Chief Financial Officer

Financial Management and performance:

• Provide the department’s Permanent Secretary, Board and Executive Committee with a clear understanding of our financial performance including budgets, forecasts, risk and opportunities, and choices / trade offs to optimise the use of resources and ensure that the resources authorised by Parliament for use by the Cabinet Office are used for the purposes intended.
• Provide accurate and timely Estimates to Parliament and a robust cash management system.

Strategic financial advice:

• Be responsible for providing the Permanent Secretary (as Principal Accounting Officer) with high-quality advice to ensure the financial and accounting consequences of decisions / options are well understood, and ensuring that the Accounting Officer is appropriately discharging her PAO duties with respect to Regularity, Propriety, Feasibility and Value for Money.

Financial Planning and controls:

• Lead the department’s financial planning process, as part of Business Planning, ensuring the department has a coherent, affordable and effective financial plan that can be delivered within an acceptable risk tolerance. This includes having personal accountability to the Accounting Officer for the economic, efficient and effective use of resources and working closely with other key partners, in particular the Cabinet Office’s Strategy Director, Chief Digital & Information Officer and the Chief People Officer, to secure the resources the department needs to deliver its policies, programmes and operational delivery requirements.
• Be responsible for leading and ensuring compliance with HMT spend controls and overseeing Cabinet Office corporate compliance and assurance, as well as debt management.

Skills and capability:

• Be responsible for developing and continuing to improve the financial management capability of the department and its leaders, through education, control and influence.
• Lead the Government Finance Function within the Cabinet Office to build strong, diverse, effective and high-quality inclusive functions that are respected and collaborative, command credibility at all levels and promote a culture of evidence based and expert decision making, as well as value for money across the organisation.

Governance and performance:

• Be responsible for ensuring the department has clear and effective frameworks for budget management, planning, performance and investment management.

Business Partnering and Stakeholder management:

• Be required to influence and build relationships with senior leaders and stakeholders, including at Board level, with HM Treasury and other government departments; with partners in the Matrix shared services cluster and challenging constructively to ensure alignment with financial and organisational strategy.
• Be responsible for leading and developing a highly expert, respected and user focused business partnering function which operates in a wholly integrated and seamless way with HR, digital and commercial teams.

Person Specification:

It is important that, through your CV and supporting statement, that you provide evidence of the professional skills, breadth of experience and personal qualities for this post.

Essential Criteria:

• Proven Leadership: evidence of a track record of success in a senior Finance leadership role in a large and complex organisation with success in building, motivating and inspiring supportive, inclusive and high performing multi-disciplinary teams, leading through both business-as-usual and transformational change.
• Strategic Vision: experience of delivering a clear strategic vision for the future of a finance function in a large and complex organisation.
• Stakeholder Engagement: evidence of strong ability to influence and build relationships with senior leaders and stakeholders, including at Board level, as a trusted finance advisor and partner with the ability to communicate complex financial positions compellingly with confidence, clarity and credibility.
• Political Sensitivity: you will have to show excellent political skills, including the ability to understand and operate within complex, evolving and ambiguous environments, to manage risk and reach sound judgments on a range of strategic and reputational issues.
• Operational Excellence: you must demonstrate how you consistently promote excellent service delivery and a continuous improvement approach in your team’s output, whilst balancing working at pace to manage a full workload with conflicting short and long-term priorities.