Commercial Finance Business Partner

Job Description Summary

In this high‑impact leadership role, the successful candidate will hard‑line report to the Dowty CFO and dotted line to the Head of Commercial Operations. This is a strategic position offering significant visibility and influence across the organization. The successful candidate will be responsible for driving commercial excellence through process optimization, standardization, simplification and strict adherence to financial processes – enabling data‑driven decision making and improved profitability.

The role requires strong financial leadership to guide and own the Contract Margin Review (CMR) and Product Based Logistics (PBL) accounting processes, as well as to create and drive commercial model supporting customer service contract bids (strategic captures), in collaboration with the Programs and Sales teams. The successful candidate will also play a pivotal role in strategic financial and contract performance management for multi‑million‑dollar contracts, ensuring financial accuracy, regulatory compliance, and cost efficiency, while collaborating with various stakeholders.

• Define and implement standard PBL accounting process in line with GEA/GEAS financial policies and procedures.
• Improve and develop standard work in all areas of responsibility including successful implementation and integration of the forecast tool for PBL accounting.
• Develop and/or make recommendations and implement Dowty specific policies and procedures in line with GE Aerospace mandates.
• Lead financial modelling of new deal Booking Rate estimates and existing Contract Margin Reviews for CSA/PBL commercial products.
• Drive operational and technical modelling partnership to develop P&L level analytics, variance analysis, financial tracking, and sensitivity analysis.
• Communicate to leadership the key drivers and range of outcomes for all PBL/CSA financial models.
• Drive improvement in CMR process by changing the frequency of the annual CMR process to quarterly updates and thus stabilising the Income Statement and Balance Sheet impact.
• Demonstrate a proactive approach to support continuous improvement initiatives by collaborating and partnering with Programs to drive cost control and productivity improvements using breakdown structure methodologies to estimate the labour & material requirements.
• Lead the introduction of new tools for the modelling and management of PBLs.
• Ability to drill into ERP level transactions and, from a strategic perspective, develop countermeasures to improve first‑time yield and error‑proofing in the data accumulation process.
• Partner with controllership to oversee the CSA/PBL policy and procedures including updates and interaction with key stakeholders, transfer pricing, long‑term accounting, and backlog/order presentation.
• Assist in preparing and documenting escalation commercial constructs and providing guidance to the team on best practices.
• Key contact for internal and external auditors related to the CSA/PBL CMR process.
• Manage timely & accurate reporting and variance analysis for month‑end closing process, forecast and budgets.
• Ensure proper control, integrity, and reconciliation for all PBL accounting activities.
• For Commercial deal modelling requirements (strategic captures) focus on business strategic captures while creating and maintaining models based on both commercial and technical inputs from multiple business functions.
• Output a robust business case and be able to articulate areas and levels of risk within the financials.
• Complete sensitivity analysis to quantify the impact of acknowledged risks triggering and understand the likelihood of them triggering.
• Create and maintain accurate records of models, including storage, configuration control and documentation of assumptions & their sources.

• Bachelor’s degree in accounting, finance, or other business‑related field and strong progressive accounting or finance experience.
• Solid experience in finance, preferably within defence and aerospace, or manufacturing and through life support.
• Audit background (KPMG, Deloitte, PWC, E&Y, Accenture).
• Exceptional analytical skills with the…