Our goal is that the NSTA continues to be a ‘Great Place to Work’. Offering a flexible 37-hour week working environment with hybrid model (40% office working) and up to 2 accruable flex days per month. Work life balance is very important to us with a workplace culture that fosters collaboration, respect, and professionalism. In addition, we offer a range of benefits including a competitive pension - employer contribution (28.97%).
Brief overview of role
This is an exciting opportunity to play a key role in the team responsible for shaping and actioning the NSTA’s approach to difficult and complex questions about the financial health of our licensees both now and in the future and putting that approach into practice.
This role would require a qualified accountant or corporate finance professional looking for a new challenge. The role offers the experience of working in the public sector and the opportunity to gain exposure to industry leaders in some of the UK’s largest and most technically and commercially complex industries, including both oil & gas and carbon capture and storage.
In performing their role, the successful candidate will need to employ both financial and commercial knowledge and experience, working closely with other team members, to balance the benefits of attracting and retaining investment against any risks associated with that investment. This will include forensic due diligence of licensees and investors to inform the NSTA’s decision makers as to the level of financial risk associated with a wide variety of decisions associated with operational and M&A activity within the industry. The successful candidate will also assist the other team members in identifying potential longer term financial threats to the basin and have involvement in due diligence of other areas of importance to the NSTA relating to non-financial matters such as the quality of an entity’s governance structures and its ESG disclosure.
The role will require liaison with senior financial officers of licensees and senior colleagues from the Regulation and Operations directorates of the NSTA and across Government. To be successful the post holder will need to be comfortable building strong professional relationships both inside the NSTA and out.
Detailed job description and key responsibilities
Reporting to the Senior Financial Manager, the role requires an aptitude for solving complex, contentious and sometimes high-profile problems and independent working.
The successful candidate’s duties will include:
· Undertaking financial diligence and analysis that will play a significant role in informing the decision-making activities of the NSTA.
· Interrogating complex financial models, using deep knowledge and experience of financial reporting, commercial activities and funding structures to work efficiently by focusing in on key areas of potential risk across a wide variety of scenarios.
· Interacting with senior individuals within industry to obtain information required to carry out the role, including clearly and robustly articulating why the NSTA requires certain information to carry out its regulatory duties.
· Developing strong working relationships with colleagues across the NSTA to enable technical and operational factors to be factored into financial analysis.
· Making, and effectively documenting, evidence-based judgements as to the financial risks associated with future events, the true outcome of which may be highly uncertain and subject to a myriad of influencing factors.
· Articulating these judgements to senior figures in the NSTA to enable them to effectively defend decisions when the NSTA’s position is challenged via a Judicial Review or other legal process.
· Working independently and prioritising workload to support the wider NSTA decision making process.
· Assisting senior team members in reviewing and refining the NSTA’s policies and procedures for assessing licensee financial capability.
· Supporting the NSTA’s approach to identifying commercial or transactional trends that increase the level of overall financial risk in the basin over the longer term and in identifying potentially financially vulnerable licensees.
· Supporting the Senior Finance Manager and Head of Licensee Finance in managing relationships with licensees in financial difficulties and working with them, their advisors and other bodies potentially affected to find solutions acceptable to all parties.
· Assisting with non-financial related diligence activities that the NSTA undertakes including the adequacy of corporate governance structures, the implementation of fit and proper requirements and reviewing the quality of ESG related disclosures.
Person specification
Competence 1: Decision Making & Judgement
Effectiveness in this area includes showing clarity of thought, flexible prioritisation, evidence-based analysis to evaluate options before arriving at well-reasoned justifiable decisions. The incumbent will deliver evidence-based strategies, evaluating options, impacts, risks and solutions.
Competence 2: Delivery
Effectiveness in this area is about working to agreed goals and activities and dealing with challenges in a responsive and constructive way, often working alongside colleagues to deliver success. This also involves building a culture of strong performance allowing delivery of outcomes with a firm focus on prioritisation and addressing performance issues resolutely, fairly and promptly
Competence 3: Collaborating, Influencing and Including
Effectiveness in this area requires collaborative working, sharing information and building supportive, responsive and respectful relationships with colleagues and stakeholders, whilst ensuring assumptions are challenged in order to influence outcomes to meet the NSTA’s goals and objectives.
Competence 4: Strategic and Commercial Thinking
The incumbent will demonstrate a commercial and sustained mindset and focusing their contribution on the activities which will meet the NSTA’s organisation goals and also recognising how these fit with wider UK priorities, such as the move to net zero carbon by 2050.
Specialist Skills, Qualifications, Experience, Licenses, Memberships or LanguageEssential:
· Qualified CCAB (or equivalent) professional qualification.
· An ability to prioritise and take a key role in a small team with competing priorities.
· Experience in interrogating complex financial funding and operational models, identifying both potential issues and potential mitigations and presenting conclusions to senior team members.· An ability to articulate a position and defend conclusions robustly when under pressure.
· Understanding of corporate financing across a range of equity and debt instruments and of the underlying priorities and working practices of banks, private and public equity investors and other financial institutions.
· Experience of the oil and gas sector at a level that provides a base understanding of the key commercial relationships and business practices and the principle technical challenges faced by the industry resulting in an ability to interact with industry colleagues from a commercial, operational and legal background to advise on the financial risks associated with a particular situation.
· Experience of building and maintaining robust and effective relationships across a range of stakeholders, both internally and externally to an organization.
Desirable
- · Risk management experience.
- · Auditing, due diligence or forensic accounting experience.
- · Experience working in a public sector or regulatory environment.
Job Details
- Salary £59,573
- Appointment Type Permanent
- Appointment Term Full time
- Vacancy Reference Number NSTA 455
- No. of posts 1
- Grade SEO
- Location Aberdeen
- Travel to other location within the UK? Occasional
- Level of Security Clearance Basic
- Medical Required? No
- Unless otherwise stated consideration will be given to requests to work on a part time or job share basis. Flexible working hours can also be considered.
Application details
- Closing date for applications 17 August 2025
- Anticipated shortlisting date 19th August 2025
- Anticipated interview date 27th August 2025 - Aberdeen
Personal information
Completed applications will only be accepted via the online application process below, however, if you do require the application form in a different format please contact us at Recruitment@nstauthority.co.uk quoting the recruitment reference number and job title
You should provide examples in your covering letter that best demonstrate your skills and abilities against the competencies and specialist skills. The maximum word count against each competence example is 2,000 characters. The information you provide will be assessed during the short listing stage and if you are invited to attend an interview, the indicated competence areas will discussed further.
When completing your application, you should use the STAR format (Situation, Task, Action and Result) methodology for each competence. All appointments are subject to successful completion of pre-employment checks
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Additional information on what you can expect as a North Sea Transition Authority employee
Use of AI in the drafting, completing or enhancing of your application must be declared at the time of submission of your application. Failure to do so may mean that your application is not progressed or assessed. Any over-reliance on AI may reduce the chance of your application being successful.
Inclusion and Diversity statement
The NSTA is committed to embedding equality and diversity into all our policies and processes. We will aim to recruit, retain and promote staff on the basis of competence and regardless of characteristics including those listed under the Equality Act 2010. These protected characteristics are; age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion and belief, sex and sexual orientation.
The NSTA is an accredited Disability Confident Committed employer. We have also been awarded silver accreditation for the Gender Diversity Benchmark through Business in the Community, The Prince’s Responsible Business Network. In addition, we are signed up to their Race at Work Charter and implement its five principles. As a further commitment to attracting, retaining and developing a diverse workforce we have signed up to the Axis Pledge.
