Management Accountant

at  Scottish Water

Together we are Trusted to Serve Scotland.
It’s not every job where you make a difference for the people of Scotland: At Scottish Water Horizons (SWH), we harness Scottish Water (SW) expertise and assets to generate income. All profits are reinvested by Scottish Water Horizons for the benefit of our customers and communities. Sound good?
It’s an exciting time to be joining our team as we enter a new phase of growth. We have bold ambitions. We are ramping up the pace and scale of our projects and we’re working with some of the brightest people in the industry.
Who are Scottish Water Horizons
SWH are a part of Scottish Water and play a key role in helping housing developers, and commercial property developers ensure that water and wastewater infrastructure has the capability to meet Scottish Water’s requirements.
We are a commercially sustainable, stand-alone business leading the way in encouraging growth, establishing renewable technologies and transforming utilities across the Scottish Water landscape. Our varied business engagements include developer projects, development centres, low carbon energy projects, low carbon heat projects, and waste management to name but a few.
We are looking for a Management Accountant to work in our Finance team in Scottish Water Horizons.
What you’ll do
You will be responsible for providing clear and relevant financial information and analysis to Scottish Water Horizons business teams to enable them to track, understand, forecast and effectively control costs.
In this role, you will be responsible for providing both regular and ad-hoc financial reports that track and explain operating costs, ensuring that this critical information is communicated regularly to the business team. Your support will be essential as the team plans ahead, helping to set financial performance targets for business plans, annual budgets, and quarterly forecasts.
Additionally, you will focus on developing new tracking reports and analysis that strengthen control over project costs, while enhancing the understanding of whole life costs. This includes creating innovative methods for capturing and presenting both financial and non-financial information, such as linking costs to specific activities and developing new performance reports.
Moreover, you will play a key role in supporting and coaching the business team on financial policy, processes, and controls, ensuring that everyone is aligned and equipped to manage financial matters effectively.
What you’ll bring
You must have a relevant accountancy qualification, be part way through study for this or be able to demonstrate equivalent ‘qualification by experience’. You’ll need a strong grasp of accounting principles and management accounting techniques.
In this role, you must be able to explain financial concepts and information to business professionals in a way that is easily understandable, and you should be able to grasp business processes, terminology, and their applications. It’s essential to feel confident in challenging and influencing others, particularly those in more senior positions.
You will also need to analyse data and transform it into actionable information. This involves reviewing cost data, identifying what drives those costs, and looking for trends and correlations. Your conclusions must be robust and clearly articulated to ensure they are meaningful.
Strong IT skills are crucial, particularly proficiency in Excel and knowledge of Peoplesoft or an equivalent financial system, as you will be using these tools in most aspects of your work. Additionally, you should be able to work agilely and effectively within a team, contributing beyond your individual day-to-day responsibilities to deliver ad-hoc improvement projects.
It would be an advantage to have experience of activity-based analysis of costs and / or implementing new reporting tools (eg: performance dashboards / scorecards or equivalent).
You will work as part of a Finance team who provide this service across Scottish Water Horizons but you will also work closely day to day with business colleagues throughout Scottish Water Horizons.
Looking out for you
While the work we do is important, we know it’s not the only thing that matters. That’s why we make sure you have everything you need to find a good work-life balance.
But you’ll get plenty of time to recharge with 38 days of holiday every year (including public holidays). And you can even buy five more if you need a little extra time. You can also take paid time off to volunteer in your community.
When it comes to major life events we have family-friendly policies around adoption, maternity, and parental leave. And for the everyday? We embrace flexible working.
For your future, there’s our pension (the ‘know-what-you’ll-get-when-you-retire’ kind), as well as life assurance.
As for some nice extras? You can expect an annual company bonus. Not to mention access to SW Splash – handy rewards that can save you money on holidays, bills, and shopping.
The not-so-small print
This role will be a Grade 7. If you’re new to Scottish Water, you’ll join us on a starting salary of £41,000. Performance-driven pay progression would then allow you to move through the range to a maximum of £51,970.
If you’re interested in this role – or know someone else who might be - we’ll be accepting applications until the updated date of midnight on 12th November 2024. Please also include a cover letter with your application.
In November 2024, we are moving to a 35hr week to support the wellbeing and work/life balance of our employees.
Job offers at Scottish Water are conditional, and will be confirmed on completion of our pre-employment screening, e.g. referencing, criminal record checks, license checks, etc. These checks are conducted on our behalf by a third party. Don’t worry - we’ll ask your permission before starting these checks.
A few final things worth knowing…
Research shows that some people avoid applying for jobs unless they can meet every single criteria. If you’re interested in this job, but don’t tick all the boxes, apply anyway! We hardly ever hire people who can do every part of a job from Day One. Everyone has a learning curve. So don’t rule yourself out!
Let us know if there are any changes we can make to our recruitment process to help you perform at your best. Lots of our people have disabilities or neurodiverse conditions (including some of our recruiters!). We’re also aware that some people might be experiencing temporary challenges because of life events, like menopause. We’re very used to making adjustments, so please don’t be afraid to ask.
As part of our commitment to developing a flourishing Scotland, it’s important that all our employees are Scottish taxpayers. If you join us, your home address will need to be in Scotland. If you don’t already live here, you’ll need to commit to moving here within your first three months.
Finally (finally!), candidates who haven’t submitted an application in the last 12 months will have their records removed from our recruitment database. You won’t need to do anything. Your data will be automatically deleted.
We’re here to help. Ask us anything at
SWRecruitment@ScottishWater.co.u

Please refer the Job description for details