Senior Accountant

About us: We are one of the top three automotive retailers in the UK, proudly representing 32 manufacturer brands, selling a huge range of new and used vehicles from over 150 dealerships across the UK and Ireland.

We believe our people are our greatest asset, and we’re committed to recognising the valuable contribution each person makes. That’s why we continue to invest in a leading rewards and benefits package designed to support your career, wellbeing, and life outside of work.

Senior Accountant
Location: Gateshead / Hybrid (with occasional travel as required)
Hours: 37.5 hours, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm with a 30 minute lunch break.

The role

We’re looking for an experienced Senior Accountant to play a key role within our Central Finance team. This position provides essential support to the Central Finance Manager and is responsible for the accurate delivery of monthly financial operations, ensuring the integrity of transactional accounting, strong balance sheet control, and a timely month‑end close.

You’ll combine hands‑on technical accounting with leadership, partnership and commercial insight, helping to drive high‑quality reporting, robust financial governance and continuous improvement across the central function.

Key responsibilities

• Prepare monthly management accounts and commentary for review with the Central Finance Manager.

• Review and maintain monthly balance sheet reconciliations, ensuring accuracy and compliance.

• Support Finance Business Partners with annual budgets, forecasts, and ad hoc financial information requests.

• Lead, mentor, and supervise members of the finance team, including performance reviews and career development.

• Analyse working capital performance, highlighting risks and recommending actions to support healthy cash flow.

• Authorise large payments, requisitions, expenses (T&E), refunds, and write‑offs within agreed thresholds.

• Support the preparation of documentation for internal and external audits.

• Ensure strong financial governance, compliance, and adherence to finance policies and procedures.

• Build and maintain effective working relationships with Central and Group Finance teams and wider stakeholders.

• Champion a culture of continuous improvement, standardisation, simplification, and increased financial awareness.

About you

• Proven experience working as an Accountant, ideally within a complex or fast‑paced environment.

• Experience leading or managing finance team members.

• Strong technical accounting knowledge combined with sound commercial awareness.

• Qualified accountant (ACA, ACCA, CIMA or equivalent) preferred but not essential.

• Confident communicator with the ability to build effective relationships across the business.

• Proactive, detail‑oriented, and motivated to improve processes and ways of working.

Core Benefits:

• Competitive salaries with structured pay scales and progression as you grow within the business

• Generous annual leave that increases with your length of service

• Enhanced family leave, including 6 months’ full pay for maternity and adoption leave, and 2 weeks’ full pay for paternity leave

• Access to Techscheme for discounted technology purchases with flexible payments

Health & Wellbeing:

• Eyecare vouchers to help cover vision care needs

• Smart Health – 24/7 access to GP services to support your mental and physical wellbeing

• Dental insurance for everyday dental care and unexpected treatments

• Optional critical illness cover for peace of mind during life's most challenging moments

Financial Wellbeing:

• MyView PayNow – access a portion of your pay as you earn, with features to stream, save, and track your money through a user-friendly app

• Free will writing services to help plan for the future

• Flexible life assurance options and partner life assurance for added protection

Leisure & Lifestyle:

• Discounted gym memberships to support an active lifestyle

• Travel insurance to help you explore with confidence

• Access to home and technology vouchers

• bYond card and a wide range of exclusive retail and lifestyle discounts

We strongly believe in nurturing and providing our people with specific manufacturer brand and management training to enhance career development opportunities. We have a great bunch of people, and we like to celebrate and encourage success at all levels.

Lookers and Charles Hurst are an equal opportunities employer. We are committed to a working environment that is free from discrimination, is inclusive, and empowers our people to bring their whole self to work and reach their full potential.

If your application is successful, we will conduct relevant employment checks prior to you commencing employment with us. These will include verifying your recent employment, address, credit history and a standard criminal record check. For roles that require you to drive, a driving licence check will also be carried out. Please note, all offers of employment are made subject to a 6 month probation period commencing from your start date.

We take our data protection responsibilities very seriously and are committed to upholding and respecting your privacy rights. Information about how we will process your data including the types of data we collect, the purposes for which we use it, who we may share it with and how long we keep it are set out in our privacy notice. It also includes information about your individual privacy rights. Please make sure you read our Privacy Notice so that you understand how we may collect and use your data.