Finance Manager - AI Security Institute

Department for Science, Innovation & Technology; Manchester, City Of London; On-site; GBP 45,000 - 60,000; Full time

Job summary

A UK Government Department is seeking a Finance Manager to lead its finance function. This role requires a qualified finance professional capable of enhancing financial systems and providing insights to senior leadership. The ideal candidate will possess strong organisational skills, experience with financial modelling and systems, and the ability to improve efficiency across financial operations.

Qualifications

• Fully qualified in finance with professional experience.
• Comfortable using financial modelling tools.
• Strong understanding of budgeting and forecasting.
• Experience improving financial systems in a public sector or tech environment.

Responsibilities

• Lead AISI's finance function and manage financial data.
• Provide expert financial advice to senior leaders.
• Ensure efficient purchase to pay processes.
• Design actionable reporting tools for financial insights.

Skills

Financial modelling

Data analysis

Process improvement

Reporting

Education

CCAB or CIMA accountancy qualification

Tools

Oracle

Power Apps

Power Automate

Job description

Location

London, Manchester

Job summary

The AI Security Institute is the world's largest and best-funded team dedicated to understanding advanced AI risks and translating that knowledge into action. We’re in the heart of the UK government with direct lines to No. 10, and we work with frontier developers and governments globally.

We’re here because governments are critical for advanced AI going well, and UK AISI is uniquely positioned to mobilise them. With our resources, unique agility and international influence, this is the best place to shape both AI development and government action.

Our Finance team is the operational backbone that enables our researchers and policy experts to keep pace with the speed of AI development. We are building a high performing finance team that can transform traditional government finance operations into streamlined, efficient processes and support senior leaders with critical business planning and insights to enable us to deliver against our mission.

Job description

AISI's Finance Manager will lead the organisation's finance function. This role will be critical in delivering outstanding outcomes across all aspects of financial management, matching industry standards. We are seeking an experienced finance professional who can shape the team and define efficient processes, while delivering expert financial advice to AISI's senior leaders and wider DSIT finance professionals.

This role is right for you if you are excited about building a team and reputation for excellence in AISI's unique operating environment. You will have exposure to senior staff in AISI, technical leaders across AISI's research unit and finance professionals in DSIT.

In leading AISI's finance team, we expect you to

• Exert strong organisational grip over AISI's financial position and manage our finance data including expenditure and forecast tracking
• Advise senior leaders on business planning decisions using financial insights
• Own our 'precure to pay' pathway, ensuring great supplier satisfaction through on time payments
• Build out smarter and more efficient systems, working with DSIT and AISI's operations specialists
• Build strong relationships with DSIT's central finance team to make improvements to systems and ways of working, while contributing to department-wide financial information to support AISI's operational and strategic needs

This is a huge opportunity to shape one of AISI's key operational pillars, helping drive up efficiency and service excellence across the organisation in pursuit of our mission.

What you’ll be doing

• Build, maintain and improve clear financial data flows between AISI systems, Oracle & forecast modelling tools, shared service providers, and other trackers.
• Manage a small team of finance professionals who are triaging, raising, receipting payments within AISI.
• Ensure purchase to pay processes — including raising, uplifting, and tracking — are efficient, traceable, and correctly integrated in our systems.
• Improve how expenditure is recorded and reconciled, reducing manual intervention and ensuring month-end data is complete and accurate.
• Define and implement consistent data standards (e.g., cost centres, programme codes, contract dates, and identifiers).
• Develop actionable, reliable reporting tools that provide senior leaders with accurate in-year financial information and forward-looking forecasts.
• Lead meetings with senior staff to deliver efficient decisions on business-critical areas, including troubleshooting finance issues, reprioritising spend in-year and allocating future year budgets through business planning.
• Design or support solutions that enable teams to see spend, pipeline and commitments in one place. Work with Finance Business Partners to improve the forecasting process and reduce reliance on manual Excel workarounds.
• Identify automation opportunities to streamline recurring finance processes.
• Document workflows and ensure knowledge transfer so systems are understood beyond individual users.
• Provide training and clear guidance so finance and delivery teams use systems consistently and effectively.
• Collaborate with central DSIT finance and digital teams to ensure alignment on reporting standards and controls.

Person specification

Essential criteria

• Fully qualified CCAB or CIMA accountancy qualification or equivalent, with professional experience in finance.
• Comfortable working with data and financial modelling tools: from reconciling transactions to shaping dashboards and reports.
• Strong understanding of core finance processes: forecasting, budgeting, accruals, journals, purchase orders, and spend approvals.
• Proven experience improving or managing financial systems and data environments, either within the public sector, a start‑up, research organisation or tech company.
• Hands‑on experience creating and managing finance requests (Oracle is the system we use).
• Analytical and detail-oriented, with a strong ability to spot and resolve data or process gaps.
• Experience managing at least one person.
• Able to bridge between finance, operational, and technical teams, translating needs into practical solutions.
• Organised, methodical, and able to prioritise competing demands.
• Proactive and curious: identifies problems early and takes ownership of fixing them.
• Clear communicator who can build confidence in finance data and systems across the organisation.

Desirable criteria

• Hands‑on experience with Microsoft Power Apps, Power Automate, and other financial or workflow software, or the ability to create and automate your own.
• Skilled at mapping end-to-end processes and simplifying complex systems.
• Experience of government finance frameworks such as Consolidated Budgeting Guidance and Managing Public Money.

Behaviours

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

• Managing a Quality Service
• Changing and Improving
• Delivering at Pace

For more information and to apply, please visit our website via the apply button below.