Interim Finance Director

The OVO Group’s purpose is to drive progress towards net zero carbon living. To reach Plan Zero, we need everyone to come together - not just as customers buying energy, but as members with a common goal. As part of this ambitious plan, our goal is to become the ‘Leading Employer in the UK’ by 2030. If you think you could be the talent we’re looking for, then come and join the adventure!

Where in the world of OVO will I be working? 

You will be working within the Capital Allocation pillar of the ‘One Finance’ Team. The wider One Finance team contains three main pillars:

• Specialist teams: Energy Trading; Tax; Audit and Compliance & Risk;.
• Core Finance: Accounting & Reporting; Procurement and Capital Allocation
• Technology & Transformation: BI and Transformation

This role will report to the CFO, Bill Castell and will partner with Raman Bhatia (COO) and Christina Scott. (CPTO)

What will I be doing?

In this role you will be responsible for:

• Providing strong business partnering to the business and leading a finance ways of working agenda that is high support and highly analytical.
• Leading, developing and growing a team of skillful, data-oriented, Finance business partners, ensuring they have the right balance of technical skills and commercial savviness.
• Providing financial insights to the Operational, Product and Technology Leadership Teams (COO, CPTO), including return on investment analysis for any new opportunities and efficiency savings within the current operating model to improve business performance and support decision-making.
• Assessing “agile capital allocation” across Technology Product teams
• Overseeing and reviewing projects and product investments that will continually improve standards of service delivery, function efficiency, lower risk and increase profitability.
• Supporting the Operational Leadership team through the annual budget and quarterly reforecast process.
• Translating financial and non-financial operational metrics into actionable plans to support key stakeholders in driving the business forward
• Taking an active role in supporting the CFO in negotiations and proposals for new and existing contracts.
• Managing the Group Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) team (team size 9) who own and run all the forecasting cycles, produce the key reporting packs and deep dive analytics.
• Managing the Procurement team, who look after over £0.5bn of spend (team size 8).
• Leading an overall team of 20 with 3 direct reports.

Is this the job for me? 

The ideal candidate should have a background which reflects some or all of the following elements:

• Able to lead and inspire high performing teams, ensuring clear goals and objectives are set and organising work effectively to be productive and progressive
• Background working with agile, progressive businesses with strong retail operations experience; large workforce, offshore/onshore decisions and large third party contracts
• Experience of fixing the basics when it comes to working capital and financial planning processes. Including knowledge on the collections processes
• Thrives in ambiguous, fast-paced environments and high levels of market volatility
• Proven commercial acumen, willing and able to view accepted practices and processes through a new lens, and initiate change.
• Track record in influencing decision making within a business and improving performance with a substantial positive impact on value.
• Extensive business partnering experience; comfortable working in a rapidly changing environment and who is comfortable proposing, justifying, initiating and implementing change.
• Comfortable working with big data sets and translating results into meaningful analysis and incorporating into forecasts
• Advanced excel skill and experience and initiative in building robust financial models
• Excellent analytical skills; able to understand complex performance issues; able to advise and prioritise action plans to resolve.
• Strong presentation, relationship building, negotiation, facilitation and conflict resolution skills with senior stakeholders.
• An excellent project manager as well as a creative thinker. This is a role that calls for both a starter and a coordinator.

• Experience working with ERP systems, preferably Workday.
• Accountancy qualification with several years post qualified experience.

Want to check out more?

Working in Tech at OVO Energy

Check out our Tech Stack

Watch our video about joining OVO Tech Team

See how we work on our blog and our Tech Blog

OVO tech github: https://github.com/ovotech

From us you’ll get* (add/delete as appropriate for the role/brand) 

• An annual discretionary bonus
• 4% of your salary to spend on flexible lifestyle benefits
• 5% matched employer contribution to your pension
• 25 days holiday + 1 for your birthday
• And many more... 

(*) Please note that certain benefits kick-in once you have passed probation which can be up to 6 months after your start date.

We want the best people 

At OVO, we empower our people to have choice around where and when they work - flexible working arrangements can be discussed for all of our roles. Please speak to the Talent Acquisition team for more info.

We’re keen to meet people with varied backgrounds - our view is the more inclusive we are, the better our work will be. We want to build teams which represent a variety of experiences, perspectives and skills, and we recognise talent on the basis of merit and potential.

We understand some people may not apply for jobs unless they tick every box. If you're excited about joining us and think you have much of what we're looking for, even if you're not 100% sure… we'd love to hear from you.

Learn more about working in the OVO family of companies on our careers page and Glassdoor. We’re also delighted to have received a Top Employers certificate in 2018, 2019 and 2020!