Finance Manager (12 months secondment)

This posting is for hourly paid logistics employees to apply through.

About Us

We are Ocado Group, and we're bringing world-class automation to online grocery. Our Ocado Smart Platform (OSP) combines cutting-edge robotics, AI, and IoT within our advanced CFCs (Customer Fulfilment Centres). We've mastered the single pick, transforming online delivery for our global partners. Join us and be part of a team pushing the boundaries of retail technology.

About the Role

This Finance Manager role has responsibility over the Direct Operating costs (c.£130m pa) within the Operations business area, encompassing the global teams of Engineering Operations and Operational Services supporting all product offerings (OSP CFC, ISF, OSRS, OMRS, SBA etc).

A critical focus of this role is key ownership over the Cost per Each (CpE) metric, a pivotal performance indicator reported widely across executive leadership with the objective to identify cost-reduction opportunities, drive contribution margin growth, and achieve strategic cash flow goals.

With a drive to continually advance how we operate while providing effective support and robust challenges to your business partners (including VPs and the COO), this high-profile role offers a significant opportunity to add commercial value across all global markets.

You will manage and develop direct reports, building financial modeling capability across the team and leveraging process automation to deliver robust insights, long-term strategic plans (5 Year Plan, Budget, Outlook, and cash flow projections), and high-impact financial guidance to senior stakeholders.

Core duties

• Partner with key stakeholders (VPs and their teams) providing financial insight and constructive challenge to support decision making and strategy development to drive the achievement of annual and longer term goals.
• Own, analyse, and drive cost reduction initiatives for the strategic Cost per Each (CpE) metric, acting as a pivotal commercial partner in boosting contribution margins and achieving corporate cash flow targets.
• Leverage a strong commercial and technical understanding of the Ocado business across all product offerings and global markets, translating business strategy into financial plans through the preparation of budgets, rolling forecasts, cash flow projections, and the 5 year plan.
• Provide strategic financial support to your business partners, helping to identify financial risks with proposed mitigations and evaluating the financial impact of operational developments (such as bot reliability, site rollouts, and new proposition launches).
• Develop and articulate management information, performance tracking, and ad hoc analysis to support cost control and senior level decision making, ensuring outputs are timely, relevant and actionable.
• Maintain & continually enhance complex cost models to advise on key business decisions and support cost estimations for new propositions.
• Responsible for the team delivering period-end reporting requirements, providing an executive overview of financial results vs budget, full year outlooks and performance variance drivers.
• Continuously develop and implement initiatives to yield efficiencies in our processes, increase output accuracy and enable data-led insights by leveraging reporting tools, process automation, and modern solutions (such as AI tools).
• Manage, engage, and coach team members to establish and maintain a high-performing team that delivers at a high standard while operating within a lean team structure.

About you

• Fully qualified accountant (ACA / ACCA / CIMA or equivalent) with post qualification experience in commercial or operational finance.
• Proficient in building trusted relationships with senior executive partners in order to provide both effective support and constructive commercial challenge.
• Demonstrated capability in advanced financial modeling, automated 5-Year Planning, and multi-variable metric analysis (such as CpE).
• Resilient and adaptable in dealing with business challenges within a changing environment with competing priorities.
• Excellent communication and storytelling skills across different functions of the business, both financial and non-financial and at all seniority levels.
• Proactive drive for continuous improvement and automation to yield process efficiencies and elevate output quality.
• Highly collaborative with the ability to combine financial and operational metrics to derive strategic insight and influence business decisions.
• Proven leadership ability to set clear objectives, prioritise key activities, and coach direct reports and rotational talent to achieve high performance.

What we offer

We believe in supporting our people with meaningful, flexible benefits that prioritise well-being and work-life balance. Here’s a snapshot of what you can expect:

• Time to recharge:
  25 days annual leave (rising to 27 after 5 years), plus the option to buy more – and 30 days a year to work from anywhere in the world.
• Health & wellbeing:
  Private Medical Insurance from your first month, wellbeing support through specialist apps and EAP, plus Income Protection and Life Assurance.
• Family-first policies:
  22 weeks paid maternity/primary carer leave and 6 weeks paid paternity leave
• Financial support:
  Pension with employer matching up to 7%, share schemes (Sharesave & BAYE), and interest-free loans for train tickets.
• Commuter perks:
  Cycle to Work Scheme and free shuttle buses to/from Hatfield and Welwyn Garden City stations.
• Exclusive discounts:
  15% off at Ocado.com with free delivery (starting in your first month).