Senior Management Accountant, Cancer Research
Retail
£47-54k
Excel
Senior and Expert level
London
More information about location
1-2 days a week in office (Redman Place, Stratford, London)
Cancer prevention, awareness and research charity
Be an early applicant
Cancer prevention, awareness and research charity
1001+ employees
HealthcarePersonal healthCharitySocial ImpactMedTech
Be an early applicant
£47-54k
Excel
Senior and Expert level
London
More information about location
1-2 days a week in office (Redman Place, Stratford, London)
1001+ employees
HealthcarePersonal healthCharitySocial ImpactMedTech
Company mission
To prevent, control and cure cancer through ground-breaking research.
Role
Who you are
- Qualified Management Accountant (ACA, ACCA, CIMA or equivalent) who has delivered accurate management accounts, month-end activities, and financial reporting within a large, complex organisation (e.g., retail, consumer, hospitality, charity etc). This includes:
- Experience delivering and maintaining strong financial controls
- An awareness of annual budget and forecasting cycles
- Has successfully built credible and collaborative stakeholder relationships with strong interpersonal, communication, influencing, and negotiating skills at all levels
- Clear communication with a demonstrable ability to present and explain financial information and identify key themes to provide insight and tell ‘the story’ to non-financial stakeholders
- Supported in delivering year-end audits and producing annual accounts
- Can set and meet deadlines while maintaining strong attention to detail and effectively managing expectations
- A proactive problem-solver with a continuous improvement mindset for encouraging innovation while promoting best practices and strong financial controls
- Proactive in identifying and striving for continuous improvement of processes, approaches, outputs, and financial controls
- Strong Excel skills with experience manipulating large, complex data sets across multiple systems
- Some experience mentoring and coaching junior team members, with an interest in developing people management skills
- Some understanding of fixed-asset, stock, and rent accounting would be advantageous, but is not essential
- Ideally, immediately available or on one month’s notice or less (this is desirable, meaning we welcome applicants with longer notice periods who meet the above requirements)
- If you’re interested in applying and excited about working with us but are unsure if you have the right skills and experience we’d still love to hear from you
- Unfortunately, we are unable to recruit anyone below the age of 18, so that we can protect young people from health & safety and safeguarding risks
What the job involves
- Reports to: Retail Finance Manager
- Department: Chief Operating Office
- Contract: Permanent
- Hours: Full time 35 hours per week
- We are professionals with purpose, beating cancer every day. But we need to go much further and much faster. That’s why we’re looking for someone talented, someone who wants to develop their skills, someone like you
- Cancer Research UK’s Finance team’s credibility and professionalism in handling money fundraised by public generosity is essential to the smooth running and future ambitions of our organisation, ultimately helping the charity reach our goal of beating cancer
- We’re looking for a Senior Management Accountant to join Cancer Research UK’s Fundraising Finance team to own and deliver the management accounts across our Retail & Trading teams, which raised £126m in 2024/25 towards our life-saving work
- In this role, you’ll collaborate closely with the Finance team and Retail budget holders to ensure accurate management accounts, financial reporting, financial planning, and robust financial controls
- You will provide insightful financial guidance to Retail budget holders to inform key decision-making through a period of significant change
- You will also have the opportunity to line manage the Retail Management Accountant, while leading on process improvements, standardisation, and the adoption of best practices across the team
- If you are a qualified Management Accountant who has worked in a large, complex organisation and thrives in building collaborative and credible stakeholder relationships, we’d love for you to join our mission
- Owning and delivering timely, high-quality, and accurate management accounts and other business-critical reports for Cancer Research UK’s network of hundreds of stores and distribution hubs
- This includes retail fixed assets and stock accounting
- Collaborating with your finance team and budget holders to understand major variances to plan/prior years, while ensuring budget holders understand and take responsibility for performance and variances to the financial plan
- Reviewing management information to find efficiencies and improvements to ensure focus on the organisation’s top priorities
- Training budget holders to ensure they can confidently interpret financial information (including self-service accounts/transaction lists) and demonstrate strong budget control
- Using your financial judgement and expertise to support budget holders in navigating a period of change and inform key decisions aligned with Cancer Research UK’s Trading Strategy
- Collaborating with your finance team and trading budget holders to identify and process transactions needed to ensure accounts are complete and correct
- Owning a range of accounting adjustments (including stock, fixed assets, and rent)
- Identifying and implementing improvements and efficiencies in Cancer Research UK’s management accounting processes while maintaining strong financial controls
