About the jobJob summary
The Finance Military Operations (FinMilOps) team delivers a TLB finance service that is responsible for providing financial advice, business intelligence, support, and assurance for all aspects of military operational spend against budgets. This includes Strategic Command’s military operations spend, primarily in PJHQ and MAB, but also across DI, DD, and DOB. In addition to the service provided by the core Strategic Command finance function, these directorates require financial support adapted to operational context, considering speed of relevance, non-standard requirements, and Operational Security (OpSec).
This G7 Broader Middle East (BME) role faces operational teams managing the day-to-day of all current Operations across BME (including Contingent Ops and Crisis response).
The role will provide financial advice and support all operations across BME ensuring appropriate financial and accounting systems and procedures are maintained, and delivering financial scrutiny of expenditure. The role will also support in-year management (IYM) and forecasting. Financial scrutiny of expenditure will be a key element of the role, keeping abreast of the financial situation for the region to ensure financial information and risks are communicated upwards in a timely way. The number and location of Operations can change according to changing operational priorities and/or UK Government policy.
The role also has responsibility for the PJHQ costing team whose role it is to provide costings for military operations, at pace, across a range of theatres and areas of activity.
This role will be accountable to G6 Global Ops & Hd FBP in PJHQ. The role has four reports, two on BME and two in the costing cell. It will require frequent liaison with in-country CivSecs and FinMilOps finance services, coordinating activity including during crisis response. They will be expected to deputise for Hd FBP FinMilOps, supporting Deputy Director Finance (Finance for Military Operations) and liaising directly with Commander Joint Operations (CJO) when required.
The role will require advanced finance business partnering skills and an ability to deliver finance operations at pace. A knowledge of costing would also be beneficial.
This is a unique opportunity for a high-calibre candidate with the expertise, vision, and leadership skills to excel in a fast-paced, dynamic environment. If you are ready to make a significant impact, we want to hear from you.
This position is advertised at 37 hours per week.
Job description
Day to day financial management of Ops
* Timely delivery of annual Financial Review Notes (FRNs) and Financial Approval Notes liaising with FLC and Defence Resources, to secure HMT approval. Includes engagement with relevant stakeholders, in providing a proper and accountable financial mechanism for the delivery of Special Reserve funded Operational outputs.
* Reviewing and challenging, when appropriate, relevant FRNs, Business Cases and Statements of Requirements to ensure they represent VfM and are an appropriate charge to the operation.
* Ensuring accurate and timely forecasting at each accounting period aiming for final outturn at AP12 to be within +/-1% of the AP06 forecast, liaising with FinOps Forecasting teams.
* Identifying potential financial risks and opportunities associated with each Op, escalating when appropriate.
Overseeing the Costing Cell
* Promoting visibility of the team and encouraging Divisions to engage early if they have likely costing requirements.
* Ensuring costs provided are realistic and requirement owners are fully aware of any limitations or risks associated with the costs provided.
* Overseeing crisis response requirements for J8 including to deliver timely costs to inform operational decision making; ensuring costs are captured and reported, and liaising with Strategic Finance to ensure understanding of likely funding sources.
* Driving improvements to the costing process, including developing improved way to capture planning assumptions and present costs including risks.
Leadership and Management
* Understanding and communicate the aims and purpose of the team and how they align with the aims and purpose of the HLB, the TLB and the Department.
* Understanding the capacity, capabilities and ambitions of your team, effectively empowering, inspiring, motivating and coaching them, supporting individuals’ personal development and careers, to create a great place to work.
* Driving a culture of being open to challenge and new ideas, building a supportive team environment, role modelling and encouraging making time for personal development and sharing of knowledge and experience.
* Maintaining oversight of the deployed BME CivSec team, reviewing whether they have appropriate resource and capability to deliver required objectives, whether they are delivering effectively, and ensuring continuity of placements.
Building effective stakeholder engagement:
* Liaising with relevant FLCs to ensure they are managing and reporting their relevant operational spend in accordance with J8 requirements.
* Liaising with relevant HLB divisions/units to ensure they understand the role of FinMilOps and engage early with any financial requirements.
* Reporting to StratFin through the Quarterly review process.
Delivering Change and Continuous Improvement
* Owning and driving forward change and improvements to cross-cutting areas as required.
* Ensuring the team is kept up to date with any division or departmental change initiatives and support them through change.
* Identifying opportunities for continuous improvement in the service provided by finance, engaging with the Business to enable prioritising changes that will add most value.
* Being forward looking, using financial, operational performance and economic data to deliver insight that both drives and facilitates change and continuous improvement.
* Delivering improvements in financial awareness and acumen across operational areas.
Person specification
Essential
* Qualified with a CCAB/CIMA accountancy qualification.
* The ideal candidate will be very well organised and a strong communicator, who is able to quickly build good working relationships with a variety of stakeholders within the organisation and externally, use their initiative to solve problems and can deal with a wide range of people.
* Job holders need to be familiar with a number of finance specialisations including forecasting, financial planning, costing, governance, requirement scrutiny and transactional processes (invoice payments, accruals, prepayments etc.).
* The role requires a high standard of IT skills including the use of Excel and Word and a familiarity with Oracle-based systems.
* The successful applicant will be expected to be in Northwood on a regular basis. Given the nature of operational requirements, access to Secret systems and attendance at in-person meetings will necessitate time in Northwood office of at least 60% of the week and potentially more as required by business needs.
* There is potential for the post holder to periodically visit operational theatres to conduct assurance checks or to deploy at short notice to provide In Theatre financial support. This would be subject to successful completion of relevant training and a medical.
Desirable
* An understanding of how MOD/UKStratCom operates given the breadth and diversity and its highly delegated model.
* An excellent ability to balance a range of competing priorities drawing on good judgement, initiative and able to coordinate the team accordingly.
* A self-starter capable of working independently from high-level strategic direction.
Qualifications
* CCAB, CIMA or equivalent.
Behaviours
We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:
* Leadership
* Communicating and Influencing
* Managing a Quality Service
* Making Effective Decisions
* Working Together
Technical skills
We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:
* Accountancy
BenefitsAlongside your salary of £59,960, Ministry of Defence contributes £17,370 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.
* Learning and development tailored to your role
* An environment with flexible working options
* A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
* A Civil Service pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%
Apply before 11:55 pm on Sunday 18th May 2025
For further information, and to apply, please visit our website via the “Apply” button below. #J-18808-Ljbffr