Chief Financial Officer
Hale Capital Management | Fund Finance, Management Company and Firm Operations
Position Summary
Founded in 2008, Hale Capital Partners is an SEC-registered investment adviser managing approximately $284 million across private equity and public markets strategies, with a history of returns we consider quite compelling. As the firm grows, we are adding a full-time CFO to own finance, treasury, compliance oversight and operating infrastructure across our funds, co-investment vehicles and management company, and to build the platform for our next leg of growth. This is a hands-on seat in a lean firm, with a controller but no material layer between this person and the work.
Because we invest in turnarounds, culturally we go to the lowest level of data in everything we do, and we reconcile it ourselves. The CFO will own financial truth from the source records up, personally validating capital accounts, allocations, carry and track-record data against the LPA waterfall, cash ledger, general ledger and trial balance.
On that foundation, the CFO turns source data into forward-looking, predictive analysis on pacing, reserves, liquidity, concentration and scenarios that shapes how we deploy capital, rather than reporting history. We automate aggressively while staying intensely detail oriented, building durable, scalable systems that let the firm grow without adding complexity.
While the firm CFO role may take all your capacity, for extraordinary candidates with ambition, our CFO will have the opportunity to play a critical role in portfolio companies: diligence, 100-day finance workstreams, rebuilding portfolio company records and standing up reporting where none exists. For someone ambitious, career advancement here is unlimited. If interested after reading the full spec, answer a few questions here (NB turnaround oriented questions are for potential portfolio company value add): https://sd.com/l/hcp-cfo/
Who We Are Looking For
Read this section carefully. It is the real job description.
• You move faster than the people around you. Urgency is your default speed, not something you switch on for an audit or a close. You know how to move a decision without waiting for permission.
• You do not trust a number you have not traced. Your instinct is to trace every material number back to the waterfall and the ledger yourself before you sign off on it. You have done this on live books, under deadline, recently enough to still be fast.
• You have excellent judgment. You can tell a real control failure from a cosmetic one, an LP question that needs the Managing Partner from one that does not, and a provider mistake worth escalating from one worth quietly fixing.
• You own outsourced work as if it were your own. You have managed a fund administrator hard: held deadlines, pushed back on work that was not right, and changed providers when warranted.
• You have run lean. You have worked where senior people still do the work themselves. Scope and sequence flex; accuracy and controls do not.
• You thrive in turnarounds. Incomplete records, unreliable reporting and compressed timelines at an investment target energize you rather than slow you down.
• You want a bigger job than the one you have now. You are looking for scope and career advancement, not a title to defend.
First 90 Days
Early performance will be judged against these deliverables:
1. Build trust with the team through involvement, competence and sincerity.
2. Personally validate capital accounts and allocations. Across all funds, co-invest vehicles and SPVs, tie contributions, distributions, fees, carry and expense allocations to the LPA waterfall, the cash ledger and the trial balance, so you own the numbers from day one.
3. Own a firmwide cash and liquidity view. Management company and funds together, covering capital call pacing, reserves, expense run-rate and a rolling forecast the Managing Partner can decide against.
4. Take ownership of the regulatory calendar and compliance program end to end, confirming every obligation is covered and on schedule.
5. Own the track record of record. Company and fund-level cost, value, MOIC, gross and net IRR, realized and unrealized, tied to audited financials and data-room ready without rework.
6. Assess every service provider. Scope, cost, service level and quality, with a direct recommendation on each.
7. Build out the reporting layer. Fund performance, portfolio monitoring and management company dashboards used directly by the investment team. PowerBI fluency is a positive for turnarounds.
Key Responsibilities
Fund Finance and Investor Operations
• Own fund finance across all vehicles: accounting, reporting, tax, audits, capital accounts, fees, carry and allocations, with command of each down to source.
• Partner on quarterly letters, AGM and LPAC materials and investor communications.
Valuation, Performance and Track Record
• Own the quarterly valuation process, portfolio monitoring and fund performance reporting.
