Home. There’s no place like it.
And there’s no feeling like helping people create the joy of feeling truly at home. At Dunelm, that’s what we do. We’re the UK's number one choice for homewares because we make home life lovelier for our customers. And we’ve crafted a workplace that feels just as welcoming – where you can bring your ideas, be yourself, and feel right at home.
At Dunelm, our Finance team isn’t just about numbers, we’re the powerhouse behind smart decisions, smooth operations, and spotting golden opportunities for growth. We balance the books and manage procurement like pros, but we also dive deep into financial data to uncover patterns, trends, and hidden gems that help steer our business forward.
With an approximately 85-strong team, we’re just the right size - agile enough that no one gets lost in the crowd (or stuck doing the same thing every day), but big enough to offer real opportunities to grow explore new areas and really challenge yourself. If you think finance is all grey suits and spreadsheets - think again. Here, we're making numbers exciting, decisions smarter, and opportunities bigger.
Work your way, together
We’re a hybrid business, which means you’ll have flexibility alongside time together with your team. In this role, you can expect 3 days a week in the office or on-site, helping you stay connected, collaborate and do your best work for our customers.
The Business Finance Team is a team of roughly thirty finance professionals, who partner with the functions across Dunelm, to:
- Produce timely and accurate weekly and monthly reports and insight to inform trading and operational control and decision making
- Set targets (in conjunction with business) and provide independent view of forecasts and trends
- Hold business to account to deliver to targets and manage risks and opportunities
- Support and challenge tactical and strategic decision making, including financial appraisal (and post investment appraisal)
- Agitate for optimising profitability and return on investment, and for best use of our resources
- Use our unique viewpoint to join things up, ‘unblock’ issues and put simple structure around priorities and actions
There are many opportunities for development in the team, both:
- Progression through Analyst, Business Partner, Finance Manager, Senior Finance Manager and Head of; and
- Partnering with the varied parts of Dunelm’s business, including Stores, Supply Chain, Digital, Marketing, Tech, Commercial and many more!
- As Senior Finance Manager for the business functions you partner, you are responsible for leading your team to provide support and challenge to your business partners in line with the Business Finance purpose, whilst also ensuring that all requirements for the Dunelm Finance function are delivered.
- In addition to leading your team, you will directly partner with your Executive and Dunelm Leadership Team partners on specific projects, initiatives and focus areas, acting as a key member of their leadership teams. You will work closely with your colleagues partnering other areas of the business to support join up of opportunities and issues across the end-to-end operation.
- Leadership of your team, including direct line management of Finance Managers and coaching and development of the broader team.
- Primary outcomes of the team include:
- Production of weekly and monthly reporting
- Forecasting, budgeting and strategic planning
- Decision support, from tactical decisions up to large strategic projects, including financial appraisal
- Insight and analysis to better inform decision making
- Challenge and support to business functions and, where relevant, to third party suppliers
- Ensure the month-end is closed accurately, timely and in accordance with policies as set by Financial Reporting (P&L and balance sheet)
- Partner directly (and indirectly via the team) the Exec and Dunelm Leadership Team members in the functions you support – acting as ‘critical friend’
- Direct ownership, leadership and presentation of regular or ad hoc outputs and meetings. E.g. Weekly Trade, Steering Groups for focus areas, acting as Finance Lead
- Identifying business opportunities or risks and influencing stakeholders to take action. Questioning the status quo and coming up with improvement ideas.
- Constantly re-review the prioritisation of your team’s workload, looking for better ways to do things and being brave in stopping activities.
Specifics for Trading Finance
- End to end ownership of sales, margin and stock from a finance partnering perspective, from planning through to performance
- Ownership of budgeting and forecasting cycles (specifically sales and margin planning, plus channel-based sales driver expectations like traffic, levers etc), across commercial categories and sales channels – ensuring alignment across target setting and wider business planning
- Ownership of weekly Trade content and trading story, helping the business to understand performance and areas of focus. Follow up of ad-hoc Trade actions that support diagnosis of business trading performance.
- Partnering of Exec and Leadership Team stakeholders to achieve targets and identify areas of opportunity/optimisation (through eventing, margin investment, clearance decisioning etc); specific critical challenge on strategic planning
- Reporting support; partnering where required to surface important content to aid decision making. Continuous review of existing reports to prevent inefficiency or duplication.
- Month end responsibility areas: ownership of sales, product margin and commercial gross margin adjustments (including freight and volume rebates)
- Management and prioritisation of Exec/DLT asks (capacity, nature of ask, importance of output to decision making)
- Development of team members through coaching, nature of task, and level of exposure
- Continuous improvement mindset embedded in the team
Essential Skills
- Proven line management experience, delivering through others
- Commercially minded, with a genuine drive to make a difference and support Dunelm to achieve its growth and profitability targets
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills, able to condense complex information into clear messages to gain understanding and buy-in
- A good relationship builder building trust with key stakeholders and able to influence
- Finance qualified, with broad finance experience and knowledge, able to represent the whole finance function with stakeholders
- Equally comfortable in the high level and directional as the detailed and accurate and able to flex approach based on the circumstances
- Comfortable with ambiguity and changing priorities and able to lead a team through continuous re-prioritisation to ensure the best value outcomes are delivered
Behaviors
Communicating – Making the complex easy to understand, influencing and engaging others to achieve support for decisions and actions
Curiosity – A desire to truly understand the business operations and to question why things are done the way they are. Always probing beyond the first answer.
Adapting – Having the courage to change direction to achieve outcomes. Creating a safe environment for the team to experiment and learn.
Thinking Big – Using internal and external networks and knowledge to suggest and influence change
Challenging – Being the voice of constructive dissent to help reach better outcomes; shape opinions and challenge thinking
Making It Happen – Cutting through complexity to deliver agilely against the most important outcomes. Set clear roles, responsibilities and expectations with your team.
