The posting
Company Description
John Crane, a business of Smiths Group, is a global leader in mission-critical flow control solutions for energy and process industries that enable efficient and sustainable operations. Our products include mechanical seals and systems, couplings, bearings, filtration systems, and predictive digital monitoring technologies.
We have a global network of more than 200 sites in over 50 countries and employ more than 6,000 people worldwide. We partner with our customers to help them keep their operations safe, reduce downtime, improve efficiency, and meet the latest environmental standards.
John Crane is part of Smiths Group. For over 170 years, Smiths has been pioneering progress by engineering for a better future. We serve millions of people every year, helping to create a safer, more efficient, productive, and better-connected world across four global markets: energy, security & defence, space & aerospace, and general industrial. Listed on the London Stock Exchange, Smiths employs approximately 16,000 colleagues in over 50 countries.
John Crane is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to crafting an inclusive environment for all employees.
Job Description
We have an exciting opportunity for an experienced and strategic finance leader to join John Crane as Head of Global Finance Shared Services. Reporting into senior finance leadership, this role is responsible for leading and developing our global Finance Shared Services organisation across the UK, India and Mexico, ensuring the delivery of efficient, scalable, and high-quality finance services that support business performance and growth.
As the leader of our Shared Services organisation, you will drive operational excellence across core finance processes including Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, General Ledger, Cash Management, and Payroll. You will play a critical role in shaping and executing the Shared Services strategy, leading finance transformation initiatives, driving process standardisation and automation, and ensuring strong governance, compliance, and stakeholder satisfaction across the global business.
This is a highly visible leadership role requiring a collaborative and commercially minded individual who can influence at all levels, lead geographically dispersed teams, and deliver sustainable improvements across our finance operations.
Responsibilities
Leadership & Strategy
- Lead the global Finance Shared Services organisation across the UK, India and Mexico.
- Develop and execute the Shared Services strategy in alignment with wider finance and business objectives.
- Build and maintain a high-performing, customer-focused culture that promotes accountability, collaboration, operational excellence, and continuous improvement.
- Develop organisational capability through succession planning, talent development, and leadership coaching.
- Partner with Finance Leadership and regional stakeholders to drive service excellence and business value.
Shared Services Operations
- Provide leadership and oversight of Accounts Payable (AP), Accounts Receivable (AR), General Ledger (GL), Cash Management, Payroll, and related transactional finance activities.
- Ensure consistent delivery of services through standardised global processes, policies, and controls.
- Establish and monitor service level agreements (SLAs), key performance indicators (KPIs), and operational metrics.
- Oversee the timely and accurate completion of month-end, quarter-end, and year-end activities.
- Drive operational efficiency while maintaining strong financial controls and governance standards.
Finance Process Excellence & Transformation
- Lead the Finance Process Excellence team in identifying and implementing continuous improvement initiatives.
- Drive standardisation, harmonisation, and optimisation of finance processes across the global organisation.
- Champion automation, digitisation, and simplification initiatives through ERP systems, analytics tools, and emerging technologies.
- Lead finance transformation programmes, transitions, and process migration activities.
- Promote a culture of innovation and operational excellence across Shared Services functions.
Governance, Controls & Compliance
- Establish and maintain a robust governance and control framework across Shared Services operations.
- Ensure compliance with company policies, accounting standards, regulatory requirements, and audit expectations.
- Strengthen risk management practices and maintain effective financial controls across all processes.
Stakeholder Management
- Act as the primary interface between Shared Services, Finance Leadership, and key business stakeholders.
- Build strong relationships across the organisation to ensure alignment on priorities, service expectations, and outcomes.
- Regularly communicate operational performance, transformation progress, risks, and improvement opportunities to senior leadership.
- Drive customer-focused service delivery and stakeholder satisfaction globally.
Payroll Leadership
- Provide strategic oversight of the UK Payroll function.
- Ensure accurate and timely payroll processing while maintaining compliance with all regulatory requirements.
- Drive payroll process improvements and strengthen operational controls and governance.
Qualifications
You will be a proven finance operations leader with significant experience managing global shared services environments and leading large-scale transformation initiatives.
Essential Qualifications & Experience
- Bachelor's degree in Finance, Accounting, Business, or a related discipline, or equivalent professional experience.
- Professional accounting qualification such as ACA, ACCA, CIMA, CPA, or equivalent.
- Significant leadership experience within a Global Finance Shared Services or Global Business Services environment.
- Proven experience leading multinational and geographically dispersed teams.
- Strong understanding of end-to-end finance processes, including:Accounts Payable (AP) Accounts Receivable (AR) General Ledger (GL) Cash Management Payroll Record-to-Report (R2R)
- Demonstrated success delivering finance transformation, process standardisation, and continuous improvement programmes.
- Strong knowledge of governance, compliance, financial controls, and risk management frameworks.
- Experience working with ERP systems, preferably SAP.
- Strong project management, analytical, and stakeholder engagement skills.
Key Competencies
- Inspirational leadership with the ability to develop, motivate, and retain high-performing teams.
- Strategic mindset with the ability to translate business objectives into clear operational priorities and measurable outcomes.
- Excellent stakeholder management and influencing skills, with the ability to build credibility across all levels of the organisation.
- Strong communication and presentation skills.
- Proven ability to lead transformation, automation, and process improvement initiatives within complex global organisations.
- Sound judgement and decision-making capability, balancing commercial, operational, compliance, and customer requirements.
- High levels of integrity, accountability, and commitment to governance and ethical business practices.
Additional Information
With colleagues stretching across the globe, we are proud of our diversity. To foster inclusivity, we run employee resource groups (ERGs) to provide a safe space for employees to connect and support each other. Our cross-business ERGs include Veterans, Pride Network, Black Employee Network, Women@Work Network, and Neurodiversity.
Across our company, we recognize excellence, culminating in the Smiths Excellence Awards, our annual celebration of the most extraordinary activities, people, and projects that best showcase our strengths and help drive our business forward. We announce these on our annual Smiths Day, a global celebration of Smiths around our network.
Join us for a great career with competitive compensation and benefits, while helping engineer a better future.
We believe that different perspectives and backgrounds are what make a company flourish. All qualified applicants will receive equal consideration for employment regardless of color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, economic status, disability, age, or any other legally protected characteristics. We are proud to be an inclusive company with values grounded in equality and ethics, where we celebrate, support, and embrace diversity.
At no time during the hiring process will Smiths Group, nor any of our recruitment partners ever request payment to enable participation – including, but not limited to, interviews or testing. Avoid fraudulent requests by applying jobs directly through our career’s website (Careers - Smiths Group plc)
