Finance Lead

As Finance Lead, you will own the financial relationship with one of our largest strategic accounts. You'll be the senior finance voice in the room with our client, shaping budgets, forecasts, and commercial decisions that directly influence how the account performs. This is a high-autonomy role for someone who enjoys partnering with operations, commercial, and client finance leaders, translating complex delivery into clear financial decisions, and building the kind of trust that makes you the go-to person in every client conversation.

Responsibilities

Lead development of annual and in-year client budgets with operational leaders and client finance teams; Own rolling forecasts, including monthly reforecasts, variance analysis, and identification of financial risks and opportunities; Maintain full visibility of forecast vs. actuals across all spend categories and client locations; Ensure financial plans align with contractual scope, pricing models, and operational delivery plans; Ensure timely receipt, validation, and tracking of client purchase orders against approved budgets and contractual entitlements; Reconcile purchase orders to forecasts, invoices, and contracts, proactively resolving discrepancies; Maintain clear, auditable linkages between budgets, contracts, purchase orders, and invoices; Own monthly financial close activities for assigned client sites, including accurate accruals and cost allocations; Ensure journals are complete, accurate, and compliant with internal controls and external accounting standards; Partner with central finance and accounting teams to resolve close issues within deadlines; Manage and report on financial performance across contracted services, headcount and labor, ad hoc time and materials, and parts and pass-through costs; Provide cost drivers, trend analysis, and forward-looking insights; Act as the primary finance contact for the client account and present financial performance, forecasts, risks, and opportunities in client reviews; Support pricing, costing, and margin analysis for new business, scope changes, and contract amendments; Assess the financial impact of operational changes, service model adjustments, and productivity initiatives; Provide financial insight to operations teams to support workforce planning and productivity analysis; Partner with sourcing and procurement teams on spend analysis, vendor comparisons, cost models, and savings tracking; Perform weekly and monthly billing reviews to ensure invoices are accurate, timely, and contractually compliant; Resolve billing discrepancies and disputes efficiently; Define, document, and implement financial processes and SOPs where gaps exist; Ensure adherence to internal forecasting, approval, and financial governance frameworks; Maintain audit readiness in a regulated services environment; Lead, coach, and develop a small team of finance analysts supporting the account

Requirements

Significant finance experience in a client-facing or account-based role, ideally including budgets, forecasts, billing, and commercial support for sizeable accounts or portfolios; Background in services, managed services, or professional services with complex delivery and billing models; Comfort working across multiple stakeholders (operations, commercial, sourcing, and client finance) and translating between them; Strong judgment, a partnership mindset, and the ability to hold your own in senior client conversations; Bachelor's degree in Accounting, Finance, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience; Professional accounting qualification (CPA, ACCA, CIMA, or equivalent) preferred; Expert experience in Excel

Nice to have

Experience supporting pharmaceutical, biotech, or other regulated industries; Exposure to multi-site and multi-country service delivery models; Experience with long-term outsourcing or managed services contracts