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We are seeking an experienced and capable Head of Finance to take ownership of the finance function in our fast-growing tech consultancy. As a small but ambitious business delivering high-value consulting services, we need a commercially astute financial professional who can operate across both strategic and day-to-day financial activities.
This role is central to ensuring the smooth financial operation of the business, providing accurate insights to support decision-making, managing compliance and reporting, and partnering with the leadership team and Board to enable sustainable, scalable growth. It also plays a key strategic role in shaping the company’s financial direction, supporting long-term planning, investment decisions, and commercial strategy.
The ideal candidate will bring experience from a consulting or professional services environment, where time and services – not just products – are the basis of revenue, and will be confident running a lean finance function independently, with some administrative support.
Key Responsibilities:
* Finance Function Ownership: Manage and develop the end-to-end finance function, building a framework that supports scalable and sustainable growth.
* Management Reporting: Deliver timely and accurate financial data, KPIs, dashboards and insights to the CEO, Leadership Team and Board.
* Accounting Operations: Manage all day-to-day accounting activities, including general ledger, month-end close, journal entries, accruals, and reconciliations.
* Project Accounting & Commercial Support: Work closely with the project teams to maintain accurate project P&Ls, track time utilisation and margin performance, and resource planning.
* Proposal Support & Pricing: Support the costing and financial modelling of project proposals, bids, ensuring alignment with margin targets and pricing strategy.
* Revenue Recognition: Ensure correct treatment of revenue from consulting services, based on time and materials, fixed-fee or milestone-based contracts, in line with accounting standards.
* Cash Flow & Working Capital Management: Prepare cash flow forecasts and ensure the business maintains healthy working capital. Manage client invoicing cycles to ensure timely billing and collections and managing banking relationships, cash management and other treasury-related activities.
* Budgeting & Forecasting: Lead the annual budgeting process, periodic reforecasts, and financial scenario planning, including modelling the impact of changes in utilisation, pricing, pipeline conversion, or headcount on profitability and cash flow.
* System Integration & Automation: Enhance integration between finance, project delivery (e.g. time tracking), and CRM tools (e.g. HubSpot), enabling seamless flow of data and real-time insight.
* Financial Administration: Oversee and, where necessary, perform AP/AR processing, bank reconciliations, expenses review, VAT returns and other statutory compliance requirements.
* Statutory Reporting & Year-End: Liaise with external accountants and auditors for preparation of statutory accounts, audits, year-end filing, tax and R&D credit claims, and provide year-end commentaries.
* Controls & Risk: Ensure robust internal controls, risk management practices and financial policies are implemented and followed, suitable for a consulting services firm.
* Grant Funded Projects: Manage financial planning, tracking, and claims for grant-funded projects, ensuring compliance with funding requirements, accurate cost allocation, timely submission of claims, and alignment with project milestones and reporting obligations.
* Continuous Improvement: Proactively review, improve and document finance processes, systems and policies to drive efficiency, accuracy and scalability.
Key Professional Skills Required:
* Qualified accountant (ACA, ACCA, CIMA) with at least 5+ years’ experience in finance roles.
* Experience working in a professional services, or consulting environment is essential.
* Proven experience managing a standalone finance function, ideally in a fast-growing scale-up.
* Strong understanding of project accounting, revenue recognition, time utilisation metrics, pricing, and financial audit.
* Proficient with Xero and advanced Excel skills.
* Experience with financial automation and APIs.
* Comfortable working across both strategic and operational levels — from cash flow planning to invoice processing.
* Commercially astute, with the ability to deliver actionable insights that influence business decisions.
* Strong working knowledge of UK financial and tax regulations, including R&D credits.
Key Personal Attributes:
* A proactive, hands-on operator who enjoys variety and independence.
* Self-starter with excellent organisational skills and a commitment to quality and accuracy.
* Strong commercial awareness, with the ability to see the bigger picture and contribute strategically.
* Able to balance high-level financial insight with the delivery of day-to-day financial processes.
* Comfortable liaising with technical teams, clients and stakeholders at all levels.
* Clear communicator with excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to present financial information in a clear, concise, and visual format that enables understanding at a glance by non-financial stakeholders.
* Calm under pressure, with a high degree of resilience and a solutions-focused mindset.
* High integrity, dependable and committed to the success of the wider team.
* Confident in expressing financial viewpoints and insights constructively, with the ability to challenge assumptions and influence decision-making in a positive and collaborative manner.
Seniority level
* Seniority level
Executive
Employment type
* Employment type
Full-time
Job function
* Job function
Finance and Sales
* Industries
Business Consulting and Services
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