Head of Commercial Finance

Overview:
We are recruiting a Head of Commercial Finance to provide financial insight to influence strategic decisions.

As the Head of Commercial Finance, you'll have an instrumental role in advising on strategic, forward-looking decisions to enhance the continued financial success of the firm. You'll lead a team in advising on financial and resourcing matters to support business growth and influencing the decision-making of senior stakeholders. You and your team's primary focus will be improving the understanding of performance, providing financial insights and appropriate challenge to support the Firm's strategic goals.

You'll work closely with the Finance Director, Managing Partner and Departmental Heads by providing actionable insight, financial information and metrics to enable an informed and commercially minded decision-making process.

**What you'll be doing as a Head of Commercial Finance**:

- Work with the team to oversee the provision of Firm-wide tender support, ensuring we maximise profitability and deliver a positive future impact on fees and cash when bidding for new business.
- Work with the team to oversee effective WIP management to identify improvements to existing business though minimising write-offs and reduce average time taken to convert WIP into bills.
- Play an integral role in project delivery, with a focus on delivering controls and process improvements for greater efficiency. Working with the FD, provide insight on the commercial implications of Firm-wide projects.
- Work proactively with the Marketing & BD Director to support Firm-wide strategy relating to client relationship management, leading your team on providing financial reporting and insight to track performance against targets.
- Support your team on working with departments to produce business cases for growth and lateral hires and make recommendations where required, reviewing ROI in the context of the Firm’s strategic priorities.
- Work with the FD and the wider team to roll-out a proactive approach to resourcing across fee earning teams, identifying areas for recruitment focus and guiding your team in delivering appropriate challenge to senior stakeholders.
- Provide support to the FD in delivering the strategic planning process including annual budget, reforecasts and salary reviews. Lead on insightful reporting to the Board and wider Partnership.
- Devise and deliver presentations to the Board and wider Partnership on financial performance and specific projects.
- Act as a mentor to more junior team members, supporting the Finance pipeline of talent.
- Ad hoc / proactive analysis to influence decisions and support the rest of the Decision Support team.

***What we are looking for**:

- You will be a qualified accountant (ACA, CIMA or ACCA) with proven commercial acumen and knowledge of financial analysis and reporting.
- At least 5 years' experience of working within a finance department, some of this being in a business partnering role similar to that outlined above.
- Team management experience is essential.
- Excellent interpersonal skills to enable the job holder to liaise at all levels within the Department and within the firm generally. Good written and oral communication skills.
- Good IT skills (to include in depth experience of Excel), plus good working knowledge of Word, Outlook and PowerPoint.

Please note there will be a two-stage interview process - interviews will take place during the first couple of weeks in December.

**Some of our benefits include**:

- Salary between £70,000-75,000, depending on experience.
- Medical Insurance - access to BUPA with no excess or compulsory payments.
- Hybrid working - split your time between home and our office, with a minimum of 2 days in the office per week.
- Annual Leave - minimum of 25 days per year, increasing to 31 days with length of service. Also - buy/sell holidays up to 5 days per year.
- Pension - saving for retirement? Let us do the hard work for you. We auto-enrol all eligible colleagues into a workplace pension, and we will contribute a minimum of 5% of annual salary.
- Life Assurance - 4x your annual salary in the event of a death in service.
- We take great pride in being a Disability Confident Employer. If you need any reasonable adjustments throughout the recruitment process, please don't hesitate to ask. _
- Click here_ to find out more about our diversity and inclusion work._

Type of Working: Hybrid