Specialist Services Lead

Job summary

The Department of State (DOS) runs the strategic headquarters of the Ministry of Defence and has annual expenditure of over £2.0bn, and effective management of this expenditure is essential to ensure the rest of the Defence operates optimally. The DOS Finance Directorate provides an enabling finance service in the business (Finance Business Partnering, Finance Operations and Specialist Services) to PUS and DG-led business areas. We are a friendly, collaborative, inclusive and diverse team of Finance professionals. This is an exciting time to join DOS Finance as we look to deliver strategically important change activity and refine the business-as-usual service offer across DOS.

The Specialist Services lead will be a member of the Finance Leadership Team (FLT), supporting the Finance Director (FD) and Deputy Directors (DD) in shaping and delivering the finance strategy and objectives and delivering responsibilities for the overall management of Finance workforce, performance, risk, compliance and assurance that their teams are following the standardised processes and ways of working, and embedding a culture based on desired behaviours. They have responsibility for leadership and management of Specialist Services. Alongside managing their direct reports, they will ensure that capacity and capability is in place within their team to deliver outputs, including continuous improvement and change activity. They will build and manage relationships across finance and the wider business and will actively role model the critical behaviours. They will act as a point of escalation within their area, being responsible and accountable for setting reflective and challenging KPIs and team targets aligned to the wider finance strategy. 

This position is advertised at 37 hours per week.

Job description

Specialist Services undertake activities requiring specific business knowledge and judgement. Managing their team in the provision of advice and guidance in their area of specialism, working closely with key stakeholder, resolving complex or difficult issues using adaptive and creative approaches whilst ensuring adherence with MOD standards.  Providing secretariat support to internal committees (including, but not limited to, investment /audit and risk committees), ensuring the required documentation is provided in a timely manner and providing a balanced, impartial view, drawing upon other functions, to enable informed decision making. 

Managing the production of their financial reporting, ensuring required processes are in place to give assurance on the quality of the numbers.  Providing a suitably robust input to be incorporated into the MOD financial accounts, whilst highlighting key issues, risks, and opportunities. 

Providing services as the Subject Matter Expert 

• Ensuring all business areas have adequate support, monitoring against the agreed service provision and checking that the boundaries of responsibilities are clear and being maintained.
• Understanding future requirements, anticipating, and planning for peaks in activity or changes in requirements, considering and adopting the appropriate mitigation, as required.  
• Clearly explaining the rationale for processes, ensuring that complex aspects are understood by all stakeholders and that benefits are highlighted to support compliance and meet the required standards. 
• Undertaking approvals within your delegated financial authority. 
• Managing the adherence to standards as outlined within internal MOD guidance. Enabling Senior Leadership both within the organisation and wider MOD to make informed investment decisions. 
• Managing the audit programme, undertaking engagement with Strategic Head Office and/or auditors providing updates on material or complex issues, monitoring progress of audits, outstanding audit issues and implementation of recommendations. 
• Reviewing, analysing, and interpreting financial data, providing insight for senior managers and decision makers. Managing the production, including appropriate review and escalation where necessary of the organisation’s financial accounts, highlighting key issues through analysis. 
• Managing a team of SMEs in the effective provision of services to the Finance workforce and the Business to support, advise and build capability: 

o Advising Business areas on the approvals process and undertaking review of all cases where the value meets the definition of Category D (£10M) – Category A (£600M+) in support of the Finance Leadership Team. Particularly focussing on the Financial and Economic cases and undertaking approvals within their delegated authority. 

o Management and provision of guidance for financial governance and controls activity including Grants and Grants in Aid, financial delegations, fraud and ePC.  Monitoring compliance with Internal Controls and Assurance Framework and the use of other Non-Contract Procurement (NCP) methods ensuring that these are utilised appropriately. 

o Ensuring the integrity of financial data collected through engaging with the Business to provide and validate and undertaking monthly reconciliations, providing analysis and challenging transactions, including review of control accounts. 

