Senior Finance Officer

The Finance team sits within the Office of the CIO and has a dotted line into Central Finance, via the Divisional Financial Controller for UAS and GLAM. The role sits within the Financial Planning and Analysis team and reports into the FP&A Manager. This is a key post in a department witnessing a rapid evolution of technology and supporting development methodologies, with unlimited demand for projects and services, yet constrained by funding and resource limitations. As such, we require potential candidates to possess good people, process, IT and accounting skills, ideally proven in a complex and highly distributed organisation.

Our recurrent IT spend is c.£22 million pa over 75 cost centres and c.300 FTEs. Our capital envelope of £60 million (over a three-year funding window) and c.80 live projects supply a steady pipeline of new demands to test this funding-constrained cost base. This role will provide financial support to the cost centres, with a particular focus on accurately planning future activity by identifying threats to, or opportunities to improve, our financial position.

Key aspects of the Senior Finance Officer role include:

  • Effective business partnering with cost centre owners
  • Preparing standard financial metrics to track the performance of the cost centres
  • Supporting planning activities

Essential selection criteria

  • Part qualified CIMA/ACCA studier
  • At least three years’ experience in a large accounting environment with proven management accounting, pricing, planning and reporting skills
  • Good understanding of financial systems and strong Excel skills, including pivot tables and complex formulae
  • Experienced in communicating financial terminology, management accounts, processes and functions to non-financial staff
  • Excellent analytical skills
  • Proven ability to establish and maintain relationships to a high level of effectiveness, engendering confidence from a wide range of stakeholders
  • High levels of personal effectiveness, particularly co-ordination, organisation and the ability to focus on achieving deadlines, ensuring that timetables/project plans can be met
  • A strong desire and ability to maintain a very high level of accuracy in the role

Desirable selection criteria

  • Previous experience in a public sector organisation
  • Previous experience of Oracle Financials
  • Previous exposure to MS PowerBI tools, specifically PowerPivot and PowerQuery