Product Owner - Finance

Role overview

The Finance Technology Product Lead is a senior technology partner to the Finance function, responsible for helping shape and deliver technology-enabled change needed to support the firm's finance strategy and priorities.

Working collaboratively with Finance Services and Technology teams, the role acts as a key interface between Finance and IT. It will help Finance identify and articulate business problems and opportunities, shape demand, develop technology roadmaps and investment cases, and bring together the right capabilities to deliver change successfully.

The role will also provide leadership across significant Finance technology programmes and initiatives, ensuring that priorities are translated into coherent plans, dependencies are understood, risks and decisions are actively managed, and activity remains aligned to the intended business outcomes.

This is not a role responsible for the day-to-day ownership or administration of the firm's core finance systems. Instead, the Finance Technology Product Lead provides the technology leadership, challenge, coordination and programme oversight required to ensure that Finance initiatives are well understood, appropriately prioritised and effectively delivered in collaboration with a global enterprise IT function.

The role requires sufficient understanding of finance processes and technology to operate credibly with Finance specialists, but its primary focus is on technology leadership, stakeholder management, programme execution and delivery rather than deep functional expertise in any individual finance platform.

Key responsibilities

• Act as a trusted technology partner to senior Finance stakeholders, helping translate Finance strategy, priorities and business challenges into coherent technology initiatives.

• Work closely with Finance Services, Finance Systems and Technology colleagues to understand business needs, identify opportunities and determine the most appropriate response.

• Shape and prioritise technology demand across Finance, distinguishing underlying business problems from proposed solutions and helping stakeholders in IT and Finance functions make informed choices and trade-offs.

• Develop and maintain a forward-looking view of Finance technology priorities and initiatives, aligned with wider Finance and Technology strategies.

• Translate Finance technology priorities into coherent programmes and plans, establishing clear outcomes, scope, sequencing, dependencies and measures of success.

• Lead the early shaping of initiatives, including discovery, requirements, options analysis, business cases, investment recommendations and delivery approaches in partnership with the IT Delivery team.

• Bring together multidisciplinary teams across Finance, Technology and third parties to progress initiatives from initial concept through delivery, adoption and ongoing improvement.

• Work with IT Delivery colleagues to establish appropriate programme governance, plans, milestones, dependencies, risks, issues and decision-making structures.

• Provide leadership and coordination across initiatives involving applications, data, integrations, automation, reporting and other technology capabilities.

• Work collaboratively with the Finance Systems team and internal IT teams on initiatives involving Elite 3E and the wider Finance application landscape, ensuring proposed changes are aligned with existing architecture, operational responsibilities and platform strategy.

• Ensure Finance initiatives are appropriately governed and engage relevant Architecture, Security, Data, Risk, Procurement and other Technology capabilities where required.

• Provide senior stakeholders with a clear and transparent view of programme progress, risks, dependencies, investment requirements and decisions, ensuring issues are surfaced early and appropriate action is taken.

• Support the definition and tracking of expected business benefits, ensuring technology initiatives remain focused on the outcomes that justified the investment.

• Challenge stakeholders constructively where requirements, priorities or proposed solutions do not sufficiently address the underlying business need.

• Identify opportunities to simplify processes, improve colleague experience and make better use of existing and emerging technology.

Skills and capabilities

• Strong technology leadership combined with a pragmatic and collaborative approach.

• Exceptional stakeholder management, communication and influencing skills, with the credibility to operate effectively with senior Finance and Technology leaders.

• Able to understand complex business problems and translate them into clear technology requirements, options and deliverable initiatives.

• Strong programme leadership skills, with the ability to bring structure, momentum and clarity to complex initiatives involving multiple teams, stakeholders and dependencies.

• Able to move comfortably between strategic direction and delivery detail, identifying where intervention, escalation or decision-making is required.

• Strong judgement and the confidence to challenge constructively while maintaining trusted relationships.

• Able to operate across organisational boundaries and lead multidisciplinary teams without relying on direct line-management authority.

• Comfortable balancing strategic priorities with delivery realities, including cost, risk, complexity, dependencies and organisational capacity.

• Strong understanding of programme governance, dependency management, risk management, planning and benefits realisation.

• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with an ability to bring structure and clarity to ambiguous problems.

• Commercially aware and comfortable developing business cases and recommendations for technology investment.

• Highly organised, self-directed and comfortable managing several initiatives at different stages of their lifecycle.

Desired Experience

• Experience working with Finance functions or delivering technology change involving financial processes.

• Understanding of the technology needs of a professional-services or similarly complex global organisation.

• Familiarity with enterprise finance platforms such as Elite 3E, or comparable ERP / practice-management systems.

• Understanding of legal-sector finance concepts such as matter management, time recording, billing, work in progress and financial reporting.

• Experience leading or coordinating complex technology programmes involving multiple workstreams, business functions, technology teams and third parties.

• Experience of Agile, iterative and traditional delivery approaches.

• Experience working with Architecture, Security, Data, Procurement, Risk and other enterprise technology functions.

• Experience taking technology initiatives from discovery and requirements through delivery, adoption and ongoing improvement.

• Experience working with enterprise applications, data, integrations and technology-enabled business processes.

Ready to apply?

If you’re excited about using your product mindset to transform finance systems and enable better decision-making across a global firm, we’d love to hear from you.

Inclusion

Freshfields is an equal opportunities employer and all applications received by the firm will be considered by the firm on the basis of their merit alone and we welcome applications from all suitably qualified individuals regardless of background. All offers of employment will be conditional on the candidate having/securing the right to work in the UK and providing the firm with evidence of that right (as required by the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006) prior to employment commencing.

Freshfields is a Ban the Box employer. We ask applicants to disclose criminal convictions only when a conditional job offer is made. A conviction does not automatically lead to withdrawal of the offer: we make decisions on a case by case basis and take a number of factors into account (eg the role you are applying for and the circumstances of the offence). You would have the opportunity to discuss the matter with us before we make a decision.