Head of Financial Control - Management Accounting

Skills this role screens for

About the role

About us At Trainline, our purpose is to empower greener travel choices, connecting people and places. https://www.thetrainline.com/terms/sustainability-faqs Trainline enables millions of travellers to find and book the best value tickets across carriers, fares, and journey options through our highly rated mobile app, website, and B2B partner channels.  Great journeys start with Trainline 🚄  We’re Europe’s leading independent rail platform, helping millions of travellers find and book the best-value rail and coach journeys across our app, website and partner channels. Our job is to make the green travel choice the best choice. By building a better train travel experience, we help more people choose rail - creating a positive impact for customers, our business and the planet. We’re a team of more than 1,000 Trainliners from over 50 nationalities, working across London, Paris, Barcelona, Milan, Edinburgh and Madrid. Now is a brilliant time to join us and help shape the future of travel. Introducing the Trainline Financial Control Team 👋 Trainline is Europe's leading independent rail platform, helping millions of travellers find and book the best value rail and coach journeys across our app, website and partner channels. Our Financial Control team sits at the heart of how we understand and run the business, owning the quality and integrity of our management accounts, balance sheet and month end processes. As Head of Management Accounts, you'll lead a team through two Senior Finance Managers, covering the P&L from Revenue to Adjusted EBITDA (one above Gross Margin, one below), acting as the go-to expert for complex accounting judgement and the person who joins the dots across Financial Control, FP&A and the wider business. You'll scale through your team rather than through the detail, empowering them to own the underlying processes end to end while you remain accountable for outcomes and standards, acting as the escalation point for judgement calls and the driver of improvement and projects. Beyond Financial Control, you'll be a natural point of contact for cross-functional work, partnering with teams including Legal, Commercial, Product and Technology to translate complex or ambiguous problems into a clear, well documented plan. Reporting into the Group Financial Controller, you'll build broad enough knowledge across external reporting, governance, working capital and FP&A to deputise when needed, and you'll represent Financial Control with authority across the business. In this role as the Head of Management Accounts, you will...🚄 - Lead the team within Financial Control, principally through two direct reports, acting as a role model who coaches and mentors to build capability, delegates effectively, holds the team to a high standard of delivery and keeps development and succession front of mind - Act as a thought leader within the team, bringing structure and clarity to complex or ambiguous problems and documenting conclusions so they can be applied consistently across the function - Lead cross-functional projects from beginning to end, working with teams including Legal, Commercial, Product and Technology, setting and holding a timeline and navigating senior stakeholder relationships to land a single, well-documented position - Hold accountability for the smooth, timely running of month end, including balance sheet integrity, key reconciliations and working capital analysis, with the team owning execution and you providing judgement and sign off, critically reviewing management accounts output for risks, inconsistencies and control gaps and ensuring a consistently high-quality, on-time, audit-ready close - Act as the subject matter expert for external reporting and controls, providing technical challenge on Annual Report and Half-Year Report verification activity, owning accounting policy judgements and their documentation, and liaising with external auditors on balance sheet and reporting matters as ne