Lead Finance Business Partner, Scottish Water

Excellent salary and wider package, Hybrid Working, can be based at any of their key locations in Scotland

Scottish Water is a publicly owned, independently regulated and commercially run organisation responsible for managing Scotland’s water and wastewater services. It looks after the entire water cycle, from protecting natural sources to delivering high‑quality drinking water and safely treating wastewater before returning it to the environment. The organisation plays a vital role in supporting communities and businesses across Scotland while safeguarding one of the nation’s most important natural resources.

Accountable to the Head of Finance Business Partnering in the Finance Directorate, the role operates as a trusted adviser to the Customer Service Director and its Management Team to shape plans, budgets and forecasts, inform and challenge investment choices, and steer delivery toward outcomes. The role works through a technically qualified team and the shared analyst pool, developing talent and sustaining a collaborative, outcome‑oriented culture during a period of organisational change.

The role collaborates closely with the Finance Business Partnering team on enterprise standards and cross‑Directorate trade‑offs, and with the Reporting & Controls team to ensure integrity of actuals, allocations and compliance while the FBP remains focused on decision support.

What you'll do:

• Act as the trusted financial adviser to the Customer Service Director and Management Team, ensuring robust financial and commercial insight informs strategic and operational decisions
• Lead the Directorate’s financial performance management, integrating service performance, cost drivers, risks and opportunities into a clear, action‑focused narrative
• Own the Directorate's budgeting and reforecasting processes using driver‑based models, aligning assumptions with enterprise targets and ensuring cash, headcount and delivery implications are explicit
• Sponsor, challenge and / or assure business cases, ensuring options are compared on value for money, affordability and risk, and that benefits are tracked post‑approval
• Identify and support delivery of efficiency and productivity opportunities, working with Operations, Digital, Supply Chain and PMO to secure outcomes
• Deliver scenario and sensitivity analysis on material risks, recommending mitigations, reprioritisation or re‑phasing as required
• Coordinate Directorate inputs to organisation‑wide planning and regulatory processes, including pricing and performance submissions
• Shape and maintain a prioritised insight backlog and direct work through the analyst pool to ensure outputs are decision‑ready
• Work closely with Reporting & Controls to ensure compliant allocations and reporting, protecting Business Partnering capacity for value‑add insight
• Model and embed the Finance Business Partnering playbook, contributing to continuous improvement across the community

 What you'll bring:

• You’ll bring experience as a Finance Business Partner or equivalent. We are open to you telling us how you will do it and where your experience is transferable. Alongside this, you’ll have a proven ability to influence major operational and investment decisions at Director and senior leadership level, supported by strong commercial judgement and experience of business case development, cost/benefit analysis and scenario modelling
• You’ll be highly financially and analytically literate, with the ability to translate complexity into clear, actionable insight and compelling commercial narratives for non‑finance stakeholders
• Your experience will include shaping planning, budgeting and forecasting across evolving finance models, processes and ways of working, as well as business case development, scenario analysis and performance insight
• A sound understanding of regulatory finance and cost allocation principles will also be important, complemented by exceptional communication skills and the ability to build deep, trusted relationships with non‑finance leaders

For more information on this role, please contact Hazel Wynn at Rutherford Cross: [email protected]