Job Description

This opportunity is only open to internal Scottish Government applicants who are currently 'Priority Movers'. Applications from individuals not currently on the Priority Mover list will be rejected and not considered.

Job description

This is an excellent opportunity to develop your career as an Assistant Finance Manager within a corporate setting at the heart of the Scottish Government, with a specific focus on making the most of corporate data, reporting and systems to enable financial insights and decision making across the organisation.

As an assistant finance manager within the small Corporate Reporting team, you’ll use your analytical, technical and data capabilities to produce a range of reports and applications, supporting Corporate Finance processes and managing outputs for consumption by the wider organisation.

Reporting to a C1 Senior Finance Manager, this is a key role which requires a combination of financial skills alongside detailed technical knowledge of data handling tools and processes, business intelligence, and familiarity with the Oracle finance suite and underpinning data/metadata structures.

You will work with a degree of independence to manage both data refresh of existing tools as well as enhancements and new developments, requiring highly effective analytical capabilities and strong organisation and prioritisation skills. You’ll also need to be able to communicate in a non-technical manner with a wide range of stakeholders across the Scottish Government to enable them to adopt best practice, and use financial reporting outputs effectively, managing feedback and enhancement pipelines to support ongoing improvement.

You’ll be joining an innovative, forward-looking division with a vision to apply global best practice, and a commitment to support all staff to grow their professional knowledge, skills, and experience.

This is technical role within the finance profession. While it does not require you to hold a professional accountancy qualification, the successful candidate may be part qualified or be willing to work towards qualification. Full support for this will be provided as appropriate.

Responsibilities

• Maintain and develop repeatable processes for Enterprise Resource Management (EPM) financial reporting outputs, including managing the timetable for data refresh and associated data dependencies where those outputs are generated external to the EPM system.
• Ensuring alignment of Corporate Finance dashboards and reports with SG policies and best practice on hosting and sharing Power BI dashboards and related resources.
• Build and maintain the Power BI security model and manage ad-hoc access requests and queries, ensuring data is secure and that only the relevant data is shared with the appropriate audiences.
• Manage associated guidance and training materials, and support communications with stakeholders /Q&A sessions and other engagement.
• Support continuous improvement by developing improvement recommendations, including managing and triaging stakeholder feedback, and liaising with Corporate Finance colleagues on prioritisation.
• Develop effective reporting solutions using Power BI and native Oracle reporting functionalities based on a strong understanding of EPM data, Scottish Government Chart of Accounts and related data structures, leveraging relevant emerging technologies including Automations or AI.
• Use reporting tools and data interrogation to identify data issues, in particular quality assurance of EPM outputs for dashboards and reports, and recommend solutions or controls to address these, in conjunction wider Finance and Oracle system management colleagues as appropriate.
• Support continuous improvement of Corporate Finance off system processes and reporting, including process, formulaic or VBA macro based developments or improvements to existing and future Excel or other MS Office dependent activities.
• Support testing of new EPM releases by verifying accuracy and consistency of current and future reporting outputs and liaise with project team to support relevant defect resolution and re-testing.

Qualifications

Trained in a relevant technical discipline such as advanced Excel/VBA or Power BI, or have professional experience of using these in practice.

Technical / Professional Skills:

1. Budgeting, Forecasting and Costing - Working
2. Working with Data in Systems - Practitioner
3. Working with Data in Finance - Practitioner

You can find out more about the skills required here: Finance profession

Experience

Experience working with Power BI in a corporate finance context, owning the end to end lifecycle of requirements gathering, build, test, publish, iterate, and maintaining a business as usual data refresh pipeline and security model.

Experience producing outputs in the form of reports and data visualisations so that financial data can be used effectively to support evidence based decision making, leveraging your knowledge of Scottish Government corporate finance data and metadata structures.

Working pattern

This role is a permanent level transfer position.

Our standard hours are 35 hours per week and we offer a range of flexible working options depending on the needs of the role, including Flexi-leave. Scottish Government staff in hybrid-compatible roles should aim to work in-person 40% of the time, either in an office or other agreed work location. If you have specific questions about the role you are applying for, please contact us.

How to apply

Applications for this position will only be accepted from substantive B2 grade employees.

Please submit a statement outlining your suitability for the role, relevant skills and experience, and what you would bring to the team (maximum 500 words).

Vacancies close at 23:59pm on Monday 5 October.

If you have questions about your application please contact Gareth.Walton@gov.scot

Selection Process

All applicants will be invited to an informal discussion with the hiring manager. There will be no formal testing or assessment.

Discussions are expected to be scheduled for w/c TBC.

Recruitment Principles

As a government organisation, we adhere to the Civil Service Commission Recruitment Principles and we investigate any complaints received in relation to recruitment cases.