Financial Controller

Cavendish Advocacy; Southampton; Hybrid; GBP 40,000 - 80,000; Full time

Job summary

An established industry player seeks a finance leader to oversee the finance function, ensuring efficient processes and strong financial controls. This role offers the chance to work with talented professionals in a dynamic environment, providing extensive training and development opportunities. The company promotes a flexible hybrid working model and values diversity and inclusion, creating a supportive workplace. If you're passionate about finance and looking to make an impact, this is an exciting opportunity to advance your career while contributing to a forward-thinking organization.

Benefits

Flexible working model

Mentorship access

Paid time off for volunteering

Private Medical Insurance

Social and team-building events

Qualifications

• Qualified CIMA/ACCA/ACA with proven finance leadership experience.
• Strong leadership and communication skills with attention to detail.

Responsibilities

• Oversee day-to-day finance function and ensure strong financial controls.
• Manage payroll process and prepare statutory accounts.

Skills

CIMA/ACCA/ACA qualification

Leadership skills

Communication skills

Advanced Excel skills

Problem-solving skills

Education

CIMA/ACCA/ACA qualification

Tools

Excel

Job description

Cavendish is all about talented people, delivering excellent results for our clients. We are a multi-award-winning, PR Week Top 150 communications consultancy, ranked No 1 in PR Week’s UK Public Affairs consultancy rankings and recognised at PRCA National Awards 2025 as Large Consultancy of the Year.

Across our 11 strategically located UK and Ireland offices, Cavendish brings together industry-specialist communications to provide integrated solutions for clients and limitless development opportunities for our people.

We believe in sourcing talent from diverse backgrounds, nurturing a company culture that leads to a strong work life balance, and strengthening it by providing great learning and development opportunities.

What you will get from us

You’ll have the opportunity to take your career to the next level, working with dynamic, talented people in a fast paced and expanding organisation. Alongside a competitive salary, we provide extensive training and development opportunities and an industry leading benefits package including:

• A flexible, hybrid working model.
• Access to mentorship from some of the best minds in the industry
• Industry leading allocation of paid time off
• Geographical flexibility across our regional offices
• Private Medical Insurance
• Regular social and teambuilding events
• Paid time off to volunteer for a charity.

What you’ll need to do

• Oversee the Group’s day-to-day finance function ensuring processes are efficiently managed
• Ensure strong financial controls are established and monitored regularly for profit-protection/audit purposes
• Oversee the payroll process, liaising with HR where appropriate to ensure a seamless experience for employees
• Oversee the preparation and submission of statutory accounts and similar statutory requirements including project managing the Group audit
• Manage a growing team of finance professionals. Proactively support the Finance team as needed including project work and month end close as required
• Oversee the credit control process to ensure any debtor escalations are resolved timely
• Oversee the preparation, analysis and commentary of key business reports to ensure reporting deadlines are met timely and accurately
• Provide support to the Head of Finance as required

What we are looking for

• Qualified CIMA/ACCA/ACA
• Proven experience of successfully leading a finance function and demonstratable passion for being ‘hands-on’
• Strong leadership skills with the ability to engage, motivate and mentor a team
• Highly personable with strong communication/business partnering skills and the confidence to interact with all levels of the business
• Experience in managing external auditors and accountants to prepare and file statutory accounts
• Experience overseeing and optimising credit control and payroll
• Tech-savvy with advanced Excel skills (LOOKUPS, pivot tables and SUMIFS at a minimum) and excellent attention to detail
• Experience in managing multi-currency accounts would be desirable
• Proactive with a passion for problem solving, continuous improvement and process betterment
• Experience working within a marketing/communications/professional service firm is desirable but not essential

Our vision is to be a truly diverse and inclusive workplace that enables us to attract and retain a diverse workforce, representative of our clients and community. For this reason, we welcome applications from candidates regardless of qualifications and experience in industry and from all persons, regardless of their race, sex, disability, religion/belief, sexual orientation, or age.

Everyone stands to benefit when we embrace and value the diversity of thoughts, ideas, and ways of working that people from different backgrounds, experiences and identities bring to an organisation.

We are a disability confident employer. If you require any reasonable adjustments during the application and interview stages, please email [e-mail].