Commercial Finance Manager (Horizon Water Infrastructure)

SMS; Birmingham; Hybrid; GBP 100,000 - 125,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading energy solutions provider in the UK seeks a Commercial Finance Professional to manage finance aspects and support future growth in the water sector. This role involves leading financial operations, performance insight, budgeting, and partnering with operational teams. The ideal candidate is a fully qualified Accountant with significant experience in commercial finance and strong analytical skills. The working arrangement is hybrid, with frequent travel to the southeast region.

Benefits

25 personal holiday days per year

Hybrid working options

Medicash health plan

Pension matching scheme

Qualifications

• Significant experience in commercial finance roles.
• Experience in water, utilities, construction, engineering, or infrastructure sectors.
• Strong corporate/project finance knowledge.

Responsibilities

• Act as finance lead for key bids and tenders.
• Provide financial support to project managers and senior stakeholders.
• Lead monthly financial performance reviews.

Skills

Commercial finance expertise

Financial modelling skills

Analytical thinking

Project finance knowledge

Education

Fully qualified Accountant

Job description

Why choose us?

Choosing to work for SMS means choosing to make a difference. We are changing how businesses and consumers use energy for the better, helping achieve a greener, sustainable, and more affordable energy system for everyone. Through our range of innovative energy solutions, we are delivering the future of smart energy – working closely with private and public sector partners we are playing a critical role in transforming and decarbonising the UK economy by 2050.

What's in it for you?

• 25 personal holiday days per year (with additional 8 public holidays) increasing to 30 personal days after 5 years of service (includes options to buy and sell).
• Hybrid working options.
• Automatic enrolment onto our Employee Participation Scheme.
• Enhanced Maternity leave. Paternity and Adoption leave.
• 24 / 7 free and confidential employee assistance service.
• Medicash health plan offers a wide variety of benefits from cashback on everyday healthcare treatments like optical, dental and physio treatments. Discounted gym memberships and free 24 / 7 online GP.
• Life Insurance (4 x annual salary).
• Pension matching scheme (up to 5% of salary).
• Developing our people is important to us - we support and encourage development by offering internal and external accredited courses, secondments and study support.

What's the role?

Horizon Water Infrastructure (‘HWI’) is a provider of fully funded, turnkey, data as a service solution for the water sector. HWI is growing rapidly and has recently been awarded, and signed, a 20-year contract with a key client to design, build, own, operate and fund a smart metering roll out. This will be an end‑to‑end, fully turnkey, smart metering ‘data as a service’ contract, and will be fully financed by HWI.

This will be the first, fully financed, activity of this type in the water sector, but is expected to become a common industry model. To support the management of this contract and HWIs future growth, we are looking for an experienced commercial finance professional to join our SMT.

This individual will take the lead in managing the finance aspects of the business, partnering closely with operational and commercial teams, and will act as the deputy for the Finance Director. As part of this they will lead on providing financial support to drive the development of future business opportunities, both with existing clients, and the wider regulated water sector. In addition, they will be responsible for day‑to‑day finance partnering, leading on performance insight, analysis, and strategic planning and budgeting / forecasting. The ideal candidate will be analytically strong, commercially astute, and adept at balancing strategic thinking with hands‑on financial management.

The working hours for the role are Monday to Friday, 8 : 30am to 5 : 00pm. The role is home based but there is the requirement for frequent travel to the south east region as required.

Key Responsibilities

• Act as finance lead for key bids / tenders, including pricing, modelling, and support in negotiations with potential clients and supply chain.
• Lead on financial aspects of impact assessments, including re‑pricing and options appraisal, supporting negotiations and governance / approval.
• Identify key commercial risks and design and recommend mitigations.
• Work with legal and commercial teams to ensure viability.
• Provide commercial and financial support to project managers, operational leaders, and senior stakeholders.
• Lead monthly financial performance reviews. Prepare high‑quality reports, board packs, and insight summaries highlighting trends, risks, and strategic considerations.
• Track commercial risks and opportunities.
• Drive regular insight through financial / commercial analysis, identify root causes, and recommending corrective actions.
• Make margin / return improvement recommendations, and support with implementation and benefit tracking.
• Lead on investment appraisal, conducting returns analysis (sensitivity and scenario analysis) and challenging assumptions.
• Draft the relevant sections of approval papers and engage with Exec Board and shareholders as required.
• Work with commercial and operational teams to track and manage key risks and opportunities.
• Lead the business planning, budgeting and forecasting process for the business, liaising with Group Finance as required.
• Build and maintain rolling cash flow forecasts for the business and interface with Group Treasury teams as required.

To be considered for this role, we would love you to have / be :

• A fully qualified Accountant.
• Significant experience in commercial finance roles.
• Extensive experience in commercial analysis and financial modelling.
• Strong corporate / project finance knowledge, in particular investment appraisal.
• Experience in working on highly complex, high value bids / tenders.
• Experience partnering with commercial, operational and project delivery teams.
• Experience in water, utilities, construction, engineering, or infrastructure sectors.
• Water industry knowledge would be significant advantage, in particular regulatory economics.