Finance Manager, Enterprise

Finance Manager – Enterprise 

About Us:

We are a FTSE 100 company at the forefront of innovation and global leadership in Education Technology sector. As part of our continued growth, we recently consolidated various assets from around our organisation to focus on growing our Enterprise proposition in our renamed Enterprise Learning & Skills Business Unit, focused on delivering high-impact solutions to large-scale clients. This new team is central to our long-term strategic ambitions, and we’re looking for a dynamic Finance Manager to help shape its success.

Position Overview:

This is a rare opportunity to be a central part of a Commercial Finance function for a newly created sub-business unit. Reporting to the Finance Director for the business unit, you will play a pivotal role in driving performance and developing the transformation of finance processes. This role combines expert knowledge and commercial insight, and the opportunity to influence a high-growth, high-visibility part of the organisation.

This role is ideal for someone who thrives in a dynamic, commercially focused setting and can combine strong analytical skills with business partnering expertise.

Key Responsibilities:

Financial Planning & Analysis

• Own the preparation and delivery of annual budgets, quarterly forecasts, and long-term plans.
• Provide high-quality financial insight, variance analysis, and performance commentary.
• Support the FD with the development and delivery of the Enterprise BU’s strategic and operational financial planning.

Business Partnering

• Work closely with operational leaders to challenge assumptions, improve financial outcomes, and support commercial initiatives.
• Present financial results and recommendations to senior management clearly and confidently.
• Provide financial guidance on new business cases, investments, pricing, and cost optimisation.

Reporting & Governance

• Produce accurate, timely monthly management accounts and KPI dashboards.
• Ensure compliance with internal controls, group accounting policies, and governance requirements.
• Liaise with central finance, FP&A, and shared service teams to ensure alignment and consistency.

Process & Systems Transformation

• Drive continuous improvement across reporting, forecasting, and financial processes.
• Contribute to system enhancements, automation initiatives, and data integrity improvements.
• Identify opportunities to simplify, standardise, and streamline workflows.

Leadership & Stakeholder Management

• Support collaboration across cross-functional teams within a large FTSE100 structure.
• Build strong relationships based on credibility, reliability, and commercial acumen.

Governance & Risk Management

• Ensure financial control, compliance, and alignment with group standards and regulatory frameworks.

Skills, Experience & Qualifications required:

• Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, or a related field; an MBA, CPA, or CFA is highly preferred.
• Strong FP&A and business partnering experience, ideally within a large corporate or matrix organisation.
• Excellent analytical capabilities with proven ability to turn data into insight.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to influence and challenge senior stakeholders.
• High proficiency in Excel and financial modelling.
• Experience with ERP and reporting tools (Hyperion Essbase, Oracle, Salesforce, Tableau, etc.) a huge plus
• Proven track record of improving processes and delivering high-quality outputs under tight deadlines.
• Structured, disciplined approach to work, with attention to detail.
• Experience supporting operational, commercial, or transformation teams.

• Exposure to project finance, investment appraisal, or strategic planning.

   

Leadership Capabilities

This role would suit an individual looking to progress upwards within the finance organization into a Finance Director role or with longer term CFO track ambition - Pearson has an excellent track record of mobility within the finance organization. Therefore, the following leadership capabilities are critical:

• Ability to Influence Others – Identifies the agendas, concerns, and motivations of interested others, and is persuasive when positioning ideas and arguments to address them. Proactively cultivates networks with key individuals across functions to gain support for ideas, creating a foundation for future influence. Ensures that all proposals or arguments are fully supported by strong logic and a compelling business case, addressing all relevant factors.
• Communication – Communicates financial information and concepts in a clear, precise, thorough manner to meet the needs of both finance and non-finance audiences. Ensures that own positions effectively address others' needs and priorities, and that concerns are openly discussed and addressed. Projects self-assurance and unshakable
• Accountability and Ownership – Prioritizes and balances, organizes, and allocates time, actions, and resources to generate significant positive results and achieve critical goals, even in fast-moving or uncertain situations. Anticipates and decisively intervenes, addressing and removing obstacles, and redirects efforts to accelerate work, improves quality, moves the work forward, and/or gets efforts back on track.
• Collaboration and Partnering – Identifies opportunities and takes actions to build relationships between own area and other teams/departments to help achieve business goals.
• Change Management Capability – Understands the change management process. Able to influence and lead others to embrace change positively in support of organizational objectives.
• Prioritization – Juggles many priorities and competing demands for one's time. Understands the importance of materiality when prioritizing work.

Personal Attributes

• Commercially minded with strong attention to detail.
• Proactive, curious, and able to challenge constructively.
• Comfortable working with ambiguity and driving clarity.
• Strong sense of ownership and accountability.
• Collaborative team player who builds positive relationships.

Compensation at Pearson is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skill set, level of experience, and specific location. As required by the California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York State, New York City, Vermont, Washington State, and Washington DC laws, the pay range for this position is as follows:   

The minimum full-time salary range is between $110,000 to $120,000. 

This position is eligible to participate in an annual incentive program, and information on benefits offered is here. 

Applications will be accepted through December 1, 2025. This window may be extended depending on business needs.