Senior Finance Business Partner

Job summary

One Senior Finance Business Partner role is available in the Finance Business Partnering Team.

The Team is organised into three areas who support the Director Generals (DGs) and their teams to effectively discharge their financial accountabilities. This includes providing support and guidance to directors to enable effective financial management of their budgets including oversight of the arm’s length bodies where applicable.

Finance is high on the agenda in the department and we play a pivotal role in supporting and shaping the way the resources are allocated to deliver the department’s strategic and operational priorities.

We are the ‘go to’ team for teams across the department, advising and providing robust challenge on the affordability and value for money of policy development and investment decisions, business planning and providing insight on budgetary performance against the delivery of our departmental objectives.

Job description

Senior Finance Business Partner: Museums and Galleries

In this role, you will support the Department’s Society, Media and Culture Group’s Finances covering the Museums and Galleries portfolio (including DCMS sponsored Arm’s Length Bodies (ALBs)). The primary responsibilities of the role are as follows:

• Support senior leaders to embed effective financial management within DCMS ensuring the successful implementation, development and improvement of policies and programmes
• Provide high quality financial advice and timely financial management data, information and analysis to directors and their teams
• Provide advice and guidance on all financial matters as necessary, from accounting to budgeting, input to fiscal events (e.g. Government Estimates process, Budget, Spending Review and Business Planning)
• Support policy teams in development and scrutiny of business cases, providing expert advice and challenge
• Lead assurance activities / effective financial oversight of ALBs including regular engagement at senior levels
• Build effective relationships with Policy / ALB stakeholders and drive value-for money thinking
• Draft papers and prepare Ministerial submissions as necessary

Person specification

The ideal candidate would have the following key skills and experience, please note that desirable skills will only be used in the event of tied candidates:

Essential requirements:

• Highly numerate and literate with full CCAB or CIMA accountancy qualification or equivalent (or part qualified and working towards full qualification)
• Experience of providing financial analysis in a policy or corporate context including on projects and programmes
• Collaborative, able to work effectively with a wide range of colleagues and stakeholders and with experience of working with senior leaders
• Experience of supporting development and review of business cases
• Solutions-oriented and able to manage competing priorities to tight deadlines

Desirable Skills:

• Business partnering experience within a government or public sector context
• Working knowledge of Managing Public Money and central government accounting and budgeting rules
• Experience working with Arm’s Length Bodies in a finance context
• Experience of line management

We are running an information session where prospective applicants can find out more about the role. This will be hosted by Anita Raj, and will take place on:

31 March 2026 at 11am (Virtual)

The session will be an opportunity to hear more about the role, the team and wider directorate and the department.
It will also be an opportunity for you to ask any questions. Please register your interest before 3pm on 30 March by filling out this Registration form and you will be sent an invitation. Invites will only be sent after this deadline has passed.

Please note that the session will not be recorded and will not focus on the DCMS recruitment process - please direct any queries that you have on this topic (timelines, reasonable adjustments, onboarding etc) to resourcing.team@dcms.gov.uk

Qualifications

CCAB or CIMA accountancy qualification or equivalent (or part qualified and working towards full qualification)

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Working Together
• Leadership
• Seeing the Big Picture
• Changing and Improving