Head of Finance, Trainline
14 Month Fixed Term Contract
£90-100k
+ Offers Bonus
More information about location
Europe's leading rail ticketing platform
Posted today
Europe's leading rail ticketing platform
1001+ employees
Posted today
£90-100k
+ Offers Bonus
More information about location
1001+ employees
Company mission
Trainline is proud to be Europe's leading rail and coach platform - a tech company with a mission to make train travel as smooth as possible to allow travellers to make greener travel choices.
Role
Who you are
- Qualified accountant (ACA, ACCA, CIMA or equivalent) with minimum 5 years PQE
- Proven senior finance leadership experience, ideally in a fast-paced, tech-enabled environment
- Demonstrated success managing diverse operational finance functions
- Strong people management skills, with a proven track record of leading, motivating, and developing high-performing teams across multiple disciplines
- Strong systems and transformation experience (ERP, finance automation, data tools)
- Exceptional stakeholder management and influencing skills
- Highly analytical with a process improvement mindset
- Resilient and adaptable, with the ability to hit the ground running and lead through change
What the job involves
- The Head of Finance is a key leadership position in our Edinburgh office, responsible for overseeing and optimising the core operational finance functions
- We are seeking an experienced Head of Finance to lead a team of 20, including teams across:
- Finance Transformation
- Finance Systems
- Procurement
- Finance Data & Controls
- Accounts Payable & Accounts Receivable
- This role is critical in driving financial efficiency, governance, data integrity, and systems improvement across Trainline’s finance operations. You'll work closely with senior finance leadership and key business stakeholders to ensure effective financial operations, aligned with strategic business goals
- Provide strategic and operational leadership across the finance function in our Edinburgh office
- Lead, inspire, and develop a multidisciplinary team, with a strong focus on people management, team performance and engagement
- Set clear objectives, manage team capacity and capability, and create a collaborative environment that supports professional growth and high performance
- Act as a senior point of contact for finance operations and transformation initiatives, building trusted relationships across Finance, Technology, and the wider business
- Prepare and present regular updates, insights, and recommendations to key stakeholders, including the CFO and senior leadership, on operational finance performance, transformation progress, and strategic initiatives
- Lead the end-to-end delivery of finance transformation initiatives aimed at optimising operational efficiency, scalability, and automation across core finance processes
- Define and drive the finance transformation roadmap in alignment with Trainline’s broader strategic goals, presenting to key stakeholders
- Embed a continuous improvement culture by introducing KPIs, automation, and self-service tools to reduce manual effort and improve accuracy and control
- Ensure that transformation projects are delivered on time, within scope, and with strong stakeholder engagement throughout
- Own and oversee the strategic direction and day-to-day management of Trainline’s finance systems landscape, ensuring systems are scalable, secure, and aligned with business needs
- Support the team in acting as the business owner for core finance platforms, ensuring ongoing performance, compliance, and continuous improvement
- Ensure systems support strong internal controls and compliance standards
- Support training and change management initiatives to drive adoption, accountability, and effective system use across finance teams
- Provide strategic leadership and oversight of Trainline’s procurement function, ensuring it delivers commercial value, cost efficiency, and supports the company’s growth objectives
- Support the team in driving initiatives to improve spend visibility and purchasing discipline across the organisation
- Collaborate cross-functionally to ensure procurement processes are well integrated into broader systems and workflows
- Provide strategic oversight and leadership to the team, ensuring delivery of high-impact financial and operational dashboards that support decision-making and evolving business needs
- Maintain robust financial controls, reporting standards, and data governance frameworks
- Ensure accuracy, transparency, and compliance across all finance data and operational processes
- Provide oversight and guidance to the AP/AR teams to drive accurate, efficient, and well-governed processing, reconciliation, and reporting
- Drive improvements in AP and AR processes, leveraging automation, system enhancements, and best practices to reduce manual effort, increase efficiency, and strengthen controls
- Monitor key metrics and proactively manage performance against targets to support working capital optimisation
Our take
Trainline make it super easy to book transport tickets. Its app is intuitive and well designed and its even pioneering paperless travel, allowing users to store their tickets in the app.
It's hyper-focused on customer experience and has a product culture of fast iteration to deliver great outcomes for customers. Its customers make 170,000 journeys a day and it sells 200 tickets a minute.
Its continuing to innovate to stay ahead, using machine learning to predict price movements and integrating with Siri and Google Assistant so people can buy tickets simply by speaking to their phone.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Company
Employee endorsements
Challenging work
"The complex nature of the market as we work with different suppliers is an amazing opportunity to create fluid solutions. A very well segmented..."
Company benefits
- Flexible working (40% min office attendance)
- Cycle to work scheme
- Discounted gym memberships through Wellhub
- Private Health and Dental Insurance
- Enhanced Pension (matched contributions)
- Income Protection
- Share Incentive Plan (buy one get one free)
- Learning budget
- Primary & Secondary Caregiver Leave
- Shared Parental Leave
- Enhanced sick pay
- Free Perkbox subscription
- Electric Vehicle Salary Sacrifice Scheme
- YellowNest - Subsidised Childcare Fees
- Work from Abroad
Company values
- Own It - We care about every customer, partner and journey
- Do Good - We make a positive impact
- Travel Together - We're one team
- Think Big - We are building the future of rail
Articles
Leadership
Jody Ford
(CEO)Joined Trainline in 2020 as COO before becoming the CEO in 2021. Previously the Group CEO at Moonpig and Photobox and also spent over 10 years at eBay in various VP roles.
Lisa Hillier
(Chief People Officer)Previously the CPO at Gousto, The Restaurant Group, and Just Eat. They also spent over 6 years at Betfair as the Head of HR and Chief Human Resource Officer.
Mike Hyde
(Chief Technology Officer)Previously a Director of Data Science at Facebook and as a Director of Business Insights at Skype and Microsoft.
Sakshi Anand
(Chief Growth Officer)Joined Trainline in 2023 as the VP of Growth and President of UK before becoming the CGO in 2025. They are also the Founder of NeuStar Consulting.
People progressing
Gary joined in 2022 from Comparethemarket as Director of Engineering and was recently promoted to VP Engineering, reporting directly to CTO.
Joe joined in 2022 from Meta as Director of Data Science and was recently promoted to VP Data, reporting directly to CTO.
Ali joined in 2023 from Meta and was recently promoted to VP Product, reporting directly to CPO.
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at Trainline
- 💚 Diversity drives us forward We know that having a diverse team is crucial to Trainline’s ongoing success. A team that is diverse in all forms – gender, ethnicity, sexuality, disability, nationality and diversity of thought are key to Trainline being an inclusive environment where every Trainliner can be their true self. We're committed to creating workplaces where everyone belongs, is celebrated and their differences are valued, creating an awesome employee and customer experience. 💚 Meet our Networks Our diversity networks are inclusive communities developed and led by Trainliners, with sponsorship and support from senior leaders. They're all about empowering and supporting underrepresented groups, by providing a safe space to talk, a place to come up with new ideas and a channel for voices to be heard. 🚀 Women in Leadership 💜 Gender Equality Network 🏳️🌈 Rainbow Train (LGBTQIA+) 🌻 Sunflower (accessibility) 🌍 Ethnic Diversity Network 🐣 Parent & Carers
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