Role: Finance Business Partner

Location: Shoreham - Hybrid

Salary: £70,000 to £80,000 (DOE) plus benefits

Role ID: 2025-2868

Our vision is to create a safe and sustainable world.

Ricardo plc is a global strategic, environmental, and engineering consulting company. With over 100 years of engineering excellence and employing close to 3,000 employees in more than 20 countries, we provide exceptional levels of expertise in delivering leading-edge and innovative cross-sector sustainable products and solutions. Every day, we enable our customers to solve the most complex and dynamic challenges to help achieve a safe and sustainable world.

The Group Finance team led by the Chief Financial Officer (‘CFO’) is responsible for external financial reporting, budgeting and monthly business performance reporting, tax, treasury, internal controls and small companies accounting.

The Role

The Finance business partner works alongside the Enabling Functions creating a real and active partnership. They provide quality financial information, tools, analysis and insight to leaders, and use these to challenge their thinking, helping them make more informed decisions and driving business strategy.Their role is to provide real-time input and analysis, to be a trusted adviser, to add value through problem solving, to have strategic focus, whilst ensuring compliance and risk mitigation to effectively support in decision-making.

Key responsibilities

• Create strong and active business partnering relationships with Enabling Function leaders, providing real time input, analysis, finance support, insight, direction and challenge, thereby playing a lead role in the delivery of the cost control objectives of the Enabling Functions.
• Leading the monthly management accounting process for the Enabling Functions, including:
  • Consolidation of costs by function for analysis and presentation in the monthly Group results.
  • Provision of cost analysis and commentary on key functional departments and cost centres.
  • Provision of analysis and reports on functional departments including headcount/FTE, cost per FTE, costs as a percentage of revenue.
• Work closely with the Enabling Function leaders to understand historical and forecast spend in order to:
  • Provide insight, support and constructive challenge as to spend levels and performance against budget/forecast.
  • Provide analysis and influence on the implications of spend decisions, options, opportunities and risks.
  • Provide financial analysis and insight in order to commercially appraise and challenge key investment activities – ensure there is linkage between the strategic objectives of the Business Units and the Enabling Functions.
  • Lead and provide financial analysis and insight for the annual budgeting processes. Consolidation of the Enabling Function budgets.
• Appraise and challenge Enabling Function capex cases – analysis expected return on investment and ensure rationale is in line with strategic priorities.
• Champion continuous improvement to the cost capture and reporting process, including:
  • Liaison with business systems to ensure appropriate cost classifications are able to be reported in underlying systems.
  • Working closely with business unit finance teams to ensure transactions/costs are being appropriately posted – through variance analysis, identify any errors or inconsistencies to ensure the consistent application of process across the Group.
  • System report design/build to enable accurate and insightful cost reporting.
• Support the audit process, as required, to ensure questions are answered and audit deadlines are met.
• External reporting:
  • Preparation of any required Functional Cost analysis for the Group’s half year and full year results.

 Key Competencies and Experience

• Qualified accountant (CIMA, ACA, ACCA)
• Significant experience in a finance business partnering role within a global, multi-divisional group.
• Proven ability to build effective relationships with and gain the trust and respect of senior stakeholders becoming a trusted partner.
• Strong analytical mindset and the ability to provide insight in order to influence and challenge stakeholders and support strategic decision making
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to articulate complex financial information to non-financial colleague and stakeholders
• Excellent time management, planning and prioritisation skills and the ability to deliver to tight deadlines with multiple priorities.
• Excellent financial, numerical and modelling skills, particularly using Excel.
• Working with complex systems and system consolidation experience.
• Leadership skills in supporting wider colleague, leading project and continuous improvement activity.

Working here

You will be warmly welcomed into our workplace where every voice matters. We are diverse thinkers and doers, coming together to create a culture of inclusion. We will support you to find your place.

We will encourage you to use your passion and expertise to make a positive impact through the projects you work on.  Your knowledge and desire to bring about change will be invaluable in helping deliver innovative solutions that support communities across the globe in becoming safer and more sustainable.

Work life balance 

We offer flexible approaches to work, whether that is working from home, being in the office, or as a hybrid worker. We're happy to discuss flexible working arrangements. Wellbeing is at the core to our culture, allowing employees to flourish and to achieve their full potential.

Benefits

We want you to know how much you are valued. Your remuneration and benefits package will reflect that. You will receive a range of benefits which include support for your physical and mental health. 

Our core benefits include 25 days' annual leave, plus 8 flexible bank holidays, a competitive company pension scheme, life assurance and professional subscriptions reimbursement. We also offer a wide range of flexible benefits to suit your lifestyle.

Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion statement

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer, we believe in each person's potential, and we'll help you reach yours. We have an ambitious diversity, equality, and inclusion approach as explained here. We value diversity; recognising that a more diverse workforce creates a richer and more varied working environment. Diversity also drives innovation, by allowing us to offer our clients the best consultancy service that we can. As part of our commitment to engage positively and pro-actively with all our employees and to ensure an inclusive culture, we are a recognised as a 'disability confident' employer.

Next steps

Once you have submitted your application a member of our Recruitment Team will be in touch. Please be aware that the timing can vary dependent on the volume of applications that we receive for each role and in some cases, we may start to review applications prior to the closing date.

Ricardo is a Disability confident employer please advise the recruitment team via recruit@ricardo.com if you require any adjustments to support you throughout the recruitment process.

#LI-JT1 #LI-Hybrid