Senior Commercial Finance Manager

Not the scorekeeper. The person in the room when the number is decided.

BAT is a global multi-category consumer goods business. Our purpose is to create A Better Tomorrow™, with a vision to build a smokeless world: as at 31 December 2025, 34.1m consumers used our Smokeless Products, generating 18.2% of Group revenue, with an ambition of 50% of revenue from Non-Combustibles by 2035. Japan is one of the markets where the economics of that shift are being worked out in practice — which is what this job is for.

The role
You are the finance partner to Marketing and Trade in Japan, reporting to the Commercial Finance Controller and leading a team of one to three. You decide how we judge whether an investment worked, you challenge the business case before it goes forward, and you tell senior stakeholders things they would rather not hear. Sitting quietly and reporting the result is not what this seat is for.

What you'll own

• The financial case behind Marketing and Trade strategy — brand and product profitability, pricing decisions, and where the money should go next

• Business cases for new product launches, and the honest review afterwards of whether the returns arrived

• Evaluation of marketing investment and customer investment with key retail accounts — including recommending we stop things

• Channel profitability and revenue growth analysis, and what the competitive picture means for our own plan

• The annual plan and quarterly budget process for the commercial functions, and the variance conversations with budget holders

• Controls and governance for marketing spend — tightened where needed, without strangling the creative work

• A team of one to three: their work, their development, and their exposure to the business

What you'll bring

• Fluency with investment analysis — return on investment, net present value, scenario work — plus the commercial judgement to interpret it

• A working understanding of marketing and trade activity, so your challenge is credible to the people running it

• Experience of pricing and excise, and of a full company planning cycle

• The temperament to challenge senior people persuasively rather than combatively

Qualifications

• 8+ years as a finance business partner, ideally in consumer goods

• Fluent Japanese and English

Where this leads
Typical next steps from this seat are Commercial Finance Controller, Corporate Finance Controller, or Finance Director in a small-to-mid-size market outside Japan.