Build the investment capability of a new strategic authority, then lead its finances into its first mayoral term.

Every senior career builds up a sense of what an exceptional organisation could look like: how it decides, how its people work together, and how it earns trust. For a finance leader, that picture is sharper still. Most spend their careers managing budgets and protecting what they inherited. Few get the chance to build an investment capability from the start. This is that chance.

Sussex & Brighton Strategic Authority is new, and the important things are still being decided. We have cross-party support, a prosperity strategy and a growing investment capability, and elected members from all three Constituent Councils are closely involved in our work. Our culture, our ways of working and our governance are open to the leaders we appoint now. We are lean by design and determined to work differently.

Our region gives that work real weight. Brighton & Hove, Crawley and Gatwick sit alongside market towns, rural communities and a coastline stretching from Chichester to Hastings. Each has its own strengths, and each faces challenges that need fresh thinking. Finance and investment are how we turn that potential into lasting public value.

That is why this role goes well beyond budget management. You will develop our investment strategy and turn regional priorities into an investable pipeline, using blended finance, co-investment, revolving funds, loans, guarantees and joint ventures where lawful and appropriate. You will work with Government, institutional investors, businesses and our Constituent Councils to attract funding and bring in private investment. The timing makes it exceptional. Fire and rescue functions transfer to us in April 2027, our first Mayor is elected in May 2028, and Government is moving more powers and funding to strategic authorities that can show they are ready. You will build the frameworks that make us ready.

As our Section 73 Chief Finance Officer, you will hold statutory responsibility for our financial affairs, with direct access to the Board and, once elected, the Mayor. You will lead our financial strategy and Medium Term Financial Plan, set the financial side of our Local Assurance Framework with the Monitoring Officer, and lead our commercial strategy, procurement and audit arrangements. The directorate is still taking shape, and you will decide what capability it needs as functions and funding grow.

You will be a qualified accountant with substantial senior financial leadership experience in local government or a comparably complex organisation. Beyond that, we want curiosity and creativity: evidence that you have unlocked investment or shaped financing and commercial arrangements, built consensus across organisations with different priorities, and given candid advice when it mattered. You will know the difference between responsible experimentation and unacceptable risk to public funds. Your expertise matters, and so does how you lead.

In return, you will join our Leadership Team as one of three senior leaders we are appointing now, for law, governance and compliance, finance and investment, and people. Together you will build a leadership team that challenges convention and creates an organisation people want to join. You will have a direct line to the Board, the freedom to design a finance and investment function around what the Authority needs rather than what it has inherited, and a leading voice in funding and investment discussions with Government and partners.

Bring everything you’ve learned. Then go further. So, what will you build?