Our client, an established architecture, design, and planning firm in the Inner North Shore of Boston, is seeking a Chief Financial Officer to join their team due to retirement of the existing CFO.
The CFO will serve as a senior business partner to the ownership and executive leadership team, with responsibility for finance, accounting, risk management, human resources, information technology, and administrative operations. This is a high-impact role for a strategic, hands-on financial leader who understands project-based professional services and can help the firm scale discipline, visibility, and profitability without adding unnecessary bureaucracy.
The Chief Financial Officer will lead the financial and administrative infrastructure of the firm. The CFO will be responsible for budgeting, forecasting, financial reporting, internal controls, cash-flow management, project accounting, business analytics, compliance, insurance, banking relationships, HR oversight, IT oversight, and operational process improvement.
The ideal candidate will bring strong financial acumen, executive presence, and the ability to translate financial information into practical guidance for principals, project managers, and business leaders. This person should be comfortable moving between strategic planning and detailed execution, including project profitability, billing, collections, utilization, contract risk, and resource planning.
Key Responsibilities
Financial Leadership and Strategy
- Serve as a trusted advisor to executive leadership, ownership, principals, and senior managers.
- Lead annual budgeting, forecasting, long-range planning, financial modeling, and scenario analysis.
- Provide clear, timely, and actionable reporting on revenue, profitability, cash flow, backlog, utilization, overhead, and working capital.
- Identify opportunities to improve margins, strengthen cash conversion, reduce risk, and support sustainable growth.
- Translate financial trends and operating metrics into practical recommendations for leadership and project teams.
Accounting, Reporting, and Controls
- Oversee all accounting operations, including general ledger, accounts payable, accounts receivable, payroll, billing, collections, month-end close, and year-end reporting.
- Ensure accurate and timely financial statements, management reports, and compliance reporting.
- Maintain and improve internal controls, approval processes, accounting policies, and financial procedures.
- Coordinate with outside accountants, tax advisors, legal counsel, insurance brokers, banks, and other external advisors.
- Ensure compliance with applicable tax, regulatory, insurance, and contractual requirements.
Project Accounting and Business Performance
- Oversee project accounting and reporting for a project-based professional-services environment.
- Partner with principals and project managers to monitor project budgets, schedules, billing, work-in-progress, revenue recognition, collections, and profitability.
- Develop dashboards and metrics that improve visibility into project performance and firmwide operations.
- Evaluate client, market-sector, service-line, and project profitability.
- Support contract review, fee development, consultant cost planning, risk assessment, and resource planning.
Cash Flow, Banking, and Risk Management
- Manage firmwide cash flow, working capital, banking relationships, credit facilities, and treasury activity.
- Improve billing cadence, collections strategy, cash forecasting, and aged receivables management.
- Lead enterprise risk management, including professional liability, general insurance, contract exposure, and financial risk.
- Review and improve policies related to client contracts, consultant agreements, billing terms, approvals, and project risk.
Human Resources and Administration
- Provide executive oversight of HR, including compensation, benefits, payroll, employee policies, recruiting support, compliance, and performance-management processes.
- Partner with leadership on workforce planning, retention, organizational design, succession planning, and employee development.
- Support a collaborative, professional, and service-oriented administrative function that enables project teams and business leaders to perform effectively.
Information Technology and Systems
- Oversee IT strategy, business systems, vendors, cybersecurity, data integrity, and technology investments.
- Evaluate and improve systems related to accounting, project management, timekeeping, reporting, HR, document management, and collaboration.
- Ensure technology platforms support operational efficiency, business continuity, reporting quality, and firmwide productivity.
Leadership and Team Development
- Lead, mentor, and develop finance, accounting, HR, IT, and administrative team members.
- Create a culture of accountability, transparency, responsiveness, and continuous improvement.
- Communicate with clarity, discretion, and sound judgment across executive, operational, and project-team audiences.
Qualifications
- Bachelor degree in accounting, finance, business administration, or a related field required; CPA, MBA, or comparable advanced credential preferred.
- Minimum of 10 years of progressive financial leadership experience, including senior-level responsibility for accounting, finance, and operations.
- Experience in architecture, engineering, construction, design, real estate, professional services, or another project-based business strongly preferred.
- Strong understanding of project accounting, labor utilization, billing, revenue recognition, WIP, cash-flow management, and profitability analysis.
- Experience overseeing or partnering closely with HR, IT, risk management, legal, banking, insurance, and outside advisory functions.
- Demonstrated strength in budgeting, forecasting, financial reporting, internal controls, and business-process improvement.
- Experience with Deltek, Ajera, Vantagepoint, QuickBooks, Sage, NetSuite, or similar accounting/project-management systems preferred.
- Ability to work effectively with owners, principals, executives, project managers, and cross-functional teams.
- High integrity, strong business judgment, excellent communication skills, and a collaborative leadership style.
The compensation for this position ranges from $250,000.00 - $350,000.00. Actual compensation will be dependent upon the specific role, office location as well as the individual’s qualifications, experience, skills and certifications.
To all staffing agencies: PKF O’Connor Davies TalentConnect (“PKFOD TalentConnect”) will not be utilizing agencies to staff this position. Please do not forward resumes to PKFOD TalentConnect recruiters, partners and/or employees at any of our locations regarding this position. Please be reminded, PKFOD TalentConnect is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes. All unsolicited resumes will become the property of PKFOD TalentConnect.
