Head of Commercial Finance, UK Finance London Full Time

helsing.ai

Helsing is a defence AI company. Our mission is to protect our democracies. We aim to achieve technological leadership so that open societies can continue to make sovereign decisions and control their ethical standards.

As democracies, we believe we have a special responsibility to be thoughtful about the development and deployment of powerful technologies like AI. We take this responsibility seriously.

We are an ambitious and committed team of engineers, AI specialists, and customer-facing programme managers. We are looking for mission-driven people to join our European teams – and apply their skills to solve the most complex and impactful problems. We embrace an open and transparent culture that welcomes healthy debates on the use of technology in defence, its benefits, and its ethical implications.

The role

As Head of Commercial Finance, you will be responsible for all business-related finance topics for our UK business. You will have a chance to work with a diverse and highly motivated cross-functional team across a plethora of projects and directly influence the success of the Helsing group. This is a rare opportunity to join the company at an exciting stage of its evolution and help set the conditions for rapid growth and success over the next few years.

The day-to-day

Support Helsing’s commercial and functional leadership to set stretching financial objectives.

Apply budget and schedule management principles and practices to ensure that budgets are set and attained for multiple projects.

Monitor organisational financial and schedule metrics to support budgetary planning and to determine corrective action to maintain target performance levels.

Work with the team to develop financial forecasts and report against them, completing programme estimates to assess the financial status of the programme throughout the life of the programme.

Develop and implement high-impact integrated organisational plans to ensure business, technical, and customer requirements are achieved. This includes identifying growth opportunities across the company’s portfolio.

Work closely with Commercial & Legal to develop financial and negotiation strategies that reflect the agile nature and demands of a leading technology company, its customer base, and that drive profitability.

Contribute to tender development as well as engagement with the customer down through the supply chain to ensure key financial issues are addressed.

Provide critical due diligence with respect to company business dealings, financial risk, and investment strategies.

Coordinate financial audits and manage relationships with external stakeholders.

Establish strong relationships with external customers in the UK Ministry of Defence.

Work with other Finance leaders to streamline processes and improve communication across organisational and geographical boundaries.

Coach and mentor employees, as well as providing development opportunities and support to expand the capabilities of the team.

Create a culture of continuous improvement in the team by communicating and deploying best practices to improve cost, quality, delivery, employee job satisfaction, and customer satisfaction.

You should apply if you

• Have experience with building and managing internal and external stakeholder relationships.
• Experience of providing financial management on large scale complex programmes within the defence sector.
• Have excellent attention to detail, and the ability to work independently and as part of a team.
• Have an accounting and/or commercial qualification or MBA.
• Strong technical background, with the ability to guide and develop the team’s financial and commercial management skills.
• Excellent communication skills, both verbal and written.
• An adaptable and resilient character, able to cope with changing requirements and multiple priorities who can help their team remain effective.
• Strong business partnering and influencing skills; able to explain and troubleshoot financial issues with non-finance professionals and inspire them to achieve greater financial performance.
• Experience of working in an international environment.
• Demonstrable business & commercial acumen, and experience of commercial negotiations and contracting with the UK Ministry of Defence.
• Experience in both the defence and technology sectors is highly desirable.
• Are business fluent in English.

Note: The above bullet points describe the ideal candidate. None of us matched all of these at once when we first joined Helsing. We encourage you to apply even if you believe you meet only part of our wish list.

This position may require the successful applicant to apply for and be granted local security clearance and potentially other NATO security clearance.

Join Helsing and work with world-leading experts in their fields

Helsing’s work is important. You’ll be directly contributing to the protection of democratic countries while balancing both ethical and geopolitical concerns.

The work is unique. We operate in a domain that has highly unusual technical requirements and constraints, and where robustness, safety, and ethical considerations are vital. You will face unique Engineering and AI challenges that make a meaningful impact in the world.

Our work frequently takes us right up to the state of the art in technical innovation, be it reinforcement learning, distributed systems, generative AI, or deployment infrastructure. The defence industry is entering the most exciting phase of the technological development curve. Advances in our field of world are not incremental: Helsing is part of, and often leading, historic leaps forward.

In our domain, success is a matter of order-of-magnitude improvements and novel capabilities. This means we take bets, aim high, and focus on big opportunities. Despite being a relatively young company, Helsing has already been selected for multiple significant government contracts.

We actively encourage healthy, proactive, and diverse debate internally about what we do and how we choose to do it. Teams and individual engineers are trusted (and encouraged) to practise responsible autonomy and critical thinking, and to focus on outcomes, not conformity. At Helsing you will have a say in how we (and you!) work, the opportunity to engage on what does and doesn’t work, and to take ownership of aspects of our culture that you care deeply about.

What we offer

A focus on outcomes, not time-tracking.

Competitive compensation and stock options.

Relocation support.

Social and education allowances.

Regular company events and all-hands to bring together employees as one team across Europe.

Helsing is an equal opportunities employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability or gender identity. Please do not submit personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, data concerning your health, or data concerning your sexual orientation.

Helsing’s Candidate Privacy and Confidentiality Regime can be found here.

Apply to protect democracies.