Own the performance, growth, client confidence, people, controls, and economics of ARDEM’s complete portfolio of client finance and accounting operations.
ARDEM needs a single senior leader who can manage the F&A portfolio as a business and an operating function. The role exists to provide oversight with clear portfolio ownership, stronger Project Owners, credible client leadership, disciplined controls, and scalable delivery across AP, AR, billing, cash application, reconciliations, accounting support, and related processes.
This is a hands-on functional leadership position. This person is highly technical in Finance and Accounting knowledge. This person is an expert in GAAP, taxation, and general US accounting principles. They lead and act as the technical expert to the Project Owners. The person must be able to lead managers and teams, represent ARDEM with clients, understand operating details, make decisions, and improve the function. The role is not intended for an administrator, coordinator, policy owner, or senior individual contributor who has not carried comparable accountability.
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All client finance and accounting engagements, including AP, AR, billing, cash application, reconciliations, accounting support, and adjacent F&A services.
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Direct leadership of the Project Owners / delivery managers assigned to the F&A portfolio.
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Approximately 30 client projects in the initial portfolio, many with teams of 1–3 FTE.
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Client governance from kickoff through stabilization and steady state, including at-risk and strategic-account reviews.
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Portfolio economics: revenue, direct cost, margin, capacity, productivity, retention risk, and expansion opportunity.
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Provide technical guidance to project managers for all accounting responsibilities
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Portfolio delivery and SLA performance
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Client confidence, retention, and escalation leadership
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Project Owner capability and accountability
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Staffing, capacity, succession, and personnel decisions
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F&A controls, documentation, quality, and readiness
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Portfolio revenue, cost, margin, and productivity
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Functional training standards and production readiness
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Support for discovery, solution design, transitions, proposals, and expansion
While all four pillars are equally important within the organization, in this role, the focus of this role is Client Satisfaction and Employee Satisfaction. The ability to support Revenue and Cost related initiatives will help you to grow within the organization.
Client satisfaction
Clients know who is accountable, receive proactive communication, see risks early, and experience controlled, dependable delivery.
Employee satisfaction
Managers provide clarity, coaching, fair accountability, development, and a working environment in which capable people can succeed.
Revenue
The function protects retention, supports expansion, enables new business, and builds capacity for profitable growth.
Cost and productivity
The leader controls staffing, utilization, rework, preventable failure, external depend, and the cost of weak management or poor planning.
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Own the complete operating performance of the assigned function, including priorities, standards, people, client impact, risk, and results.
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Establish clear accountability below the role so responsibilities do not remain concentrated with executive leadership.
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Build dashboards, review cadences, decision rights, escalation paths, and documented follow-through.
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Identify structural weaknesses and recommend the organization, roles, skills, and capacity required for the next stage of growth.
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Technical expert on all F&A related projects
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Create clear senior accountability for client-impacting commitments and material risks.
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Participate directly in kickoffs, strategic reviews, at-risk situations, and major decisions relevant to the function.
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Work with Commercial, Operations, Quality, Talent, Technology, Finance, and future Solutions/Transition resources without transferring the role’s own accountability.
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Bring facts, options, recommendations, owners, and dates to escalations rather than forwarding problems.
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Own hiring quality, role clarity, performance management, coaching, development, engagement, retention, succession, and necessary personnel changes.
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Assess managers and key contributors based on demonstrated outcomes, judgment, client presence, control, and leadership behavior.
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Create backup depth and reduce dependency on individual employees.
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Hold managers accountable for timely feedback, accurate performance evidence, and completion of development or corrective actions.
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Provide direction and “coaching” to junior level leaders
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Understand the revenue, direct cost, productivity, capacity, external spend, and business value connected to the function.
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Protect client retention and enable responsible growth.
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Identify avoidable cost, rework, weak utilization, poor prioritization, and recurring management burden.
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Make recommendations that balance client experience, employee sustainability, revenue opportunity, risk, and cost.
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100% Customer Satisfaction
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High Employee Satisfaction
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High Employee Retention
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Cost and Productivity Improvements
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Positive contributions to Expansions and Revenue Generation
12–15+ years in BPO, BPM,
- d services, managed finance operations, or a comparable multi-client environment.
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Expert knowledge of GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) and financial reporting.
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Proven track record in budgeting, forecasting, and tax compliance.
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Demonstrated leadership of multiple F&A accounts, teams, or service lines rather than one internal accounting department.
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Strong client-facing experience with Controllers, CFOs, finance leaders, and operational stakeholders.
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Working knowledge depth across AP, AR, reconciliations, accounting controls, month-end support, and related finance operations.
