[Remote] Senior Lead, Finance Business Partner

Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Pearson is hiring a Senior Lead, Finance Business Partner to lead finance for its K12 Assessments portfolio. The role partners with business leaders on commercial strategy, forecasting, investment, contract and joint-venture governance, and leads the finance team.

Responsibilities

• Partner with the MD and Leadership Team to shape commercial strategy, ensuring decisions are grounded in robust financial insight and a clear view of each business's unit economics
• Own the financial lens on the portfolio's core economic drivers: contract wins, renewals and lifetime value; test volumes and price realization; candidate conversion and attach economics; cost-to-serve and content investment returns
• Build rigorous bid and renewal economics — incremental revenue versus incremental cost-to-serve on state RFPs, pricing posture by contract, and disciplined evaluation of scope expansion opportunities within existing programs
• Bring a forward-looking, external perspective — state funding and policy developments, demographic and pipeline trends, competitor performance — and translate it into implications for plans and pricing
• Operate a no-surprises partnership with the US K12 Executive Partner, Finance: early elevation of emerging risks and opportunities — including contract renewals, state budget developments and policy changes — quantified and framed with recommended actions
• Own the monthly performance narrative for K12 Assessments: drivers and variances versus plan, forecast movements and the leading indicators behind them, communicated with clarity to the MD, the Business Unit and Group
• Bring discipline to revenue forecasting across three distinct models — long-term contracts recognized on percentage of completion, short-cycle registration-driven testing volumes, and candidate-funded program fees — with rigorous cost-forecast governance underpinning each
• Represent K12 Assessments in US K12 Business Unit forecast, planning and risk-and-opportunity reviews; ensure the portfolio's numbers, assumptions and story are consistent at every level they are told
• Maintain a current, honest view of the risk and opportunity register, with owners and mitigation plans
• Oversee the financial governance of the GED joint venture, including intercompany service arrangements, royalty obligations and partner reporting — ensuring charging arrangements remain accurate, contractually compliant and well evidenced
• Maintain a complete view of the state contract portfolio — terms, scope, profitability and renewal exposure — and lead finance support for major renewals and new-state pursuits
• Manage financial arrangements with internal service providers across Pearson, including test delivery and operations services, ensuring clear, fair and well-governed cost arrangements
• Lead the annual operating plan and long-range plan for K12 Assessments, embedding commercial and market perspectives into forecasts and ensuring targets are ambitious and credible
• Partner on capital allocation and investment decisions — including significant ongoing content and product development investment — ensuring returns exceed hurdle rates and investments deliver against their cases
• Define and track performance metrics aligned to commercial success across the portfolio — contract health, volumes, price realization, attach rates and margin — driving accountability for outcomes
• Develop and embed consistent frameworks, methodologies and financial tools that raise the quality of decision-making across three businesses with different operating rhythms
• Champion data-driven decision-making, automation and AI-enabled ways of working across the finance team and the business
• Act as the conduit between the business and Finance Operations and Centers of Expertise, ensuring technical and process excellence is built into business practice
• Build and lead the K12 Assessments finance team, bringing finance professionals from three heritage businesses together as one team; develop talent, foster collaboration and plan succession
• Build strong partnerships across US K12 Business Unit finance, Group Finance functions and other teams
• Role model Pearson behaviours

Skills

• Professional finance qualification and significant experience in senior finance business-partnering roles with strong commercial exposure
• Demonstrated ability to influence executive stakeholders, provide independent challenge and shape strategic decisions
• Deep expertise in financial planning, forecasting, investment analysis and commercial performance management
• Proven track record of translating complex analysis into clear, actionable insight — and of communicating performance, risk and opportunity upward with candour and precision
• Strong understanding of materiality and the ability to prioritize across competing agendas in a fast-moving environment
• Ability to identify business risk early and implement mitigation; instinct for stewardship alongside growth
• Collaborative leadership style with a proven capability to build and develop high-performing, cross-cultural teams — including integrating teams from previously separate organizations
• An enterprise mindset: comfortable operating across organizational boundaries in a matrixed structure, including shared corporate functions

Benefits

• Eligible to participate in an annual incentive program.

Company Overview