Senior Management Accountant (Retail)

Senior Management Accountant (Retail)

£47,000 - £54,000 (+ Benefits)

Reports to: Retail Finance Manager

Department: Chief Operating Office

Contract: 7 month Fixed Term Contract

Hours: Full time 35 hours per week

Location: Stratford, London Office-based with high flexibility (1-2 days per week in the office).

Visa sponsorship: You must be eligible to work in the UK to apply for this vacancy. Cancer Research UK is not able to offer visa sponsorship. 

Closing date: 9th October 2026 23:55

Recruitment process: One to two competency-based interviews

Interview date: Please note that applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis, and the vacancy may close before the advertised closing date if a suitable number of applications are received. We encourage interested candidates to apply as early as possible.

At Cancer Research UK, we exist to beat cancer.

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.

What will I be doing?

Financial Reporting:

• 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.

Accounting and Year-End:

• 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.

Financial Planning and Analysis:

• 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.

Leadership:

• Line managing and developing the Trading Management Accountant.
• Encouraging and reviewing the effectiveness of operational tasks from other members of your finance team.

What skills will I need?

• 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).

Our organisation values are designed to guide all that we do.

Bold: Act with ambition, courage and determination  

Credible: Act with rigour and professionalism   

Human: Act to have a positive impact on people  

Together: Act inclusively and collaboratively

We’re looking for people who can believe in and embody these organisation values and can use them to drive forward progress against our mission to beat cancer.

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.

What will I gain?

We create a working environment that supports your wellbeing and provide a generous benefits package, a wide range of career and personal development opportunities and high-quality tools. Our policies and processes enable you to improve your work-life balance, take positive steps in your career and achieve your personal wellbeing goals.

You can explore our benefits by visiting our careers web page.

How do I apply? 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.

Additional Information

For more information about working with us please visit our website or contact us at recruitment@cancer.org.uk.  

For more updates on our work and careers, follow us on: LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, X and YouTube.

Our vision is to create a charity where everyone feels like they belong, benefits from and participates in, the work we do. We actively encourage applications from people of all backgrounds and cultures, in particular those from ethnic minority backgrounds who are currently under-represented.

We want to see every candidate performing at their best throughout the job application process, interview process and whilst at work. We therefore ask you to inform us of any concerns you have or any adjustments you might need to enable this to happen. Please contact recruitment@cancer.org.uk or 020 3469 8400 as soon as possible. 

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.