Our vision is to create a safe and sustainable world.

Ricardo plc is a global strategic, environmental, and engineering consulting company. With over 100 years of engineering excellence and employing close to 3,000 employees in more than 20 countries, we provide exceptional levels of expertise in delivering leading-edge and innovative cross-sector sustainable products and solutions. Every day, we enable our customers to solve the most complex and dynamic challenges to help achieve a safe and sustainable world.

The Role

The R&D Project Accountant is responsible for providing accurate and timely project information to the Project accounting Team Lead, Financial Controller, Head of FP&A and funding authorities. The candidate should have excellent attention to detail, a high level of discipline and organisation, and the ability to identify key insights arising from the data.

Key Responsibilities

• Prepare and submit timely and accurate claims and reports to grant funding authorities in the UK, EU & US in accordance with the funding rules and associated Ricardo procedure(s).
• Lead grant audits, providing relevant evidence
• Complete month-end R&D accounting, including grant recognition
• Provide input to the cash flow forecast
• Co-ordinate month-end R&D forecasts (grant-funded and internal), working with stakeholders to understand activity in each key project
• Keeping up to date records of grant rates
• Ensure all costs are correctly categorized in line with Group guidelines and agreed budgets, and that the financial impacts are incorporated into the forecast
• Tracking and summarizing reasons for variance to forecast and identifying/addressing root causes 

Key Competencies and Experience

• Financial qualification or part-qualification
• Financial analysis and accounting experience in a global organisation
• Experience with a large accounting ledger software (like SAP)
• Excellent Excel skills including experience with or willingness to learn Power Query
• Ability to communicate effectively with stakeholders, including working through challenges collaboratively
• Able to demonstrate a continuous improvement mindset, identifying and implementing opportunities for process improvement and automation

Working here

You will be warmly welcomed into our workplace where every voice matters. We are diverse thinkers and doers, coming together to create a culture of inclusion. We will support you to find your place.

We will encourage you to use your passion and expertise to make a positive impact through the projects you work on.  Your knowledge and desire to bring about change will be invaluable in helping deliver innovative solutions that support communities across the globe in becoming safer and more sustainable.

Work life balance 

We offer flexible approaches to work, whether that is working from home, being in the office, or as a hybrid worker. We're happy to discuss flexible working arrangements. Wellbeing is at the core to our culture, allowing employees to flourish and to achieve their full potential.

Benefits

We want you to know how much you are valued. Your remuneration and benefits package will reflect that. You will receive a range of benefits which include support for your physical and mental health. 

Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion statement

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer, we believe in each person's potential, and we'll help you reach yours. We have an ambitious diversity, equality, and inclusion approach as explained here. We value diversity; recognising that a more diverse workforce creates a richer and more varied working environment. Diversity also drives innovation, by allowing us to offer our clients the best consultancy service that we can. As part of our commitment to engage positively and pro-actively with all our employees and to ensure an inclusive culture, we are a recognised as a 'disability confident' employer.

Next steps

Once you have submitted your application a member of our Recruitment Team will be in touch. Please be aware that the timing can vary dependent on the volume of applications that we receive for each role and in some cases, we may start to review applications prior to the closing date.

Ricardo is a Disability confident employer please advise the recruitment team via recruit@ricardo.com if you require any adjustments to support you throughout the recruitment process.