Senior Specialist Financial & Data Analytics

APL LOGISTICS LTD; Greater London; On-site; GBP 60,000 - 80,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading logistics firm in Greater London is seeking a Senior Specialist in Internal Audit with a strong focus on financial analysis and data analytics. This pivotal role involves conducting financial audits, ensuring data quality, and leveraging analytics to provide insights into financial integrity and forecasting accuracy. Candidates should have 4–7 years of relevant experience and a bachelor's degree in accounting, finance, or business analytics, along with technical skills in tools like SQL and Power BI.

Qualifications

• 4–7 years of experience in internal audit, external audit, FP&A, or financial analysis.
• Hands-on experience applying data analytics in audit or finance roles.
• Experience supervising or mentoring junior team members is preferred.

Responsibilities

• Lead financial centric internal audits with a focus on financial planning and reporting.
• Develop and maintain data pipelines for analysis.
• Design data driven audit procedures using analytics.

Skills

Financial analysis

Data analytics

Stakeholder management

Strong analytical mindset

Excellent communication

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, Finance, Business Analytics, Economics, or related field

CPA / CA or similar

Tools

SQL

Power BI

Python

Advanced Excel

Job description

The Senior Specialist, Internal Audit – Financial & Data Analytics plays a critical role in delivering high value, data driven internal audit and advisory engagements. This role is heavily focused on financial analysis, performance insights, and advanced data analytics, integrating FP&A skillsets into internal audit work to enhance risk coverage, anomaly detection, and business insight.

The role partners closely with Finance, FP&A, and business stakeholders to evaluate financial integrity, forecasting accuracy, management reporting, and key financial risks through analytics enabled audit techniques.

Key Responsibilities

Financial & FP&A Focused Audit Execution

• Lead and perform financial centric internal audits covering:
  • Financial planning, budgeting, and forecasting processes
  • Management reporting and key performance indicators (KPIs)
  • Cost structures, margin analysis, and profitability drivers
  • Revenue, expense, and working capital trends
• Evaluate the accuracy, completeness, and reasonableness of financial models, assumptions, and forecasts.
• Assess governance and controls over financial analysis, variance analysis, and performance tracking.

Data Analytics & Continuous Risk Assessment

• Contribute to the development and maintenance of databases and data pipelines. This ensures data quality and accessibility for analysis.
• Extract data from various sources (databases, APIs, web scraping, etc.), clean it, and transform it into a usable format. This often involves dealing with challenging datasets that includes missing values, lump sum amounts, inconsistencies, and different data types/format.
• Design and execute data driven audit procedures using advanced analytics to:
  • Identify anomalies, trends, and outliers in large financial datasets
  • Perform end to end population testing rather than sample based testing
  • Support continuous auditing and monitoring initiatives
• Build and maintain repeatable analytics scripts and audit routines.
• Predictive Modelling: Building ML models to forecast future outcomes based on historical data. This can involve machine learning techniques like regression, classification, and clustering.
• Create dashboards to aid in continuous monitoring efforts or present audit findings.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to translate audit objectives into data questions and analytical approaches.

Internal Audit & Risk Advisory

• Lead or supervise audit engagements from planning through reporting, including:
  • Risk assessment and scoping
  • Audit program design with a strong analytics component
  • Results communication and issue validation
• Provide forward looking insights beyond control gaps, highlighting:
  • Process inefficiencies
  • Financial risks and opportunities
  • Data quality or reporting reliability issues
• Support ad hoc management and Board level requests involving financial analysis.

Stakeholder Management & Collaboration

• Act as a trusted partner to Finance, FP&A, and business teams.
• Present audit findings and analytical insights clearly to senior management.

Process Improvement & Innovation

• Drive the integration of advanced analytics and automation into internal audit methodology.
• Identify opportunities to:
  • Improve financial controls through data insights
  • Enhance audit efficiency through scripting and visualization
• Stay current on data analytics tools, finance transformation trends, and audit innovation.

Required Qualifications & Experience

Education & Certifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, Finance, Business Analytics, Economics, or related field
• Professional qualifications preferred, such as:
  • CPA / CA
  • CIA
  • CFA (or partial completion)
  • CISA (analytics heavy roles)

Experience

• 4–7 years of experience in:
  • Internal audit, external audit, FP&A, or financial analysis
• Demonstrated experience in financial planning, forecasting, and performance analysis.
• Hands on experience applying data analytics in audit or finance roles.
• Prior experience supervising or mentoring junior team members is preferred.

Technical & Analytics Skills

• Strong understanding of:
  • Financial statements and management reporting
  • Budgeting, forecasting, and variance analysis
  • Internal controls and risk management frameworks
• Data Analytics & Tools:
  • Advanced proficiency in one or more of the following:
    • SQL
    • Power BI (DAX and Power Query) / Tableau
    • Python / R (for Machine Learning and advance statistical analysis)
    • Advanced Excel (Power Query, Power Pivot, VBA)
  • Experience working with:
    • Large ERP datasets (e.g., SAP, Oracle, Teradata)
    • Snowflake
    • Financial and planning systems

Key Competencies

• Strong analytical mindset with attention to detail
• Ability to translate complex data into clear business insights
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills
• Proactive, curious, and comfortable challenging assumptions
• Ability to balance audit rigor with commercial awareness

Why Join This Role

• Exposure to finance leadership and strategic decision making
• Opportunity to shape the future of analytics driven internal audit
• Blend of assurance and value adding advisory work
• Continuous learning across data, finance, and audit disciplines