About Southland Trailers
Southland Trailers is a privately held, family-owned manufacturing company headquartered in Lethbridge, Alberta. We design and build a wide range of trailers — including industrial, dump, flat deck, and cargo models — sold across North America.
We are at an important point in our growth, where we are looking for a Chief Financial Officer who can help shape what Southland becomes next.
Our culture is grounded in humility, hard work, open communication, and continuous improvement. This is a business where the right CFO will have the opportunity to make a meaningful mark — not only on the finance function, but on the future of the company.
The Opportunity
This is not a maintenance role. It is a strategic and tactical business growth role.
We are looking for a CFO who will serve as a true strategic partner to the executive team and help architect the next chapter of Southland’s growth. As the CFO, you will bring financial clarity, operational insight, effective growth strategies to a business that is ready to level up.
You will step into a company with a solid finance foundation, a strong Controller leading day-to-day accounting, and a real platform to build from. From there, your mandate will be broader and higher impact: strengthen profitability, improve working capital performance, sharpen forecasting and decision support, manage liquidity with discipline, and ensure capital is deployed in ways that create long-term value.
This is a rare opportunity for an experienced finance executive who wants to influence strategy, modernize systems and processes, develop a strong team, and help build a more scalable, resilient business.
What You Will Lead
As CFO, you will own and elevate the financial architecture of the business. Your leadership will be felt across performance, planning, capital, cash, and team capability.
You will be expected to:
- Drive stronger financial performance through disciplined margin management, overhead leverage, and better business visibility
- Improve the company’s cash conversion and working capital effectiveness through strong cross-functional partnership
- Strengthen liquidity management, cash forecasting, and financial foresight to support confident decision-making
- Build credibility and confidence with lenders, ownership, and key external stakeholders
- Bring rigor to capital allocation, investment evaluation, and the follow-through required to ensure investments deliver results
- Improve the quality of forecasting, scenario planning, reporting, and KPI ownership across the business
- Modernize finance systems, processes, and decision support capabilities to support scale
- Build and develop a high-performing finance function that raises the standard across the organization
What Success Looks Like – Year 1
By the end of Year 1, Southland Trailers has a CFO-led financial operating system that makes growth more predictable, fundable, and repeatable — giving the business greater confidence as it scales.
In Year 1, success looks like:
- Profitable growth becomes a managed system.
By year-end, the CFO has established a repeatable profitability cadence that protects margin while scaling volume.
- Working capital becomes a growth engine.
By year-end, Southland Trailers funds more growth from improved cash conversion, not just from borrowing.
- Leadership gains cash confidence through disciplined liquidity management.
By year-end, leadership can make decisions with forward visibility on cash and liquidity on a weekly basis.
- Funding capacity is strengthened.
By year-end, Southland Trailers has clear debt capacity, covenant headroom visibility, and a credible funding strategy for the 2030 plan.
- Capital deployment turns into measurable results.
By year-end, Southland Trailers has a repeatable capital discipline that converts investment into throughput, quality, and capacity.
**Above targets may be refined in collaboration with ownership as priorities evolve.
Who You Are
You are an experienced finance executive with the judgment, presence, and operating depth to lead at a high level in a complex manufacturing environment.
You bring clarity to important decisions. You understand how strategy, operations, capital, and cash all connect. You know when to challenge, when to coach, and when to create structure that helps the business move faster and better. You bring strength in the following areas:
- Strategic and Commercial Leadership
You translate strategy into clear financial priorities, trade-offs, and economic choices. You help the executive team make sound decisions by grounding discussion in data, business reality, and long-term value creation.
- Operational Finance Acumen
You understand the realities of an operational business. Cost drivers like yield, scrap, rework, labor efficiency, freight, uptime, and warranty are not abstract concepts to you — they are levers you know how to connect to performance.
- Cash, Capital, and Financial Discipline
You have strong command of working capital, liquidity, covenant management, and funding strategy. You know how to turn profit into cash and how to bring discipline to capital deployment without creating unnecessary bureaucracy.
- Forecasting and Performance Management
You build practical, driver-based forecasting models and scoreboards that improve clarity, ownership, and decision-making. You raise confidence in the numbers and reduce noise around them.
- Leadership and Team Development
You build strong teams, develop talent intentionally, and raise the capability of the people around you. You know how to lead a function through growth, modernization, and change while maintaining trust and accountability.
You bring credibility, humility, and sound judgment. You can communicate effectively with ownership, lenders, and senior leaders, while also staying connected to the realities of the operation.
What We Are Looking For
The ideal candidate will bring:
- 15+ years of progressive senior finance leadership experience
- Significant experience in asset-intensive manufacturing, industrial, or similarly complex operating environments
- Experience operating at scale, ideally within organizations in the $500M+ range, or in businesses that have grown meaningfully in sophistication, complexity, and operational scope
- CPA designation required; MBA considered an asset
- Proven experience with lender relationships, debt structures, covenant management, and working capital facilities
- A demonstrated track record of building strong finance teams and elevating finance capability across a business
- Experience leading systems, ERP, finance modernization, or process improvement initiatives
- The executive maturity and leadership style to succeed in a privately held, family-owned, values-driven environment where accountability is high and relationships matter
The Offer
- Annual base salary in the range of $185,000 – $235,000 commensurate with experience
- Comprehensive benefits including extended health, dental, and vision
- RRSP matching program
- Flexible in-person or hybrid work arrangement based in Lethbridge, AB
We thank all applicants for their interest. Only candidates selected for an interview will be contacted.
