At Sheffield City Council, finance plays a central role in shaping the future of our city. As a Finance Business Partner, you'll be at the heart of major decisions—guiding services, influencing strategic direction, and helping deliver outcomes that directly improve the lives of Sheffield’s residents.
Sheffield City Council is looking for two senior finance professionals to join the Finance, Commercial and Performance Services team. There has never been a more critical time to hold the financial reigns in local government, particularly in one of the UK’s largest and most vibrant cities. Global financial and economic conditions have made finance in the public sector as challenging as ever and has underlined the importance and value finance professionals add.
The Finance and Commercial Services team are here to enable the delivery of high-quality public services, achieve the best value for public money and ensure we do it in the most efficient and effective way. If you enjoy the challenge of driving business improvement and enabling colleagues to achieve their goals, then this is an excellent opportunity to work in a dynamic and supportive team.
Finance Business Partner
Our Finance Business Partners work hand in hand with services, creating real and active partnerships with operations and management. As a Business Partner you will provide real time support and analysis and be a trusted adviser to assist and influence decision making for our city.
The role is about shaping strategy and helping put our financial plans into action. You will be responsible for:
1. leading the annual business planning and budget setting process with services
2. providing financial advice, oversight, and challenge on key decisions
3. assisting in resolving business problems, ensuring that financial strategy is aligned with business strategy
4. building alliances with managers and bringing financial insight to discussions about the business
5. ‘translating’ between finance and services,
6. interpreting data, and then presenting the findings to the relevant stakeholders in a clear concise manner
7. standing over your opinions, have a well-developed sense of ethics and be prepared to stand up for these principles
This is not a transactional role—it's strategic, future‑focused, and pivotal to organisational success. You’ll work directly with senior leaders to shape outcomes across high‑profile services, supporting transformation, financial sustainability, efficiency and improving outcomes for residents.
The Successful Applicants will have:
8. A passion for making finance a driver of improvement
9. Confidence to challenge and influence decisions
10. A full CCAB or CIMA qualification
11. The ability to translate complex financial insights into clear, compelling messages
12. The ability to establish to inspire confidence from a wide range of stakeholders,
13. Experience of staff management,
14. Experience in a large, complex finance environment with proven and demonstrable accounting skills, including forecasting, budgeting, and planning
15. Leadership and teamwork skills. Evidence of the ability to network across complex organisational structures.
16. High levels of personal effectiveness, particularly co-ordination, organisation, and the ability to focus on achieving deadlines, and ensuring that timetables and project plans can be met.
Sheffield City Council is a great place to work, with supportive leadership committed to transforming the organisation, a strong peer network, flexible/hybrid working and a commitment to wellbeing, inclusion and continuous improvement.
The interviews for these roles will be conducted as a joint process. Please indicate on your application whether you are applying for the permanent or fixed-term contract role or are interested in both opportunities.
We are investing in our workforce and are promoting opportunities to our under-represented groups. We value equality, diversity and inclusion and are focused on increasing the diversity of our workforce, particularly the number of Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic, Disabled and LGBTQ+ people, so that our teams reflect the communities in the city we serve. We are also supporting staff with unpaid caring responsibilities to work flexibly.