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Evidence of improving underperforming teams, strengthening managers, and making difficult personnel decisions.
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Strong operational and financial management; CA/CPA is preferred.
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Proven history of serving as the primary point of contact for external auditors and preparing audit schedules
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Comprehensive experience managing the full cycle of the general ledger, journal entries, month-end closings, and reconciliation processes.
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Own outcomes rather than coordinate activity or report problems upward without a recommendation.
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Collaborate amongst leaders and peers to enforce a team-centric approach.
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While there is a clear definition of ownership, ARDEM values cross-departmental and team based initiatives. People are encouraged to collaborate both with junior leaders, peers, and senior leaders to ensure highest customer satisfaction.
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Remain close enough to the work to challenge assumptions, diagnose issues, and coach managers without becoming the default individual contributor.
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Use facts, operating data, and direct observation to make decisions.
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Communicate early and clearly when commitments, controls, people, clients, or economics are at risk.
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Make and document necessary personnel decisions; do not preserve weak structures because change is uncomfortable.
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Work across functions without transferring accountability or allowing cross-functional ambiguity to become client risk.
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Build repeatable systems, cadences, standards, and management depth so the function becomes less dependent on founders or heroic individuals.
Priority should be given to candidates from BPO, BPM, d services, managed services, outsourcing, professional services, or comparable environments where leaders are accountable for multiple clients, teams, service commitments, and business outcomes. Title matching alone is insufficient; recruiting must validate actual scope and authority.
Primarily corporate accounting experience without managed-services,
- d-services, or multi-client leadership.
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A senior title without direct accountability for managers, clients, portfolio economics, and personnel decisions.
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Treats quality, training, staffing, or client communication as someone else’s responsibility.
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Cannot explain how they have improved margin, utilization, retention, control, or manager performance.
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Overly high-level leadership style with limited willingness to inspect work and operating evidence.
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Describe the largest multi-account F&A portfolio you personally owned. What were the revenue, team size, client types, and service lines?
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Walk through an account that was failing. How did you diagnose the problem, what decisions did you make, and what changed?
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How do you determine whether a Project Owner is capable, coachable, wrongly placed, or should be replaced?
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What operating data would you require each week across 30 small and mid-sized accounts?
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How have you protected margin while improving service quality and employee stability?
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How would you participate in solution design for a new AP or AR opportunity without taking ownership away from Commercial?
Provide a fictional portfolio of eight F&A accounts with mixed SLA, margin, staffing, quality, and client-risk data. Ask the candidate to prepare a 30-minute portfolio review identifying priorities, management actions, client actions, people decisions, and the first four metrics they would implement.
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Actual span of control and decision authority, not only title.
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Client-facing credibility and behavior under pressure.
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Quality of people decisions and willingness to address weak performance.
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Ability to create operating discipline and improve results.
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Truthfulness regarding failures, tradeoffs, and personal accountability.
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Do not hire based primarily on title, company brand, presentation quality, compensation, or immediate availability.
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A candidate must demonstrate both functional depth and management ownership.
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A strong overall impression cannot compensate for weak evidence in integrity, client communication, people leadership, decision-making, or accountability.
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Every interview decision should document demonstrated strengths, material risks, development needs, and unresolved verification items.
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Urgency to fill the role should not lower the standard; a weak senior hire creates broader and longer-lasting organizational risk than a vacancy.
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Confirm portfolio inventory, account ownership, staffing, client status, economics, controls, and major risks.
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Assess every F&A Project Owner and identify immediate coaching, restructuring, hiring, or replacement needs.
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Establish weekly operating, risk, and financial review cadences.
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Join priority client conversations and establish a clear senior escalation path.
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Define portfolio-wide minimum standards for documentation, backup readiness, control evidence, and production release.
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Deliver a 180-day improvement plan covering retention, margin, management depth, staffing, quality, and expansion support.
Final title
Confirm whether the recommended title accurately reflects scope and the external talent market.
Reporting line
Confirm the initial reporting line and any planned transition.
Inherited team
Confirm current direct reports and known capability gaps.
Budget authority
Define approved hiring, vendor, travel, compensation, and operating boundaries.
Success measures
Set baseline measures during the first 60 days, then finalize 12-month targets.
Search strategy
Identify target companies, candidate profiles, compensation range, and recruiter ownership.
ARDEM is hiring a functional owner, not an additional coordination layer. The successful candidate must be able to assume real accountability, strengthen the management team, create client confidence, improve the operating system, and make the function increasingly capable of scaling without daily executive intervention.
