Senior Strategic Finance Business Partner - Operations & Corporate Functions

The Role:

A strategic Finance professional who serves as the point of contact for Partners and senior stakeholders, providing expertise in commercial finance, global cost and efficiency initiatives, and comprehensive performance analysis. This role will serve as primary commercial finance point of contact for the Chief Operating Officer.

What You'll Do:

Foster a culture of collaboration, innovation and One Firm behaviors.

Work closely with fellow Commercial Finance Business Partners to ensure alignment between Operations priorities, Group strategy, and Service Line objectives.

Business Partner Support - Operations

• Act as the primary finance partner to the Chief Operating Officer and Operations leadership team, supporting a newly formed Operations function as areas of focus, governance, and accountability continue to evolve.
• Partner with the COO to shape clarity on the Operations remit, translating strategic intent into prioritised, financially grounded initiatives.
• Provide proactive commercial insight and challenge to identify and deliver operational efficiencies, cost optimisation, and scalable opportunities across the firm.
• Support the COO in distinguishing between structural cost, discretionary spend, and investment activity, ensuring decisions are aligned to long term value creation.
• Work closely with Procurement to support firm wide procurement reviews, providing financial insight on supplier spend, value for money, and commercial terms.
• Lead financial analysis to identify efficiency opportunities across Operations, including process simplification, automation, and changes to ways of working.
• Partner with leadership to support premises optimisation, including space utilisation, location strategy, and cost to serve considerations.
• Quantify and track efficiency benefits, ensuring opportunities identified translate into tangible outcomes reflected in plans and forecasts.
• Support the COO in understanding root causes of delayed or inefficient billing, distinguishing between operational, commercial, and behavioural drivers.
• Ensure that billing performance and risks are transparent, measurable, and actively managed, with clear KPIs and regular insight provided to senior Operations and Finance leadership

Business Partner Support – Corporate Functions

• Translate financial performance into clear actions and decisions (e.g., spend freezes, reforecasting, reprioritisation), tracking delivery against agreed plans.
• Ensure strong financial governance across Corporate Functions (accrual discipline, cost centre hygiene, spend approval adherence), partnering with function owners to resolve issues early

Reporting

• Work alongside FP&A team to ensure that reporting for assigned divisions is in line with strategic objectives
• Proactive engagement with stakeholders on ad-hoc analysis/reporting

Forecasting / Budgeting

• Work alongside FP&A to deliver the Operations and Corporate Functions budget and quarterly forecasts, ensuring assumptions are robust, transparent, and aligned to efficiency plans.
• Work alongside Operations and Corporate Functions to ensure submissions on cost, headcount, and investment plans are realistic and prioritised.
• Ensure senior Operations and Corporate Function leaders are fully briefed and accountable for their financial plans and outcomes.

Systems, Processes & Controls

• As a member of the Global Finance team, you are expected to identify and implement efficiency and value improvements
• Work with Financial Control to ensure the integrity of the financial data supplied is robust and accurate.

Other / ad hoc

• Contribute to the calibration and creation of commercial financial controls policies and coordinate proper policy interpretation and execution in the region.

Who You Are:

Essential

• Chartered Accountant
• 10-15 years’ experience as a Commercial Finance professional
• Exceptional interpersonal and influencing skills, able to challenge and collaborate with diverse stakeholders at all levels
• Proven experience partnering with Operations, COO, or central support functions, with the ability to operate effectively where the remit, governance, and priorities of the function are still evolving.
• Strong understanding of how support functions enable front office performance, including the commercial and operational trade-offs between cost, service quality, scalability, and risk.
• Demonstrated ability to identify, quantify, and articulate efficiency opportunities, translating operational improvements into clear financial and capacity outcomes.
• Experience supporting cost optimisation, premises strategy, procurement reviews, or operational transformation initiatives, with confidence to challenge legacy ways of working constructively.
• Proven ability to prioritize competing demands and meet deadlines while maintaining quality.

Preferred

• Professional Services experience
• Microsoft D365 experience
• Power BI
• Tagetik experience