King's College London
Planning & Performance Manager
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About us:
King’s College London is consistently ranked one of the top seven Universities in the UK, has a turnover exceeding £1.3bn, is the fourth oldest university in England, and is based in the heart of London. The Senior Vice President (Operations), Jeremy Cook OBE, is responsible for the smooth conduct of the operations of the University, including overall services and operations strategy, structures, processes, and delivery along with continuous quality improvement and innovation.
We are seeking a highly organised and proactive professional to lead the operational management and delivery of the university’s quarterly review process for Professional Services, including support for the Integrated Planning Process (IPP). The successful candidate will play a key role in monitoring financial performance, tracking service efficiencies and ensuring alignment with Strategy 2030 objectives.
About the role:
The Planning & Performance Manager sits within the Vice-Chancellor's Office, reporting to the Director of Planning & Performance, and is central to how King's plans, measures and improves the performance of its central professional-services directorates. The role provides the performance monitoring, financial and operational analysis, and management reporting that allow senior leaders to hold delivery to account and to make well-evidenced decisions on resources and priorities. It plays a key part in the University's Integrated Planning Process (IPP) and in maintaining the framework of key performance indicators through which directorate performance is assessed. Working closely with colleagues in Finance, Transformation and across the professional-services community, the postholder helps ensure that agreed targets are met, that the benefits of improvement and transformation activity are realised and sustained in business as usual, and that opportunities to improve productivity and service efficiency – supported by modern reporting tools – are identified and acted upon.
This is a full time post (35 hours per week), and you will be offered an indefinite contract.
About you:
To be successful in this role, we are looking for candidates to have the following skills and experience:
Essential criteria
- Educated to degree level, or with equivalent relevant experience, in a numerate, financial, business, management or analytical discipline.
- Demonstrable experience of financial and performance analysis – reviewing budgets and management information and identifying variances and their causes to support decision-making.
- Strong practical skills in using Microsoft 365 and Power BI to build and maintain performance dashboards and automate routine reporting (for example using Power Query, Power Automate and advanced Excel).
- A track record of identifying and helping to deliver productivity, efficiency and value-for-money improvements, and of evidencing their impact.
- Experience of planning and running recurring reporting cycles and business processes (such as planning rounds or performance reviews) to firm deadlines, managing competing priorities effectively.
- The ability to present complex financial and operational data clearly and accurately for senior and non-specialist audiences, both in writing and in person.
- Good stakeholder-management skills, with experience of building effective working relationships across finance, operational and change functions to obtain timely, reliable data.
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Desirable criteria
- Experience gained in higher education, the wider public sector or another large, complex organisation.
- An understanding of institutional or strategic planning processes and how they relate to financial and operational performance.
- An awareness of benefits realisation and of how improvement or transformation outcomes are embedded in day-to-day operations.
- Advanced Power BI or wider Power Platform development skills, including data modelling and building automated data flows.
- Experience of producing performance reporting aligned to an organisational strategy and/or a service-improvement or efficiency programme.
Downloading a copy of our Job Description
Full details of the role and the skills, knowledge and experience required can be found in the Job Description document, provided at the bottom of the page. This document will provide information of what criteria will be assessed at each stage of the recruitment process.
Further information:
At King’s, we believe that the diversity of our community and a culture that is welcoming, open, inclusive and collaborative, are great strengths of the university.
The Equality Act of 2010 protects the rights of our students and staff and provides a framework to fulfil our duties to eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation and in addition, to advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between those who share a protected characteristic and those who do not. At times, this will include balancing rights and beliefs that can feel in tension.
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We are committed to free speech and to academic freedom, believing that our foundational purpose as a university, is to create spaces where a wide range of ideas, including ideas that are controversial, can be discussed and debated, and where members of our community can express lawful views without fear of intimidation, harassment or discrimination.
When engaging in the robust exchange of ideas, we ask that our community is mindful of our Dignity at King’s guidance.
We ask all candidates to submit a copy of their CV, and a supporting statement, detailing how they meet the essential criteria listed in the person specification section of the job description. If we receive a strong field of candidates, we may use the desirable criteria to choose our final shortlist, so please include your evidence against these where possible.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is evolving rapidly, and we recognise its growing role in professional work. Applicants may use AI tools to support preparation of their application, for example to research the role or structure written responses. However, applications must reflect the applicant’s own work and experience. AI tools should not be used during interviews or assessment activities unless this has been agreed in advance as a reasonable adjustment. Further guidance on the use of AI in recruitment can be found here.
We reserve the right to close adverts early due to the volume of applications we receive. While the closing date may change, all adverts will close at 23:59 to allow sufficient time for applications to be submitted on that day.
We encourage you to apply at the earliest opportunity to avoid disappointment as once we have closed a vacancy you will be unable to submit your application.
To find out how our managers will review your application, please take a look at our ‘How we Recruit’ pages.
Interviews are due to be held on w/c 10 August.
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