Finance Manager, Vintage

Penguin Random House; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 50,000 - 57,000; Full time

Job summary

Penguin Random House is seeking a Finance Manager for the Vintage division in London. You will partner with the Finance & Commercial Director to drive performance, analyse acquisitions, reprints, margins and author payments, and lead the Finance Analyst in a fast-paced publishing environment.

You will develop insights, maintain robust controls, and support strategic decisions across the division. This role offers a pivotal opportunity within a leading UK publishing group.

Qualifications

• Ability to build and maintain relationships across the division and group.
• Excellent written and oral communication with influencing skills.
• Creativity with strong commercial judgement and analytical capability.
• Accuracy and attention to detail in financial deliverables.
• Ability to multitask and manage competing priorities.

Responsibilities

• Management accounting and preparation of P&L and balance sheet.
• Oversee budgets and forecasts excluding direct staff costs.
• Input into financial and commercial decisions including acquisitions.
• Develop new reporting and processes to aid business decisions.
• Ensure financial controls are followed and reporting is compliant.
• Direct line management and development of the finance analyst.
• Support the FD with financial awareness and training for non-financial staff.
• Respond quickly to information requests to improve profitability.
• Liaise with external partners and auditors as needed.
• Represent the Finance & Commercial Director in meetings when absent.

Skills

Relationship building

Communication skills

Analytical thinking

Attention to detail

Multitasking

Team player

Education

Accounting qualification

Job description

• LegalEntity: The Random House Group Limited
• Compensation: GBP 50,000 - GBP 57,000 - yearly

Company Description

Job Description

We are seeking a Finance Manager to join our Vintage division, where you will play a pivotal role in driving financial performance, supporting strategic decision-making, and partnering with key stakeholders across the division. This is an exciting opportunity to combine strong financial expertise with commercial insight in a fast-paced, creative environment.

About the role

As Finance Manager, you will be a key member of the Publishing Finance team, working closely with the Finance & Commercial Director to support all commercial aspects of the Vintage division. This includes providing financial insight and analysis on new acquisitions, reprints, sales margins and author payments, helping to drive informed business decisions and maximise performance.

Working closely with stakeholders across the business, you will act as a trusted finance business partner, providing meaningful analysis and recommendations while ensuring compliance with internal financial controls, policies, and external reporting requirements. You will also lead and develop the Finance Analyst in the team, fostering a high-performing and collaborative culture.

This role offers the opportunity to influence decision-making and contribute to the continued success of one of the UK's leading publishing divisions.

About Vintage

Vintage is a commercially and critically successful publisher with a catalogue of over 6,000 titles. We publish some of the world’s most thought-provoking, unforgettable, beautifully designed books – from contemporarytrailblazersto our red-spine Vintage classics. Which means that our broad family of authors ranges from world-class prize-winners to brand new, emerging talent including Margaret Atwood, Tim Spector, Nigella Lawson, Rory Stewart and Jo Nesbo.

Vintage is an exciting place to work. We pride ourselves on our dynamic culture, and the whole division celebrates our successes.

Key responsibilities

• Management accounting, preparation of P&L and balance sheet where relevant, including preparation and posting of journals; managing production of monthly KPI pack
• Managing budget and forecast processes excluding direct staff costs
• Key input into financial and commercial decisions including author acquisitions and bonus levels
• Development of new reporting and processes to aid business decisions
• Ensuring best practice and financial controls are followed
• Direct line management, including training and development of finance analyst
• Assisting FD in developing financial awareness throughout the division (e.g. completed titles reviews) and delivering/overseeing training sessions to non-financial staff on reading and understanding acquisition P&L’s
• Responding quickly to requests for additional information which may aid the business to improve their profitability
• Dealing with external partners including any queries from auditors both internal and external
• Ability to represent Finance & Commercial Director in their absence in some regular meetings e.g. costings, acquisitions

What you’ll bring

• Can demonstrate ability to build and maintain strong working relationships at a variety of levels throughout the division and group
• Excellent communication skills both written and oral with the ability to influence a wide range of people
• Creativity combined with sound commercial judgement and highly developed analytical capability
• Accuracy and attention to detail
• Ability to multitask and handle competing priorities
• Strong team player with interpersonal sensitivity
• Some experience at owning day-to-day finance deliverables

Preferred criteria

• Experience in line management
• Accounting Qualification

Use of AI tools

Here at Penguin, we believe in the power of authenticity and human creativity. When you apply for a position, we want to encourage you to showcase your unique voice. Throughout our recruitment process, please share your own thoughts, experiences, and skills. This helps us get a true sense of who you are and what you might bring to our team.

We celebrate creativity and diverse perspectives, so please be yourself! While we recognise AI tools can be helpful, we recommend using them thoughtfully to ensure your responses reflect you.

Disability Confident

As a Disability Confident Committed organisation, we offer interviews to candidates with a disability who meet the essential criteria for the role, and opt-in on their application form. The essential criteria for this role are listed as part of the ‘What you’ll bring’ section. There may be times when the volume of applications means we cannot take all eligible candidates to interview.

We encourage you to tell us about any reasonable adjustments you may need by emailing [e-mail]. Remember, you only need to share what you are comfortable with, for us to support your request.

While our offices across the UK are places to connect, collaborate and celebrate with colleagues, we recognise that flexibility around where you work is just as important. For this role we expect that you will work from our office in London three days per week.

Additional Information

Disclosure requirements pertaining to the collection of your personal data:

Responsible for processing the information provided in your application is the company specified in the job advertisement, with its registered office as indicated. The company processes your data for the purpose of establishing an employment relationship on the basis of Art. 6 (1) b GDPR / Section 26 (1) sentence 1 BDSG.

The retention period for your data is determined by the statutory time limits applicable in the respective country, beginning upon completion of the recruitment process. You can find these here.

You can contact the company’s Data Protection Officer at the above-mentioned postal address.

Further information on data protection and your rights can be found here.