Senior Finance Business Partner – FP&A & Commercial Performance
Location: South London
Reporting to: Finance Director
Level: Senior Finance Professional
The Opportunity
We are recruiting for an experienced, commercially focused Senior Finance Business Partner to join an established, project-driven business looking to strengthen its financial planning, forecasting and commercial performance capabilities.
Working closely with the Finance Director, CEO and wider leadership team, this is a highly visible, hands-on position offering the opportunity to make a measurable impact on business performance.
The successful candidate will go beyond traditional financial reporting, using data to understand what drives revenue, costs and profitability, challenge commercial assumptions and identify opportunities to improve financial outcomes.
This role would suit someone who enjoys getting beneath the numbers, working closely with operational teams and taking ownership of improvements rather than simply reporting on historic performance.
What Success Looks Like – Your First Six Months
A particularly important aspect of this appointment is the ability to deliver tangible improvements within the first six months.
The successful candidate will be expected to:
Improve forecasting accuracy: Strengthen the consistency, reliability and usefulness of financial forecasts, ensuring the business has greater confidence in future performance.
Enhance financial visibility: Establish clearer, more insightful reporting across revenue, gross margin, operating expenditure and EBITDA.
Understand profitability: Develop greater transparency around profitability by project, client and business area, identifying the factors influencing financial performance.
Build commercial relationships: Establish credibility and effective working relationships with operational and commercial leaders, becoming a trusted partner in decision-making.
Identify opportunities to improve margins: Highlight tangible opportunities to improve profitability, manage costs and increase operational efficiency.
Streamline management reporting: Reduce manual processes, improve data quality and introduce more efficient reporting and analytical tools.
Influence strategic decisions: Provide the Finance Director and CEO with clear, timely and actionable financial insight to support faster, better-informed decisions.
The expectation is not simply to produce better financial reports, but to actively influence how the business performs.
Key Responsibilities
Financial Planning, Budgeting & Forecasting
Lead and improve budgeting, forecasting and financial planning processes.
Develop rolling forecasts covering revenue, gross profit, operating costs and EBITDA.
Build financial models to support scenario planning, investment decisions and commercial opportunities.
Challenge departmental assumptions and improve accountability for financial performance.
Analyse actual results against budgets and forecasts, identifying risks, trends and opportunities.
Commercial Finance & Profitability
Analyse financial performance across projects, customers and operational business areas.
Identify the drivers behind revenue, gross margin and profitability.
Work closely with commercial and operational teams to understand project costs, pricing, resource utilisation and margin performance.
Evaluate commercial opportunities, pricing structures and investment proposals.
Highlight areas of margin erosion, cost overruns and underperformance, recommending practical solutions.
Management Information & Business Insight
Develop meaningful management information and performance dashboards for senior leadership.
Improve the clarity, consistency and accessibility of financial reporting.
Translate complex financial information into concise, commercially relevant recommendations.
Establish financial and operational KPIs that improve visibility and accountability.
Provide insightful commentary on performance, rather than simply presenting…