Senior Finance Business Partner – Strategic Development Initiatives

About the role

An exciting opportunity exists to join the University of Sussex as its Senior Business Partner, delivering services to support strategic business development initiatives. This new role will provide expert advice and strategic financial support to the University’s senior leaders, underpinning delivery of the University’s Strategy 2035 and ensuring sustainable financial performance objectives are met.

You will support and advise on financial planning, taking a prominent role in analysing and evaluating strategic business opportunities, supporting the development of proposals with directors of service and academic business leads for prioritisation by the University’s Executive, and formulating financially sustainable business plans for implementation. You will primarily support the development of new business opportunities and improve the performance of existing initiatives and projects. You will work across academic and professional services portfolios, collaborating with business leaders and budget holders, to support the ongoing development of a portfolio of income generating activities and services, based on and around core higher education provision and research activity, as well as other commercial operating activities.

You must be a confident communicator able to work effectively with academic and non-academic stakeholders. You must be an enthusiastic collaborator who embraces team working and is able to leverage support and expertise from colleagues across core business partnering teams. You will provide critical business partnering support in the development of strategic ideas and options ensuring a high level of financial credibility and building excellent financial literacy and practice across the University alongside fellow Senior Finance Business Partners.

You must have an analytical mind and be experienced in presenting financial information for decision making in a succinct and digestible form by a non-financial audience. You will be familiar with the development and use of reporting tools and data driven decision making processes. This must include a high level of competence to build business cases and define models in support of decision making for strategies and specific initiatives.

About you

You will be an experienced finance business partner that can demonstrate effective organisational, analytical and interpersonal skills. You will have experience of the Higher Education sector and be used to working in a similarly large and diverse organisation. You are an excellent communicator and able to explain complex financial information to non-financial colleagues.
You enjoy identifying and solving problems and use IT systems and tools to deliver solutions. You have experience of working to support senior business leaders and budget holders to make strategic decisions, with a proven track record in forecasting, budgeting and planning financial outcomes.

About our Division

Please find further information regarding the division at Finance: University of Sussex.

Why work here

Find out more about our reward and benefits package.

Find out about our equality, diversity and inclusion.

Further Key Information

Please contact Carey Mclaughlin (c.mclaughlin@sussex.ac.uk) for informal enquiries.
For full details and how to apply see our vacancies page.

The University of Sussex values the diversity of its staff and students, and we welcome applicants from all backgrounds.

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