Salary: £45,000 to £50,000 pro rata for length of contract

Role ID: 2025 - 3116

Our vision is to create a safe and sustainable world

Ricardo plc is a global strategic, environmental, and engineering consulting company, listed on the London Stock Exchange. 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.

We are seeking to further bolster our finance team with the appointment of an Interim Financial Accountant on an intial 6 month FTC.  Reporting into the Assistant Financial Controller, this role is tailor-made for a technically strong, results-orientated individual with a continuous improvement mindset.  The Financial Accountant is a key, diverse and exciting role to drive ownership and accountability into Ricardo’s performance.  Understanding reporting requirements in a complex business, period close, posting accuracy and ensuring the business meet its statutory and group reporting requirements are all key to success here.

Key Responsibilities

• Ensuring the accurate and timely preparation and submission of monthly Management Accounts tasks within group systems on an IFRS basis, including variance analysis and the ‘what has happened’ narrative across the BU.
• Preparation and submission of annual statutory filings, including ownership of the smaller statutory accounts across multiple territories and assisting in the preparation of the main company statutory accounts.
• Support the audit process, assisting in the timely provision of financial and management information for audits both internal and external and liaising with external personnel as and when required. 
• Assist in the intercompany accounting process, looking to deliver simplification whilst meeting statutory requirements.
• Ensure all transactions are recorded, filed and reported correctly. Drive the continuous improvement of end-to-end accounting practices, including the regular preparation of key Balance Sheet reconciliations.
• Supporting in managing the day-to-day accounting operations 
• Assisting in the coordination of the cash flow / working capital process, debt and debt collection, including budget setting, KPI tracking and forecasting.
• Control, maintenance and development of Accounting Systems used within BU.
• Drive understanding and ownership into our cost drivers.
• Ensure compliance with internal controls, statutory law and financial regulations, including assisting in the preparation and review of all Corporation tax, VAT and other statutory requirements.
• Support in the annual budget process where applicable
• Documenting business processes and accounting policies to maintain internal controls.  Driving simplification and standardisation of processes to minimise non-value add activities.
• Act as a Finance Co-Pilot to the wider business, ensuring Finance support and involvement in key business activities.
• Provide support to the wider Finance team during peak times and periods of leave.
• Develop and maintain relationships with key internal and external stakeholders.

Key Competencies and Experience

• Working towards a professional accountancy qualification – ACA/ACCA/CIMA part-qualified – with upwards of 5+ years accounting experience
• A good knowledge of accounting principles essential, ideally with exposure to year end processes, audit and the month end cycle
• Experience within a Group / Listed PLC environment is desirable
• Experience within a consulting and professional service organisations is desirable
• Experience of working in a multi-currency environment is desirable
• Ability to communicate at all levels within the business
• Continuous improvement mindset
• System and Process Improvement experience

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. 

Our core benefits include 25 days' annual leave, plus 8 flexible bank holidays, a competitive company pension scheme, life assurance and professional subscriptions reimbursement. We also offer a wide range of flexible benefits to suit your lifestyle.

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.