Head of Cost & Strategic Finance

Are you a commercially sharp, qualified finance leader who thrives on turning cost insight into strategic advantage?

We’re looking for a Head of Cost & Strategic Finance to lead best-in-class cost business partnering across Distribution and Group. This is a high-impact, executive-facing role responsible for shaping, challenging and optimising a c.£400m cost base and c.£70m strategic investment portfolio

This isn’t a reporting role. It’s about influence, value creation and delivery.

The Opportunity

You’ll act as a trusted partner to Executive stakeholders, providing clear insight, robust challenge and forward-looking analysis to ensure cost targets are delivered and strategic investments drive real value. You’ll lead budgeting, forecasting and cost planning across Distribution & Group, drive synergy savings, and ensure financial discipline and model governance remain strong as the business evolves. With 9 reports and manager-of-managers responsibility, you’ll build and develop a high-performing team while staying close enough to the detail to ensure quality, integrity and commercial clarity.

What You’ll Be Doing:

Strategic Cost Leadership

Partnering with Executive stakeholders on cost performance and investment decisions
Driving cost saving synergies across the business
Supporting and challenging business cases, validating benefits and tracking delivery
Leading annual budgets and rolling forecasts (FTE, staff and non-staff costs)

Performance & Insight

Delivering clear, insightful month-end and variance analysis
Investigating cost performance issues and providing ad hoc intelligence
Enhancing forecasting models and strengthening business intelligence capability
Presenting high-quality financial reporting to Board, ExCo and Group

Governance & Control

Working closely with Controllership to ensure robust and auditable month/year-end processes
Maintaining strong model governance and quality control standards
Ensuring consistency of reporting and planning processes across Finance

Leadership

Leading and developing a team of 9
Driving accountability, collaboration and high standards across Finance
Building strong relationships across functions to become a trusted business partner

What We’re Looking For

Essential

Qualified Accountant (ACA / ACCA / CIMA)
Strong cost business partnering and planning experience
Experience managing significant cost bases
Excellent stakeholder management and influencing skills
Advanced Excel and PowerPoint capability
Ability to distil complex data into clear, actionable insight
High integrity and credibility with senior leadership

Highly Desirable

Experience leading cost planning and project reporting
Exposure to strategic investment governance
Experience managing managers

Why This Role?

Executive exposure and genuine strategic influence
Ownership of a large-scale cost and investment portfolio
Opportunity to shape financial discipline and value delivery at Group level
Leadership scope with a manager-of-managers structure
A role that blends commercial partnering, governance and strategic impact

If you’re a confident finance leader who enjoys challenge, influence and delivering measurable impact -this could be your next step.