Overview of the Role
The Senior Specialist, Finance (Cost Optimization Initiative) will drive the financial analysis, modeling, and tracking required for Save the Children's cost optimization and efficiency programs at an enterprise scale. This role involves developing current and future-state cost baselines, identifying opportunities for organizational efficiency, establishing benefits realization frameworks, and partnering with senior leadership to deliver sustainable cost savings globally.
Principal Accountabilities
- Lead Financial Analysis and Cost Modelling: Drive comprehensive financial analysis of organisational cost structures across Country Offices and Global Teams, developing sophisticated cost-driver models and scenario analyses to identify inefficiencies, quantify optimisation opportunities, and validate financial assumptions underpinning the Cost Optimisation initiative.
- Establish and Maintain Cost Baselines: Build robust current and future-state cost baselines and operational benchmarks, conducting comparative analysis across functions, geographies, and operating models to identify best practices and scalable efficiencies aligned with the organisation's 2026–2030 targets.
- Drive Benefits Realisation and Savings Validation: Develop and maintain financial benefits realisation methodologies and savings validation frameworks, establishing rigorous processes to track, validate and independently assure the delivery of cost savings against approved efficiency targets.
- Provide Transformation Finance Support: Partner with transformation and workstream leads to evaluate current versus future-state operating models, providing financial insight into business process redesign, operational simplification, and digital enablement initiatives including the development of investment rationales and business cases.
- Deliver Financial Governance and Reporting: Produce high-quality financial dashboards, executive summaries, and performance reports for senior leadership and governance forums, ensuring consistent reporting methodologies and proactively identifying financial risks, dependencies, and emerging issues across workstreams.
- Build and Maintain KPI and Performance Frameworks: Support the design and implementation of KPI frameworks and cost efficiency performance indicators for the Cost Optimisation initiative, ensuring milestones and efficiency targets are measurable, trackable, and aligned to strategic objectives.
- Influence and Engage Senior Financial Stakeholders: Engage and partner with senior finance, operations, HR, and programme stakeholders across global and country structures, translating complex financial analysis into clear and actionable insights and facilitating evidence-based discussions on efficiency trade-offs and opportunities.
- Support Service Delivery Cost Optimization: Assess the financial implications of operational redesign initiatives — including staffing structures, service delivery models, and non-staff cost initiatives — to support the simplification and standardisation of service delivery across functions and geographies.
- Ensure Financial Alignment Across Transformation Workstreams: Collaborate with Finance Transformation and Enterprise Analytics teams to align financial models, reporting frameworks, and transformation objectives, ensuring coherent and integrated financial intelligence across the full programme.
- Embed Financial Discipline and Data-Driven Decision-Making: Promote a culture of financial accountability, rigour, and data-driven decision-making across the organisation, supporting change efforts by building financial literacy and confidence in efficiency data among non-financial stakeholders.
Experience and Skills
Essential
- Extensive track record of financial leadership within large-scale organisational transformation, cost optimisation, or operational efficiency programmes in complex global organisations, with direct responsibility for financial analysis, modelling, and benefits realisation.
- Significant experience working within complex INGOs, federated organisations, multinational matrix environments, or similarly complex stakeholder structures, including proven ability to navigate competing priorities across multiple geographies and functions.
- A proven ability to design and apply sophisticated financial models, cost-driver analyses, scenario planning, and sensitivity analyses to quantify efficiency opportunities and validate transformation assumptions at enterprise scale.
- A proven ability to apply strong analytical and problem-solving skills collaboratively, including taking on hands-on analysis activities to support broader transformation workstreams and delivering high-quality outputs under tight timelines and with limited supervision.
- Extensive experience developing and maintaining financial benefits realisation frameworks, savings validation methodologies, and cost baseline models, with a track record of independently assuring and reporting efficiency delivery against approved targets.
- A proven ability to engage, influence, and build alignment among senior finance, operations, HR, and programme stakeholders across multiple geographies, translating complex financial analysis into clear and actionable insights for non-financial audiences.
- Strong knowledge and practical experience of cost management, operational cost structures, support function efficiency, staffing and level-of-effort optimisation, and financial implications of service delivery redesign.
- Exceptional communication, presentation, and financial storytelling capability, with demonstrated experience producing executive-level dashboards, governance reports, and financial summaries for senior leadership forums.
- Professional accounting qualification (CPA, ACCA, CIMA, ACA, or equivalent) with progressive experience in finance, financial planning & analysis, business partnering, or transformation finance — global or multi-country experience essential.
- Experience supporting ERP transformation initiatives or enterprise-wide financial systems implementations.
Desirable
- Experience supporting or embedding financial governance within transformation programmes exceeding USD 50M in operational scope.
- Experience working across both headquarters or global teams and decentralised Country Office operations, with an understanding of the operational realities of field-based humanitarian or development contexts.
- Practical knowledge of Lean Six Sigma, DMAIC, continuous improvement, or operational excellence methodologies as applied to financial or operational redesign.
- Exposure to enterprise analytics platforms, AI-enabled financial modelling, or intelligent automation initiatives in a transformation context.
Education and Qualifications
Essential
- Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, Business Administration, or related discipline.
Desirable
- Professional accounting qualification (CPA, ACCA, CIMA, ACA, or equivalent).
