Nuclear Waste Services has a vacancy for a Finance Director to join its busy team, flexible working from our Harwell office.
This is a senior high-profile role reporting directly into the Nuclear Waste Services (“NWS”) CFO. The role will work closely with senior stakeholders including the Board, Executive team, peers within the NWS Senior Management team and senior Finance and non-Finance colleagues across the NDA.
The role holder will be responsible for all forward-looking financial activity for NWS including Business Partnering, FP&A and Financial Projects (e.g. Pricing, Business Development, Spending Reviews, M&A etc).
This is a great opportunity to create and lead a new high performing Finance team.
- Create and lead a high performing Finance team – delivering exceptional performance and continuous improvement which is seen to set the standard across the NDA and Public Sector.
- Create a culture within the team of ongoing development (personal and professional).
- Business Partnering – Develop a best-in-class Business Partnering team working with the business which:
- acts as first point of contact for the business on all financial matters
- ensures the business understands and owns their financial performance against budget / forecast / Long Term Plan (LTP), with business partners working with the business to ensure that the Spending Review / budget / rolling forecast for their area is within funding and as realistic as possible, identifying and managing risks and opportunities – to create a ‘no surprises’ culture
- identifies and helps the business implement changes to materially improve the Value for Money that NWS delivers for the taxpayer
- for material business cases (current definition £15m+ overall spend) “own” jointly with the business the financial part of the Business Case ensuring it exceeds appropriate standards and all risks and opportunities are clearly identified. Ensure that robust tracking of spend and benefits delivery is implemented to deliver on our commitments
for all other material spends create an appropriate business case process – “own” the business case jointly with the business to ensure that we deliver an appropriate return on taxpayer investment, and we have appropriate tracking of spend and benefits delivery to deliver on our commitments - personally support the production of the largest business cases (£000m’s)
- FP&A – lead and coordinate all FP&A across NWS (SR, Budget, Rolling Forecasts, reporting and explaining actuals and variances) continually improving the process to drive performance, deliver a zero surprises culture, and explains our performance to key stakeholders specifically:
- setting the process, templates, guidance, risk and opportunities tracking etc, consolidating and explaining the position simply (slides, waterfalls etc)
- lead on risk and opportunities process to manage spend to funding - where we spend exactly our funding while accelerating delivery
- implementing and developing NWS FP&A tools to continually improve our financial capability across the organisation
- creating all financial presentations (for the Exec, Board, NDA Finance team and other key stakeholders) on behalf of the CFO to clearly and simply explain actual and expected financial performance
- provide key insights and data analysis to support decision making
- leading on all financial discussions with the NDA (and through into BEIS etc)
- set the process for efficiency tracking and consolidate reporting throughout NWS to identify and deliver material improvements in the Value for Money that NWS and the NDA deliver for the taxpayer
- Finance Projects – lead on all ad hoc financial projects (e.g. M&A, Spending Reviews, Pricing, material changes to business structure etc)
- Build networks across the NDA to identify and share best practice
- Identify and negotiate to bring into Finance activity currently performed in the Business that in a modern Finance team should be led by Finance
- Deputise for the CFO on a regular basis as required
Essential
- Fully Qualified Accountant (CIMA / ACCA / ACA / CIPFA or equivalent) with substantial post qualification experience (10-15 years plus)
- Ability to deputise for the CFO for at Board / Exec meetings and for key financial approvals
Desirable
- Experience at a Finance Director level leading large team responsible for all aspects of Commercial Finance and FP&A
- Public Sector, Nuclear or Large-scale infrastructure experience
- On appointment to an RWM, full-time staff are entitled to a generous annual holiday allowance of 38 days’ annual leave. LLWR up to 43 days in addition to a buy/sell scheme
- Rewarding performance (bonus scheme)
- We offer a generous above average pension scheme
- learning and development support
- payment of relevant annual professional subscriptions
- Employee Assistance Programme
- Financial advice assistance
- Flexible working
- Extended family-friendly policies
- Cycle to work scheme
- We welcome flexible and agile working practices
- Flexible working requests can be submitted from day 1 of employment
We value the unique differences that each of our colleagues bring to work every day and are committed to creating an environment where everyone feels respected, included and able to perform at their best. We are committed to creating a workplace that is diverse and inclusive. We value the diversity of our people and actively seek to have a workforce that represents the rich diversity of the communities we support. Currently we are underrepresented in some areas, and would particularly welcome applicants from Women, Black, Asian and Ethnic Minorities, LGBTQ+ and candidates who have a disability.
In promoting equal opportunities, we welcomes applications from all sections of the community. We select people according to their abilities and our needs. As users of the disability confident scheme, we guarantee to interview all disabled applicants who meet all of the essential criteria for the vacancy. In cases where we have a high volume of disabled candidates who meet all of the essential criteria, we will interview the best candidates from within that group.