Position: Chief Financial Officer
Reports To: Chief Executive Officer and Board of Managers
Location: Kansas City metropolitan area (company headquarters) ~2-3 days per week on-site initially, scaling back over time.
Travel: Periodic travel to operating and acquired-entity locations across the U.S. and Canada as integration activity requires
Compensation: Competitive base salary, performance bonus, and equity participation, commensurate with experience
Chamberlain Advisors is conducting a confidential executive search on behalf of a private equity-backed provider of services in the broader transportation and logistics sector, scaling across the United States and Canada through a disciplined roll-up strategy. Backed by institutional capital, the company is in a high-growth, acquisitive chapter, integrating newly acquired businesses while professionalizing its finance and accounting function for scale. Reporting to the Chief Executive Officer and serving as the lead finance business partner to management, the board, and the sponsor, the Chief Financial Officer will bring a hands-on, builder’s orientation — equally comfortable owning the close, breaking process bottlenecks, and telling the story behind the numbers — to establish a timely, reliable, and insight-rich finance function capable of absorbing acquisitions on repeat.
Core Profile: alignment with the following is required to get you in the conversation
- Hands-On Operational Builder & Entrepreneurial Ownership: You will own the finance and accounting function as a working leader rather than a delegator. In the early chapters you will get into the details personally — posting journal entries when required, standardizing the monthly close, and dismantling the bottlenecks that today push the close to roughly forty-five days against a target inside fifteen. You bring urgency, a high motor, and a genuine willingness to be on-site to fix the work at its source, setting the standard for the team you will build and develop.
- Accounting, Controllership & Financial Reporting Depth: You bring deep accounting and controllership expertise — a CPA and/or substantive controllership background is required — and you apply it to produce timely, accurate consolidated monthly financial reporting and quarterly board-level reporting packages. You do not simply tell the score; you tell the story, pairing results with the margin drivers, cost-of-sales and revenue trends, SG&A analysis, and forward commentary (MD&A) that leadership and the sponsor need to act. You lead annual budgeting and multi-year planning and forecasting, and you uplift the existing accounting team’s capability as you go.
- Process Optimization & Post-Acquisition Systems Integration: You will treat process improvement as core to the role, standardizing and automating today’s manual, siloed workflows so that acquisitions can be integrated on a repeatable basis. You will get the most from the company’s cloud-based ERP platform and reworked chart of accounts, mapping acquired-entity data and processes into established operating standards, and ensuring the people, process, and systems integration of each acquired business is planned, de-risked, and executed cleanly post-close.
- Private Equity-Backed Finance Leadership: Experience as a finance leader within a private equity or sponsor-backed environment is strongly preferred. You understand the reporting cadence, intensity, tight deadlines, and open, transparent, proactive, collaborative approach to communication – surfacing issues and presenting facts that come with institutional ownership. Lender relationships will be led by the CFO and supported by the PE sponsor — covenant compliance, banking relationships, and disciplined cash-flow reporting — that keep a leveraged, acquisitive platform on solid footing.
- Strategic Business Partnership & Cultural Fit: You will be a trusted business partner who sees around corners — surfacing issues, trends, and the levers to pull on pricing, cost, and margin, then influencing the right leaders to act on them. You will earn credibility across a largely blue-collar workforce, leading with authenticity, low ego, and team-over-title instincts. Direct M&A deal experience — diligence, quality-of-earnings, transaction accounting, and pro forma modeling — is a welcome plus rather than a prerequisite. A purely strategic finance executive who expects to delegate the details, operate primarily remotely, or wait for clean data before adding value will not succeed here; this is a builder’s seat.
Core Responsibilities & Scope Of Work
Finance & Accounting Operations
- Own the close: Establish a timely, accurate, and repeatable monthly, quarterly, and annual close, driving cycle time down from roughly forty-five days toward an inside-fifteen target and, ultimately, a tighter steady-state cadence.
- Lead hands-on: Stand up and enforce standardized accounting procedures and internal controls, personally executing core accounting work where needed to remove bottlenecks and stabilize the function.
- Build the team: Assess, develop, and uplift the existing accounting staff and controller capability, professionalizing roles and reducing reliance on manual, siloed effort.
- Ensure consolidation: Deliver accurate consolidated financial reporting across U.S. and Canadian, multi-entity operations, including newly acquired businesses.
Financial Planning, Analysis & Reporting
- Tell the story: Own preparation of the monthly financial reporting and quarterly board and sponsor reporting packages, pairing results with substantive MD&A — margin drivers, cost-of-sales and revenue trends, and SG&A analysis — rather than distributing figures without commentary.
