Finance Graduate Scheme 2025

Finance Graduate Scheme 2025

Contract type: Permanent

Scheme Start Date: September 2025

Location: Hatfield (Blended working - 2-3 days in the office)

Working hours per week: 40 hours

Level: Entry Level - Graduate

Application Opening Date: Monday 28th October

Application Closing Date: Sunday 17th November

Starting Salary:   £32,500 (increasing by £4,000 per year for 3 years, then increasing to up to £55,000 upon scheme completion, subject to CIMA progression and dependent on performance)

To read more about Ocado Retail and our Graduate schemes, visit our Careers Page!

About Us

Our mission is to deliver joy in every shop, through unbeatable choice, unrivalled service, and reassuringly good value. 

We’re Ocado Retail, a market-leading, joint venture between Ocado Group and M&S and the world’s largest dedicated online supermarket ocado.com. Not only is Ocado.com the only place to shop a full range of M&S food online, it’s also the home to the widest online supermarket range in the UK and champion of small, independent brands. We’re also the brains behind Zoom by Ocado, our same-day grocery delivery service. 

Finance at Ocado Retail

The Finance team at Ocado Retail is embedded as key partners to teams across the business - from Buying to Marketing to Operations - adding value and delivering on both immediate and long-term strategy. Our commercial mindset, analytical eye, and control focus enable the business to deliver long-term, sustainable growth. 

What you’ll do

The scheme covers 3 years and will see Ocado Retail support you to achieve the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) qualification alongside three 1-year rotations across different teams within Finance, whilst also gaining exposure to the various areas of the business. Your rotations will see you working across three of the following Finance areas:

• Commercial Finance - with a seat at the table you will be helping the business make decisions to improve product profitability and customer experience, driving business performance
• Financial Planning & Analysis - with a birds-eye view of the whole company you will be helping set business targets and reporting back to senior stakeholders on performance
• Commercial Operations - with an ear to the ground you will be helping make key investment decisions to expand our network, improve operational efficiencies, and ensure we are making the right commercial decisions with our stock
• Financial Control – a fast-paced environment needs someone who can ensure that strong processes, checks, and controls are in place to deliver accurate internal and external reporting
• Accounting Centre of Excellence - our ACE team takes responsibility for key month-end and accounting activities, with a team who apply their accounting expertise and continuous improvement mindset to create an efficient, accurate, and well-controlled financial environment

Who you are

• Someone who is passionate about understanding the retail e-commerce environment, identifying business, market trends and understands customer behaviours and what makes a business profitable
• An analytical and a data-driven individual who can apply Excel skills to manipulate data and identify what it is telling us
• Someone with the ability to build and develop relationships across the business to deliver the best results for our customers
• Most importantly, those who exhibit our core values: always be curious, bring your best self and challenge what's possible!

Expectations During and After the Scheme

• You’ll get three rotations in teams across Finance, learning on the job, supported by your manager. There is also optional access to a Mentor and a Buddy to support you with getting settled into the business and kick-starting your career.
• You will also have CIMA tuition through an external provider to help you complete your qualification, with an assigned Grad Lead. To help you study, you will have allocated time from your working hours and additional time off for study, revision, and exams. 
• On top of that, you’ll be given exposure to the Finance Leadership Team through biannual demonstrations of your work, giving you crucial experience in creating presentations and speaking to senior members of the Finance team.
• Successful graduates will roll off the scheme after 3 years into a permanent position within the Finance team based on personal preference, performance during the scheme and ability level (dependent on role availability)

What You Need To Apply

• CV & Cover Letter - Why Ocado Retail? Why this scheme? What do you hope to achieve/gain?
• Commercial awareness and problem-solving ability
• Excel skills an advantage but not essential
• Graduate with a 2.1 or above from an accredited UK University
• The legal right to work in the United Kingdom upon scheme commencement and duration of the scheme

When will you hear from us?

We love that we get loads of amazing applications for our graduate schemes. To recognise that, we aim to keep you informed throughout the process.

To start with, we’ll take a look through each application and whether successful or not, we’ll let you know. Applications will close on Sunday 17th November 2024. Our aim to be in touch with anyone who’s applied within 2 weeks of that date.

After that, we’ll keep you informed between each stage. Given how many great applications we get, it can take some time, so please bear with us in between updates.

We treat all applications respectfully and fairly so unfortunately, if you miss the closing date we won't be able to make exceptions to extend stages. This wouldn't be fair to those candidates who have completed them!

How will we contact you?

Email, so make sure you’ve added careers@ocadoretail.com to your safe senders.

Our Learning & Development Promise

There are great opportunities to grow careers within our high-performing and innovative business. These range from deepening your experience and expertise to potentially taking on management responsibility or even pivoting your career to do something completely different. 

Our career management principles exist to help the realisation of career ambitions, whatever they might be.

Driven by you

You are in the driving seat of your career. We all have a responsibility to do the things that can help move our careers forward. That could mean completing some learning, using our career stories to understand how your colleagues have got to where they are today, or applying for a new role.

Supported by your manager

You should feel that you can have open and productive conversations with your manager about your career and development. They are there to coach you, act as a mentor, signpost opportunities and be an advocate for you within the business.

Backed by ORL

We are committed to ensuring that the right tools are there for you. Our learning system ‘Walnut’ is your one-stop shop for all your learning needs. 

What’s in it for you

By joining Ocado Retail you’ll have the chance to experience life at the world’s largest online retailer, work with an amazing bunch of people who challenge what’s possible each day, and grow your skills and career in online retail. 

If that’s not enough to tempt you, you’ll also get access to loads of great benefits to sweeten the deal. Here’s a taste of what we offer:

Health & Wellbeing: Private medical insurance with the option to add your family, Digital GP appointments, market-leading family policies, mental health support, discounted gym memberships, dental insurance, and more. 

Spend & Save: Annual bonus scheme split between personal and business objectives, recognition with reward platform, up to 7% matched pension contributions, 15% Ocado discount, 20% M&S discount, free breakfast every day in the office, electric vehicle leasing scheme and free shuttle bus from Hatfield station to the office.  

Never miss the moments that matter: Blended/Hybrid working, 26 days holiday plus 8 flexible bank holidays, options to buy an extra holiday, 2 weeks work from anywhere, and lifestyle break opportunities. 

Everyone’s welcome

We’re an equal opportunities employer. That means that we make sure all potential colleagues are treated fairly and equally. If you require reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, please let us know on the application form.