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Save the Children UK has an exciting opportunity for an inspiring people leader and qualified accountant with strong financial operations experience to join us as our Finance Operations Manager, leading and developing a high-performing team to deliver an efficient, well-controlled and customer-focused finance service.

This is a maternity cover contract opportunity for approx 15 months to start in December 2026.

About us

Save the Children UK believes every child deserves a future. In the UK and around the world, we work every day to give children a healthy start in life, the opportunity to learn and protection from harm. When crisis strikes, and children are most vulnerable, we are always among the first to respond and the last to leave. We ensure children's unique needs are met and their voices are heard. We deliver lasting results for millions of children, including those hardest to reach.

About the role

As Finance Operations Manager, you will lead our Finance Operations team to deliver high-quality financial operations, accounting and controls across Save the Children UK. You will ensure our core finance processes run effectively and accurately, strengthen our financial control environment and use your expertise to identify opportunities to improve systems, processes and the experience we provide to colleagues and stakeholders.

In this role, you will:

• Lead, develop and motivate a high-performing Finance Operations team, ensuring an effective and customer-focused service across the organisation in line with agreed service levels.
• Own and strengthen our financial control environment, including the Financial Control Framework and balance sheet controls, ensuring robust oversight of accounts payable and receivable, income and cost accounting, reconciliations and banking activities.
• Manage effective month-end and year-end processes, ensuring activities are delivered accurately and on time to support high-quality financial and statutory reporting.
• Drive continuous improvement across financial processes, systems, procedures and controls, identifying opportunities to increase efficiency, strengthen controls and improve user experience.
• Support statutory, external and donor audits, ensuring queries are resolved and accurate supporting information is provided, alongside contributing to relevant balance sheet disclosures.
• Build strong relationships and collaborate across the organisation, using financial expertise, data and insight to improve service delivery, solve problems and deliver effective financial operations.

About you

To be successful, it is important that you have:

• A recognised accountancy qualification, with relevant post-qualification experience and a strong understanding of UK statutory financial reporting and external audit processes (ideally with understanding of the Charities SORP).
• Extensive experience of financial operations within a complex organisation, including financial controls and areas such as accounts payable, accounts receivable, banking and reconciliations.
• Demonstrable experience of leading and developing high-performing finance teams, creating a collaborative environment focused on effective and customer-friendly service delivery.
• Strong experience of designing and managing financial controls, month-end and year-end processes, alongside identifying and implementing improvements to processes and controls.
• Excellent analytical, problem-solving and systems skills, with experience of working with complex finance systems and using data and technology to improve financial operations.
• Strong communication, collaboration and influencing skills, with the ability to build effective relationships across organisational boundaries and explain financial issues clearly to non-financial colleagues.
• Commitment to Save the Children's vision, mission and values.

What we offer you 

We promote flexibility, inclusion, collaboration, and wellbeing both at work and beyond, and offer a wide range of benefits designed to reward your hard work and inspire you to help improve the lives of children every day. 

Some of the benefits you can expect include: 

• Generous Annual Leave – Starting at 27 days per year (pro rata for part-time employees) increasing with service up to 32 days, plus public holidays and our annual 'Save the Children Day'. 
• Family Leave – Up to 39 weeks of maternity/adoption pay (including up to 21 weeks full pay) and paternity/adoption leave of 10 weeks full pay (plus statutory entitlement).
• Special Leave – Up to 10 days paid leave per year (pro rata) for urgent or exceptional personal circumstances, without using annual leave.
• Volunteer Leave – Up to 3 days paid leave per year to support volunteering and give back. 
• Pension & Life Assurance – Helping you plan for the future with up to 7% employer pension contributions. 
• Employee Discounts – Access thousands of deals across groceries, retail, tech, travel, fitness, and more.
• Health & Wellbeing Support – Including access to a 24/7 Virtual GP and Employee Assistance Programme and Counselling, eye care support, and seasonal flu vaccinations. 

Please note: To avoid disappointment, you are advised to submit your application as soon as possible as we reserve the right to close the vacancy early if a high volume of applications are received. This is to ensure that we can manage application levels whilst maintaining a positive candidate experience. Unfortunately once a vacancy has closed, we are unable to consider further applications.

Location & Ways of Working:

The majority of our roles can be performed remotely in the UK, but at times you will be required to come to your contracted office (usually between 2–4 days per month, depending on the needs of your role, team, or service). For many roles, this is likely to be the minimum required to deliver impact.

This will be discussed and agreed with your manager / team and we encourage candidates to discuss our ways of working in more detail at interview stage.

Please note: travel costs to your contracted office will be at your own expense. 

Flexible Working - We are happy to discuss flexible working options at interview.

Commitment to Diversity & Inclusion: 

Save the Children UK believes in a world that is fair, inclusive and equitable where all children have the opportunity to change their world. We apply this to our workforce, and we are committed to developing and supporting a diverse, equitable, and inclusive organisation where structural inequality is actively addressed, and all employees have a sense of belonging and feel that they can thrive. 

We encourage applications from people of all backgrounds, and are especially interested in hearing from people with diverse and intersecting identities such as lived experience of poverty, people of faith, people of colour, people with disabilities, with experience of migration and/or refugee status, care-experienced people, the LGBTQIA+ community and individuals with experience living in diverse families.

We are not looking for just one type of person - we want to recruit people who can add fresh perspectives, innovative ideas or challenge that disrupts the risk of group think. We know that different voices working together will enable us to do our work better, improving the lives of children around the world. 

Closing date: 7th October 2026