- Being a key finance point for Trading, while ensuring appropriate financial controls are being adhered to and challenging and offering solutions to stakeholders as appropriate
- Supporting the year-end audit and production of the annual report and accounts while ensuring accuracy and supporting with audit queries
- Supporting the financial planning process (e.g., building budgeting/forecasting tools and templates)
- Acting as an advocate and role model for understanding cost drivers and cost control within Trading and the Finance team
- Line managing and developing the Trading Management Accountant
- Encouraging and reviewing the effectiveness of operational tasks from other members of your finance team
Application process
- External closing date: 20 January 2026 23:55
- This vacancy may close earlier if a high volume of applications is received or once a suitable candidate is found, therefore we strongly recommend that you apply early to avoid disappointment
- Recruitment process: One to two competency-based interviews
- Interview date: We will be shortlisting on a rolling basis so please do not delay in applying
- We operate an anonymised shortlisting process in our commitment to equality, diversity, and inclusion
- CVs are required for all applications; but we won’t be able to view them until we invite you for an interview
- Instead, we ask you to fully complete the work history section of the online application form for us to be able to assess you quickly, fairly, and objectively
Salary benchmarks
Our take
The world’s largest independent cancer research charity, Cancer Research UK (CRUK) was founded from a merger between the Cancer Research Campaign and the Cancer Research Fund in 2002. CRC and ICRF had been longstanding pinnacles of the British medical institution, their work dating back to 1902 and 1923 respectively, and the merger signalled a strong step forward for UK medical institutes’ global influence.
A multi-armed charity, CRUK uses both grant-funded researchers and its own employed staff to research the treatments and causes of cancer, whilst its striking advertising and marketing campaigns are responsible for influencing public policy on the causes, prevention, and treatment of the disease. An example of a significant public campaign was Stoptober, which appeared to have triggered a third of a million smokers at the time to try quit tobacco throughout the month of October.
Alongside its pharmaceutical efforts, in 2023 CRUK funded clinical trials for the first-ever proton beam therapy for breast cancer, indicating a focus on technological innovations in the fight against cancer. On this subject, CRUK has also taken part in a billion-pound investment in the Francis Crick Institute, a biomedical research institute that is aiming to make England an international leader in the industry.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Led by a woman
9% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Company benefits
- Health & Wellbeing - Health and wellbeing are important to us. We want our people to have time away from work to support their different commitments, needs and interests
- Our occupational health and mental wellbeing support are accompanied by online health assessment tools, Our confidential employee assistance programme is available to all to provide support for any concerns in your work or personal life for ongoing everyday support or free counselling if you need it. We also have a team of Mental Health First Aiders supporting across the organisation
- Our occupational health and mental wellbeing support are accompanied by online health assessment tools, Our confidential employee assistance programme is available to all to provide support for any concerns in your work or personal life for ongoing everyday support or free counselling if you need it
- We also have a team of Mental Health First Aiders supporting across the organisation
- UK-wide savings - Our staff have access to a wide range of discounts, benefits and cashback deals to support you with your financial wellbeing, through our Rewards platform. We offer an online savings and discounts portal covering many widely recognised retailers and brands from electronics, groceries, home and leisure, holidays and more
- Cancer Research UK staff can take advantage of savings through a cycle to work scheme, or an interest free loan to help spread the cost of travel season tickets. Staff also enjoy great benefits in and around our head office in Stratford, London with deals at local shops, bars and restaurants
- Income Protection and Life Assurance - We provide all staff with free insurance policies, paying 50% of your salary if you are unable to work through illness, and up to 4 times your salary for your beneficiaries should the unthinkable happen and you die while in our employment
- Flexible Working - We want our people to have time away from work to support their different commitments, needs and interests. We encourage a flexible working culture, including options such as home-working, reduced or flexi-hours, job shares, job-splits, compressed and core hours
- We offer a high level of flexibility for the vast majority of our office-based roles, meaning that you’ll only be required to work from a specific location for 1 or 2 days a week on average
- Annual Leave - For the majority of our roles we offer 25 days holiday a year plus bank holidays, and an extra day for Christmas Eve. You can choose to use the religious bank holidays flexibly. On top of this, you can choose to buy up to 1 week’s additional holiday each year
Company HQ
Stratford, London, UK
Leadership
Previously Non-Executive Director of NHS England for 4 years, and Chief Executive of the MS Society for 5 years.
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