degree level, or with equivalent relevant experience, in a numerate, financial, business, management or analytical discipline.
• Demonstrable experience of financial and performance analysis – reviewing budgets and management information and identifying variances and their causes to support decision-making.
• Strong practical skills in using Microsoft 365 and Power BI to build and maintain performance dashboards and automate routine reporting (for example using Power Query, Power Automate and advanced Excel).
• A track record of identifying and helping to deliver productivity, efficiency and value-for-money improvements, and of evidencing their impact.
• Experience of planning and running recurring reporting cycles and business processes (such as planning rounds or performance reviews) to firm deadlines, managing competing priorities effectively.
• The ability to present complex financial and operational data clearly and accurately for senior and non-specialist audiences, both in writing and in person.
• Good stakeholder-management skills, with experience of building effective working relationships across finance, operational and change functions to obtain timely, reliable data.

Downloading a copy of our Job Description

Full details of the role and the skills, knowledge and experience required can be found in the Job Description document, provided at the bottom of the page. This document will provide information of what criteria will be assessed at each stage of the recruitment process.