About this role
Minerva Learning Trust is a growing multi-academy trust committed to providing an outstanding education for students from a wide variety of backgrounds across Sheffield and Derbyshire.
This is a newly created senior leadership role within the Central Finance Team. Reporting to the Chief Financial Officer, the Senior Finance Manager will play a pivotal role in shaping and strengthening finance operations across the Trust. The role supports a growing multi-academy trust comprising primary, secondary and post-16 provision, requiring effective financial leadership across multiple sites and stakeholders.
The postholder will lead management accounting, finance business partnering and operational finance functions, ensuring that financial information supports effective decision-making and delivers value for money across all schools and services. They will be accountable for the accuracy, robustness and timeliness of the Trust’s finance reports, processes and systems.
We are seeking an experienced finance leader with a track record of managing and developing high-performing teams. You will be skilled in driving accountability, developing talent and creating a culture of continuous improvement and customer service. Experience in the Academy sector is an advantage, but we are more interested in your ability to get the best out of the team and drive improvements and efficiencies in processes and systems. You will have overall line management of the finance team and responsibility for all operational aspects of finance.
You will also need to have strong technical skills and experience as a finance business partner. You will act as a trusted adviser to headteachers and senior leaders, supporting budget planning, financial forecasting and strategic decision-making. The ability to translate complex financial information into clear, practical advice will be essential. At times you will need to be comfortable having difficult conversations while maintaining positive working relationships with internal stakeholders.
The successful candidate will play a key role in developing financial systems, strengthening internal controls and identifying opportunities to improve efficiency through process redesign and technology.
You will be a qualified accountant and a good mentor for more junior members of the team both for study and work-related matters. You will need to be comfortable with delivering change at pace and engaging other team members in the process.
Key Responsibilities and Requirements
- To lead and manage all operational aspects of the Central Finance team.
- To work closely with the Chief Financial Officer and Finance team to ensure financial controls across the trust are robust and applied consistently, suggesting and implementing improvements to the controls framework where appropriate to keep in line with sector best practice.
- To develop and strengthen the Finance Business Partnering team ensuring key stakeholders are supported to understand their budgets and any actions required.
- To produce monthly management accounts for allocated schools and the Trust consolidated accounts accurately and on time for review by the Chief Financial Officer
- Oversight of budget monitoring and reforecasting for all schools.
- Ensure compliance to HMRC and DfE requirements.