Commercial Controller

Location: London, Holborn
Working pattern: Full time, hybrid working (3 days in office, 2 days flexible)
Team: Commercial Finance

About Grayling UK

Grayling is one of the UK’s most connected communications agencies, helping brands, businesses and organisations navigate complexity, shape conversations and make a meaningful impact through smart thinking, cultural insight and creative ideas.

Our people are in equal parts exceptional professionals and wonderful human beings. We’ve been recognised as one of The Times and Sunday Times Best Places to Work 2026, reflecting the culture our people have built together across Grayling. It’s a culture grounded in trust, transparency, ambition and care, where talented people are empowered to do exceptional work while building meaningful careers.

We’re now looking for a Commercial Controller to join our Commercial Finance team and play an important role in the financial performance of our UK business.

The opportunity

This is a senior commercial finance role with the opportunity to work closely with leaders across Grayling's UK business, helping them understand performance and make well-informed commercial decisions.

You’ll take ownership of key areas of the UK P&L and lead our forecasting and budgeting processes, but this role goes beyond reporting the numbers. We’re looking for someone who can turn financial information into useful commercial insight – identifying risks and opportunities, challenging assumptions and helping leaders make better decisions around investment, resourcing and performance.

You’ll build trusted relationships with senior stakeholders across the business, combining strong financial judgement with the confidence to ask the right questions and provide constructive challenge.

What you’ll do

- Own key areas of the UK P&L, providing clear insight into performance and identifying emerging risks and opportunities.

- Lead UK forecasting and planning, partnering with Business Unit leads and senior stakeholders to develop robust assumptions and deliver accurate, timely forecasts.

- Lead the annual budgeting process, from planning and stakeholder submissions through to accurate delivery into Oracle EPM.

- Provide commercial analysis across areas including P&L performance, client profitability, staff utilisation and overhead spend, explaining the drivers behind performance rather than simply reporting the numbers.

- Partner with senior leaders on forecasts, proposals and business cases, providing insight and constructive challenge to support decisions around resourcing, investment and business performance.

- Support commercial and client contract decisions, working with Legal and other colleagues to identify and manage financial and commercial risks.

- Support effective cash flow management and work closely with Group Finance on month-end reporting and wider financial requirements.

- Make financial reporting easier to understand and more useful, helping colleagues outside Finance use financial information to improve performance.

- Build strong relationships across Grayling and become a trusted commercial finance partner to senior stakeholders.

What we’re looking for

Essential experience and capabilities

We’re looking for someone who combines strong technical finance expertise with commercial judgement and the ability to influence people across a business.

You’ll need:

- Strong experience across commercial finance, FP&A and business partnering.

- Strong commercial and analytical skills, with a good understanding of P&L drivers and what influences business performance.

- Experience leading forecasting and budgeting processes and challenging the assumptions behind them.

- The confidence and credibility to partner with senior stakeholders, constructively challenge thinking and influence decision-making.

- The ability to turn complex financial information into clear, practical insights and recommendations for non-finance colleagues.

- Strong communication and presentation skills, including the ability to explain the story behind the numbers.

- Strong Excel modelling skills and good PowerPoint capability.

- Strong organisation and attention to detail, with the ability to manage competing priorities and deadlines.

- A collaborative approach and the ability to build trusted relationships across different teams and levels of seniority.

Desirable experience

It would be useful, but isn't essential, if you also have:

- Experience supporting or negotiating client contracts and commercial terms.

- Previous experience within an agency, PR and communications environment, or a related industry.

Our promises to you

- Flexible working arrangements, including hybrid working, a work from anywhere policy, flexi time and 4pm Friday finishes

- 25 days’ holiday, increasing by one day every year up to 30 days

- An additional day of leave on your birthday and gifted time off over Christmas

- A monthly cash allowance to use on the benefits most important to you

- Enhanced family-friendly policies

- Free subscription to the Calm app

- Office perks, including free breakfasts and fruit

- Personal development opportunities through our internal training programmes

- New business and employee referral bonuses

- Interest-free season ticket loan and Railcard reimbursement

- Cycle to work scheme

- Employee Assistance Programme offering a 24/7 confidential advice line

- Life assurance

Get to know us

Grayling is one of the UK’s most connected communications agencies, working across Public Affairs, Planning & Infrastructure, Consumer and Corporate. With nine UK offices and more than 20 worldwide, we help organisations navigate complexity, shape conversations and make a meaningful impact through smart thinking, cultural insight and creative ideas.

We’re excited to keep raising the bar for impactful communications around the world and are proud to have been named in PRovoke Media’s 100 Best Public Relations Agencies in the World and for Grayling UK to have been recognised as one of The Times and Sunday Times Best Places to Work 2026.

Our commitment at Grayling is to combine our employees’ unique backgrounds, perspectives and experiences to build a more diverse and inclusive organisation that represents all of us and the businesses we work with.

We encourage applications from people of all backgrounds and will consider all applicants regardless of age, gender identity, ethnicity, religion or belief, sexual orientation, family or parental status, neurodiversity and disability status. If you need any adjustments during the application process, we’re here to help – just let us know.