- Drive budgeting and forecasting: Lead the annual operating budget and short- and long-range (1-, 3-, and 5-year) planning and forecasting processes in partnership with functional leaders.
- Surface the levers: Identify and quantify the pricing, cost, and operational levers that protect and improve margin, and translate them into actionable recommendations for the senior leadership team.
- Monitor performance: Conduct variance analysis against budget and forecast and provide regular, proactive insight on business performance, risks, and opportunities.
Process Optimization & Systems
- Standardize for scale: Re-engineer manual, siloed processes into standardized, automated workflows so acquisitions can be integrated on a repeatable basis.
- Maximize the ERP: Get the most from the company’s cloud-based ERP platform and reworked chart of accounts, leveraging out-of-the-box capability before adding complexity.
- Integrate acquired data: Map acquired-entity data and processes into established ERP operating standards, including multi-currency handling for Canadian operations.
- Pursue continuous improvement: Champion a continuous-improvement mindset across the function, identifying consolidation, automation, and efficiency opportunities that reduce cost and cycle time.
M&A Integration & Growth
- Integrate post-close: Lead the people, process, and systems integration of acquired businesses — consolidating financial operations, aligning charts of accounts, and standing up entities, permits, registrations, banking, and reporting.
- Plan and de-risk: Build integration plans aligned to the growth strategy that mitigate known risks, capture synergies, and include an immediate control assessment in collaboration with the controlling function.
- Support transactions: Contribute to diligence, transaction accounting, quality-of-earnings, net-working-capital, and opening-balance-sheet activity alongside the CEO and sponsor; deeper buy-side experience is a plus rather than a requirement.
- Monitor returns: Track post-acquisition financial performance, trends, and synergy realization, raising concerns to the board and sponsor on a risk-based basis.
Treasury, Leadership & Governance
- Communicate proactively: Maintain a consistent, professional, open, transparent, proactive, and collaborative approach to communication and status updates that give leadership and the sponsor confidence that risks are surfaced early, and the function is under control.
- Lead lender relationships: With the support of the PE Sponsor, manage banking relationships, covenant compliance, and disciplined cash-flow reporting, serving as a reliable steward to lenders in a leveraged, acquisitive environment.
- Partner with leadership: Serve as the lead finance business partner to the CEO, senior leadership, and the private equity sponsor, providing financial expertise and informed recommendations to move the business forward.
- Manage audit and compliance: Own external audit relationships and remediation and support tax and cross-border (U.S./Canada) compliance across a multi-entity, multi-state footprint.
Qualifications
- Fifteen or more years of progressive finance and accounting leadership, with increasing scope within growth-oriented, private equity-backed organizations.
- A CPA and/or substantive controllership background is required, with demonstrated technical accounting and close-management depth.
- A track record of operating as a hands-on finance leader willing to do the work personally rather than solely through delegation.
- Experience leading the monthly close and compressing close cycle time within a multi-entity environment.
- Demonstrated experience standardizing processes and leveraging a modern cloud ERP platform to support scale.
- Experience integrating acquired businesses post-close — people, processes, and financial systems; direct buy-side M&A experience (diligence, quality-of-earnings, transaction accounting, pro forma modeling) is a plus.
- Experience operating within a private equity- or sponsor-backed environment, including board and lender reporting, covenant compliance, and banking-relationship management.
- Strong FP&A capability spanning budgeting, forecasting, variance analysis, and KPI-driven performance reporting.
- Demonstrated ability to help scale a business through a meaningful multiple of revenue growth over a typical private equity hold period.
- Experience supporting a business through a period of rapid, acquisition-driven growth.
- U.S. GAAP experience required; familiarity with Canadian Accounting Standards for Private Enterprises (ASPE) and/or IFRS and multi-currency operations a plus, or a clear willingness to learn.
- Comfort operating in and earning credibility across a largely blue-collar, service-oriented workforce.
- Willingness to be on-site at company headquarters ~2-3 days per week initially, scaling back over time.
- Bachelor’s degree in accounting or finance required; MBA or equivalent experience desired.
About Our Client
Our client is a Kansas City based, private equity-backed provider of transportation services, scaling across the United States and Canada through a disciplined acquisition strategy. It is a service business in which its people are its product, and it is professionalizing the financial backbone — systems, processes, and reporting — required to grow with discipline.
Backed by institutional capital and actively executing its roll-up strategy, with multiple acquisitions anticipated each year, the company is entering its most consequential growth chapter. The Chief Financial Officer is among the most important hires the organization will make: the opportunity is to build a timely, reliable, insight-rich finance function from a hands-on foundation and to create the repeatable integration engine that will carry the platform through its next phase.
