Vice President Accounting and Finance
This is an exciting opportunity for an accomplished Finance & Accounting executive to join a high-growth, privately held organization at a pivotal point in its evolution. With strong year-over-year growth, continued investment in systems and infrastructure, and acquisitions on the horizon, the organization is looking for a strategic, hands-on leader who can help build and scale the finance function for its next chapter.
Reporting directly to the CFO, the Vice President of Finance & Accounting will serve as a key business partner while providing leadership across accounting, controllership, FP&A, business performance, and decision support. This individual will lead and develop an established team, strengthen the connection between Finance and Accounting, and help transform financial and operational information into meaningful insights that drive better business decisions.
This is not a role focused solely on reporting the numbers. The right person will bring a strong accounting foundation along with the curiosity, commercial mindset, and executive presence to understand what is driving the business, challenge assumptions, identify opportunities, and help shape where the organization goes next.
Responsibilities
- Serve as a strategic partner to the CFO and executive leadership team, providing financial insight, objective counsel, and decision support across key business and growth initiatives.
- Provide leadership across Accounting and Finance, developing existing leaders and creating greater alignment between controllership, FP&A, and the broader business.
- Oversee accounting, financial reporting, close, internal controls, audit, technical accounting, and related financial processes while ensuring accuracy, timeliness, and scalability.
- Strengthen budgeting, forecasting, long-range planning, management reporting, and business-performance analysis to provide greater visibility into trends, risks, opportunities, and key performance drivers.
- Partner with business leaders to evaluate revenue opportunities, pricing, gross margins, product and customer profitability, inventory, working capital, operating expenses, and cost-reduction opportunities.
- Play a key role in the continued evolution of the company’s financial infrastructure, including a significant finance/systems upgrade and integration, automation, process improvement, and the reduction of manual work.
- Support future growth and M&A activity, helping ensure the Finance and Accounting organization, systems, controls, reporting, and processes are positioned to successfully integrate and support acquired businesses.
- Build organizational depth across Finance and Accounting by mentoring and developing leaders, establishing clear accountability, and creating a collaborative, high-performing culture focused on continuous improvement and business partnership.
Desired Skills and Experience
- 15+ years of progressive Finance and Accounting experience, including leadership at the Director, Controller, Vice President, or comparable level.
- Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, Finance, or a related field; CPA required (inactive status acceptable), with an MBA or advanced degree considered a plus.
- Strong accounting and controllership foundation combined with meaningful experience in FP&A, forecasting, financial analysis, management reporting, and business decision support.
- Experience within consumer products, manufacturing, distribution, retail, or another inventory-intensive environment, with an understanding of inventory accounting, product costing, gross-margin analysis, and supply-chain economics strongly preferred.
- Demonstrated ability to analyze complex financial and operational information, identify the underlying business drivers, and translate findings into clear, actionable recommendations for executive leadership.
- Experience leading significant change, including finance systems implementations or integrations, process improvement, automation, organizational transformation, and ideally M&A or acquisition integration.
- Proven people leader with strong executive presence, business judgment, curiosity, urgency, and a track record of developing Finance and Accounting talent while successfully partnering across all levels of an organization.
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