Financial Director

Greater Manchester | PE-Backed | Engineering / Manufacturing

The Opportunity

Forge Talent is partnering with a PE-backed business based on the outskirts of Manchester looking to appoint a Finance Director as it enters its next stage of growth and development.

This is a fantastic opportunity for an ambitious Financial Controller or Head of Finance looking to step into their first Finance Director role and take genuine ownership of a finance function.

Working closely with an ambitious and commercially driven Managing Director, you will become a key member of the senior leadership team with responsibility for both the day-to-day finance function and the wider financial direction of the business.

The role goes significantly beyond reporting the numbers. You will be expected to understand the operation, challenge performance, influence investment decisions and provide the financial insight required to support growth, profitability and value creation.

The Role

• Full ownership of the finance function across reporting, planning, forecasting, controls, cash and commercial analysis.
• Act as a genuine partner to the Managing Director and wider leadership team, bringing financial rigour and commercial challenge to decision-making.
• Lead the monthly reporting cycle, delivering an accurate and efficient working day two close.
• Own budgeting, forecasting and longer-term financial planning, including the three-year business plan and supporting KPIs.
• Take responsibility for cash management and working capital, including detailed 13-week cash flow forecasting.
• Provide financial leadership around significant capital investment, assessing business cases, challenging assumptions and helping prioritise investment based on return.
• Build robust financial models to support investment proposals and communicate recommendations to senior Group stakeholders.
• Partner closely with commercial and operational teams, turning financial information into practical insight and better business decisions.
• Develop greater visibility across customer, product and channel profitability, identifying opportunities around pricing, cost and margin.
• Own inventory accounting, costing and variance analysis, including standard costing, labour recovery, overhead absorption and product-level profitability.
• Partner with UK operations and international commercial teams to provide greater insight into performance, margin and growth opportunities.
• Own and continuously improve the financial control environment, ensuring appropriate processes and governance are embedded across the business.
• Drive ad-hoc commercial and cost improvement projects across areas including utilities, business rates, pricing, customer profitability, workforce planning and pay modelling.
• Play a key role in a planned ERP implementation over the next 12 months, using the programme to improve processes, controls, reporting and management information.
• Continue developing the finance function to ensure its capability keeps pace with the growth and increasing complexity of the business.

The Person

We are looking for a qualified finance professional (ACA, ACCA or CIMA) who combines strong technical foundations with genuine commercial curiosity.

You will ideally be an ambitious Financial Controller or Head of Finance looking for the opportunity to step into your first Finance Director position.

You will be:

• Commercially minded, curious and naturally interested in how the wider business operates.
• A self-starter who gets out into the operation rather than waiting for information to come to finance.
• Confident challenging senior stakeholders while remaining pragmatic and commercially aware.
• Able to communicate effectively from Group CEO/CFO level through to operational teams on the shop floor.
• Strong across forecasting, cash, controls, management reporting and financial modelling.
• Experienced within manufacturing, engineering, distribution or another operational/product-led environment where inventory, costing and margin are important.
• Comfortable operating within a fast-paced, performance-driven environment with high levels of accountability.
• Ambitious and capable of seeing the bigger picture while understanding the commercial realities required to deliver it.

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