Stakeholder engagement and collaboration  

• Engaging with Strategic Head Office, providing input and implementing policy/accounting standard updates, understanding the impact that this has on both your team and reporting requirements and ensuring coherence with their expectations. 
• Engaging with key stakeholders to ensure the effective communication and management of information required e.g. Investment Approvals Committee (IAC) and where further approval is required outside of MOD.  
• Providing support to other Finance Leadership Team members, highlighting key discussion points, outlining your view on significant risks, recommending options to mitigate or resolve and providing progress updates. 
• Providing secretariat support to the internal committees, ensuring the required information is available in a timely manner and disseminating the outcome from the committee. 
• Engaging and collaboratively working with Finance Business Partners, communicating on key aspects of financial scrutiny and approvals, governance and controls and financial reporting activity in support of their area(s) of responsibility.  
• Building and maintaining effective working relationships with the specialists within other MOD organisations to problem solve common issues and seeking definitive advice from Strategic Head Office where required for complex issues. 
• Recognising the need for further expertise and consulting other Specialist Services and Centres of Excellence. 
• Building and maintaining working relationships with key Business areas to enable a good understanding of how the Business operates and enabling their needs to be addressed. 
• Managing the reviewing and update of working practices and processes. Considering views from other functions both within their organisation and outside. Ensuring timely and complete submissions to approvals committees whilst remaining aligned on specified content, formatting, and guidance.  

Continuous improvement  

• Dedicating time to sharing best practice and lessons learnt, collaborating across MOD to solve common issues.  Encouraging your team to generate ideas for refining standardised processes and procedures, feeding back key proposed changes to process owners, enabling consistency across the MOD finance function.  
• Seeking feedback on the services provided, testing, and evaluating their effectiveness, whilst assessing the level of effort to deliver against the benefit received. 
• Continuously strive to improve the service provision, promptly addressing issues and ensuring that processes or ways of working are adapted, and customers are informed where there is an impact. 
• Ensure misinterpretation of guidance is shared in a timely manner with team members to promote embedding any lesson(s) learnt. 
• Managing issues highlighted during internal or external audit, engaging relevant stakeholders to enable corrective action. 
• Managing the input and support to change programmes, where there is an impact to how your team will provide their services. 

Managing your team within Specialist Services 

• Management of team members, empowering, motivating and coaching to enable effective delivery. 
• Supporting individual’s personal development, careers and developing leadership skills within their team. Ensuring you and the team make time to develop themselves and their peers. 
• Being open to challenge and new ideas, sharing of knowledge and experience, encouraging others through building a supportive team environment. 
• Providing stretching targets ensuring the team are getting the basics right at the first attempt. 
• Developing and embedding the use of standardised processes to deliver a consistent output to customers. 
• Making all major decisions affecting direction and execution of work within the area of responsibility, referring upwards where decisions relate to significant issues of policy, resource allocation or management of work area

Person specification

Essential:

• You will have experience of leadership of a team and wider stakeholder groups to deliver key outputs and ability to work as a team.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills, including the ability to put complex financial issues into layman terms.

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Making Effective Decisions
• Communicating and Influencing
• Seeing the Big Picture

We only ask for evidence of these behaviours on your application form:

• Making Effective Decisions

Technical skills

We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:

• Knowledge of Managing Public Money and best practice in preparation and scrutiny of Business Cases.

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £61,630, Ministry of Defence contributes

£17,854 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme.

Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).

• As this post is based in London, applicants will be eligible for a London Allowance of £3,300pa
• Qualified Accountants (Level 7 eg CIMA/ACCA/ICAEW) would also be eligible for a functional allowance of £3,000pa
• Learning and development tailored to your role
• An environment with flexible working options
• A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
• A Civil Service pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%

Where business needs allow, some roles may be suitable for a combination of office and working from home as part of a non-contractual hybrid working arrangement. All office-based employees will be expected to spend a minimum of 60% of their working time in office, subject to site capacity and any required workplace adjustments. Requirements to attend other locations for official business, or work in another MOD workplace, will also count towards this level of office attendance. Applicants can request further information regarding how this and other flexible working arrangements may work in their team from the Vacancy Holder (see advert for contact details). Defence Business Services cannot respond to any questions about working arrangements.

The post does not offer relocation expenses.

External recruits who join the MOD who are new to the Civil Service will be subject to a six-month probation period.

Please Note: Expenses incurred for travel to interviews will not be reimbursed.

Please be advised that the Department is conducting a review of all pay related allowances which could impact on those allowances that the post currently being advertised attracts.

Any move to MOD from another employer will mean you can no longer access childcare vouchers. This include