Management Company Finance and Treasury
• Own management company accounting, budgeting, forecasting and cash planning; hold the firm to its operating plan.
• Lead treasury: banking relationships, wires, payment controls and approval thresholds.
• Own compensation, benefits, payroll and people-operations support.
Compliance, Controls and Governance
• Oversee the compliance program and regulatory calendar with outside counsel and compliance providers: filings, policies, testing and recordkeeping.
• Maintain strong controls over entity governance, approvals, banking access, payments and confidential information.
• Own the audit relationship and maintain year-round audit and diligence readiness.
Service Provider Management
• Manage the fund administrator, auditors and all other providers, holding them to quality and deadlines while retaining ownership of the result.
Fundraising and LP Diligence
• Lead fundraising finance and operations workstreams (DDQs, data room, performance requests, ODD, subscriptions) and present directly to LPs and ODD teams.
Portfolio and Turnaround Support
• Time permitting, support new-investment diligence: quality of earnings, working capital, revenue analysis and the target's finance function.
• Provide finance capacity to portfolio turnarounds: rebuilding records from the GL and trial balance, standing up reporting and cash forecasting, and assessing finance leadership.
Systems, Data and Firm Infrastructure
• Automate and simplify recurring processes, applying AI where it demonstrably improves accuracy or cycle time, without losing line-level visibility into the data.
Required Qualifications
• Private equity experience in-house at a registered investment adviser. A hard requirement. Administrator, audit, family office or unregistered-vehicle experience alone does not substitute; you must have been accountable for an adviser's regulatory and reporting obligations.
• 10+ years in finance, accounting or fund operations, with meaningful time owning, not supervising, the underlying work.
• Deep command of private-fund mechanics: capital accounts, fees, carry and waterfalls, allocations, expenses, capital activity and partnership structures.
• Demonstrated experience reconstructing financial records from source (waterfall, ledger, trial balance, bank activity), whether at a fund, in a turnaround or in a restructuring.
• Direct familiarity with SEC and state adviser requirements and private-fund regulatory obligations.
• Exceptional attention to detail and a high standard for controls, confidentiality, accuracy and follow-through.
• Presence to deal directly with LPs, auditors, counsel and portfolio company leadership.
• Low ego, entrepreneurial and resourceful, and comfortable in a lean team where senior people remain hands-on.
• CPA or equivalent accounting background.
Preferred Qualifications
• Hedge fund or hybrid-vehicle experience alongside private equity, strongly preferred. We run both liquid and illiquid strategies.
• Experience through at least one institutional fundraise and one full ODD process.
• Track record of applying automation or AI inside a finance function to reduce manual work without sacrificing control.
Measures of Success
• Capital accounts, allocations and carry calculations that tie to source and stand up to LP diligence and audit without rework.
• Source data turned into predictive analysis the investment team uses, including live views of performance, exposures, liquidity and reserves.
• Clean audits, filings and regulatory obligations delivered on calendar, every period, without heroics.
• Management company operated at plan, with liquidity and pacing visible well ahead of decisions.
• Fundraising and diligence requests answered in days, from existing materials.
• A simpler, scalable platform: fewer manual steps, faster cycles, stronger controls, ready for the firm's next stage of growth.
• Continued confidence from our LPs and the Managing Partner in the firm's numbers.
What We Offer
• Real scope, quickly: a firmwide seat with direct exposure to investment decisions and a central role in scaling the firm.
• Direct involvement in turnaround management, diligence and transaction work for anyone who wants it.
• A small, fast, low-bureaucracy firm where decisions get made in days, not quarters, and where strong performance expands the job.
• Competitive compensation, including performance-based and long-term economic participation.
This Role Is Not a Fit If
• You have not personally built a capital account schedule, waterfall or allocation.
• You treat the fund administrator's output as the answer rather than a draft to be verified.
• You rely on outside consultants to know an adviser's regulatory obligations.
• You are looking for a defined, stable seat with fixed boundaries. This one will keep expanding.
