Senior Finance Business Partner - UK & Ireland

We’re Pentland Brands: a global family business behind some of the world’s most iconic active and lifestyle brands. We bring integrity, energy and ambition to our work, setting high standards and striving to deliver great outcomes without ego.

Shape the work behind some of the world’s most loved sport, outdoor and lifestyle brands.

At Pentland Brands, every role helps move our brands forward. Whether you’re supporting our people, improving our systems, growing our commercial performance, strengthening operations or shaping better ways of working, your impact reaches across a portfolio of iconic brands used by consumers around the world.

The UK & Ireland Senior Finance Business Partner acts as the trusted financial partner for the UK & Ireland region, embedded directly within the commercial leadership team. Your mission is to shift Finance from reactive to diagnostic; to move conversations away from “what happened” and towards “why it happened, what it means, and what we do about it.” You will bring the numbers to life in a way that drives real commercial outcomes, improving margin, sharpening forecasts, and making Pentland’s Finance function the team that commercial leaders actively

What you’ll be doing:

Strategic Business Partnership

• Embed with regional commercial leadership to shape medium-term strategic plans, covering channel mix, pricing models, promotional cadence, and portfolio margin optimisation.

• Translate strategic commercial initiatives into financial frameworks, KPIs and scenario models that inform decision gates and build commercial confidence.

• Be proactively involved in route-to-market decisions, ensuring Finance is front and centre of the key strategic projects at Pentland.

• Build strong credibility across stakeholders so they proactively seek out Finance’s expertise, not just when there’s a problem.

Budgeting, Forecasting & IBP

• Lead the regional contribution to the Integrated Business Planning (IBP) process, ensuring assumptions are challenging, aligned and traceable to global and EMEA forecasts.

• Drive forecast accuracy and root-cause variance analysis, moving conversations from reactive to diagnostic.

• Embed variance analysis using consistent driver frameworks that link to demand, pricing, and supply constraints.

• Improve forecasting quality by embedding budget holders into the process and holding them accountable for their inputs.

Performance Reporting & Margin Insight

• Deliver region-specific performance reporting (weekly and monthly), including margin decomposition, promotion ROI, channel profitability, stock impacts on sales and margin, and trend analysis.

• Provide actionable insights, going beyond the numbers to influence commercial decisions on new product introductions, markdowns, pricing levers, and route-to-market shifts.

• Drive margin rate improvements through a comprehensive review of customer terms.

• Deliver customer profitability P&Ls across your region, giving the commercial team a clear view of where value is created and where it is eroded.

• Provide greater insight into functional costs and the drivers behind variances, improving transparency and accountability.

Decision Support & Scenario Planning

• Build and maintain models for what-if scenario evaluations, including price elasticity, assortment optimisation, and cannibalisation impacts.

• Develop and maintain scenario models for discounting strategies, channel shifts, and promotional levers.

• Partner with commercial teams to stress-test planning assumptions and strategic trade-offs, ensuring decisions are made with a full understanding of the financial implications.

Stock & Operational Finance

• Work with Merchandise Planners to establish a regular rhythm of actionable meetings on aged stock, driving clear decisions and reducing working capital risk.

• Work closely with Supply Chain Finance to support stock decisions, ensuring Finance has a strong voice in operational trade-offs.

• Enable commercial teams in retail marketing ROI demonstration, resource allocation decisions, and trade-off optimisation.

Cross-functional Collaboration & EMEA Alignment

• Coordinate with Central Commercial and DTC FP&A to ensure alignment in reporting definitions and planning inputs across EMEA.

• Harmonise approaches and frameworks across the EMEA region to drive consistency in reporting and planning, reducing ambiguity and duplication.

• Strengthen EMEA commercial decision-making by embedding high-quality financial insight into all major trading, customer, and brand decisions.

• Improve cross-functional ways of working where your role intersects with Commercial, FP&A, and Supply Chain.

• The majority of your key stakeholders are based in or regularly travel to Farringdon for direct face time interactions and engagements. This role is based at Farringdon and no international travel is typically expected.

What you’ll bring:

• Qualified accountant (CIMA, ACCA or ACA) with 5+ years of post-qualification experience.

• Proven track record in commercial finance or FP&A, ideally within a consumer, retail or branded goods business.

• Strong business partnering skills, with the ability to build relationships with non-finance stakeholders and translate complex analysis into clear commercial language.

• Expertise in financial modelling, scenario planning and margin analysis, with a sharp commercial instinct for what drives value.

• Experience of budgeting, forecasting and IBP processes, with a demonstrated ability to improve forecast accuracy and planning quality.

• A diagnostic mindset, with a drive to go beyond the numbers to understand root causes and recommend clear actions.

• Ability to work in a fast-paced matrix organisation, managing multiple stakeholders and priorities simultaneously.

• Comfortable working across international or multi-region environments; EMEA or multi-market exposure is a plus.

Why Pentland Brands?

Pentland Brands is the name behind some of the world’s best-known sport, outdoor and lifestyle brands, including Speedo, Berghaus, Canterbury, Endura, Ellesse, Kickers and Mitre.

We are a global family business with a clear purpose: pioneering brands that make life better. Across our teams, functions and locations, we work together to create products, experiences and partnerships that help people live more active, confident and positive lives.

Joining Pentland Brands means becoming part of a business where your work can have real reach, across multiple brands, markets, teams and disciplines. It is a place for people who want to contribute, collaborate, improve how things are done and help build the future of brands with heritage, ambition and global impact.

Perks & Benefits

We offer a competitive salary, discretionary bonus, hybrid working, flexible start and finish times, generous holiday allowance, product discounts, sample sales, enhanced family-friendly policies, healthcare support, gym and fitness discounts, cycle to work scheme and electric car scheme.

You can find full details of our benefits and perks on our UK Benefits page .

The Interview Process

We want our interview process to feel clear, straightforward, and supportive. If your experience and expectations look like a strong match for the role, here’s what you can expect next:

1. Talent Team Intro Call - A 30-minute video call with our Talent Team to get to know each other, talk through the role and your experience, and answer any questions you have.

2. Experience Interview - A more in-depth interview (usually online) with the hiring manager to explore your skills, experience and approach, and how these align with the role, our principles, and our ways of working.

3. Final Interview - A final in-person interview at our office, focused on deeper discussion and practical application, giving you the chance to meet more of the team and see Pentland Brands in action.

‘“This vacancy is a newly created role as part of organisational changes. Final appointment will depend upon the outcome of consultation processes and affected employees will have priority for consideration.”