Chief Financial Officer

Collins Engineers, Inc. • Full-time • Chicago, IL, US • $225k - $250k / year • 12h ago

The Chief Financial Officer (CFO) is a core member of the executive leadership team and a strategic partner in shaping the firm’s future. The CFO is responsible for the overall financial strategy, performance, and integrity of the organization. This leader sets the tone for financial discipline, transparency, and long-term value creation while enabling growth across all offices. Operating as a strategic partner to the President, the CFO leads the organization establishing financial strategy, allocating capital, managing risk, and building the financial capabilities required for sustained success.

This role plays a critical part in shaping the organization’s strategy, ensuring that financial insights, data, and discipline inform all major business decisions. This role reports to the President.

Responsibilities

Strategic Leadership & Executive Partnership

Serve as a trusted strategic advisor to the President and executive leadership team, shaping firm-wide strategy, long-range planning, capital priorities, and major business decisions through a financial and enterprise-value lens.
Translate financial insight into actionable enterprise strategy, guiding growth investments, geographic expansion, service-line development, pricing discipline, and resource allocation.
Provide forward-looking analysis and executive recommendations that clarify tradeoffs, quantify risk-adjusted returns, and balance near-term performance with long-term resilience, scalability, and value creation.
Influence executive decisions beyond the finance function by bringing an enterprise perspective to strategic priorities, market opportunities, operating risks, organizational capacity, and investment choices.
Establish an enterprise-wide operating cadence that reinforces accountability, financial discipline, transparency, and consistent decision-making across offices, practice areas, and leadership levels.
Build financial acumen among operational leaders by ensuring they understand the economic drivers of the business and can use key performance metrics to improve profitability, utilization, cash flow, and strategic execution.

Financial Planning & Performance

Lead the firm’s financial strategy and key performance metrics, aligning revenue growth, utilization, multiplier, profitability, cash flow, working capital, and capital structure with the firm’s strategic objectives and long-term value creation.
Drive integrated annual budgeting, long-range planning, forecasting, and scenario modeling that connect strategic priorities to financial capacity, operational execution, and measurable enterprise outcomes.
Provide forward-looking financial insight and executive-level decision support to the President and executive leadership team, translating complex financial and operational data into clear priorities, tradeoffs, and recommended actions.
Track results against established KPIs, and identify trends, risks, and growth opportunities.
Ensure resources are allocated effectively across the organization to maximize return on investment and support strategic priorities.

Accounting, Controls & Compliance

Set the financial governance agenda for the organization by ensuring timely, accurate, and strategically relevant reporting that gives the President and executive leadership team clear visibility into performance, profitability, cash flow, risk, and enterprise value creation.
Provide executive oversight of accounting, audit, tax, and compliance functions, strengthening financial governance, optimizing tax strategy, and maintaining institutional credibility with financial stakeholders, including auditors, banking partners, insurance advisors, and other professional advisors.
Design and evolve scalable internal controls, enterprise risk practices, and financial governance frameworks that enable disciplined growth, consistent decision-making, and operational accountability across a multi-office firm.
Serve as a strategic financial advisor on engineering contract structures, fee strategy, risk allocation, project economics, utilization, multiplier, and margin performance for public and private sector work, ensuring decisions protect profitability and support long-term organization value.
Anticipate, assess, and mitigate financial, operational, and strategic risks that could affect profitability, liquidity, growth capacity, or organization value and serve as the executive escalation point.
Protect and enhance long-term enterprise value through initiative-taking risk assessment, disciplined capital stewardship, sound governance practices, and informed executive decision-making.
Ensure regulatory compliance and strong corporate governance while aligning financial controls, policies, and risk tolerance with the organization’s strategic objectives and growth trajectory.

Growth, M&A & Strategic Investment

Partner with the President and executive leadership team to shape, evaluate, and execute the organization’s growth strategy.
Support organic growth initiatives and assess mergers, acquisitions, and expansion opportunities through financial modeling, due diligence, and integration planning.
Provide financial leadership in evaluating new business opportunities, investments, and strategic initiatives.
Cultivate and manage strategic relationships with external financial stakeholders, including auditors, banking partners, insurance advisors, and other professional advisors—to support capital access, risk management, audit integrity, and long-term enterprise value.
Ensure financial strategy is aligned with operational execution across all offices.

Finance Team Leadership & Talent

Recruit, develop, and retain a high-performing finance team with the capabilities needed to support current operations and future growth.
Establish clear objectives and KPIs for finance leaders, providing expectations, coaching, feedback, and accountability for results.
Lead succession planning for critical finance roles and contribute to broader organizational leadership development.
Promote a culture of continuous development, accountability, and performance excellence within the finance function.
Partner with HR on workforce planning, compensation strategy, and organizational design to ensure the function is structured and staffed for both current performance and future practice growth.

Financial Systems & Technology

Champion the adoption of financial systems, reporting tools, and analytics capabilities that improve accuracy, efficiency, visibility, and business insight.
Lead the modernization of financial processes through automation, data analytics, and digital transformation.
Foster a culture of continuous improvement within the finance function and across the organization.

Ethics & Financial Integrity