Group FP&A Lead

Absolute Executive Recruitment Pty Ltd; Sydney; On-site; AUD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Absolute Executive Recruitment Pty Ltd is seeking a senior FP&A professional in Sydney to own the budget and forecast cycle, linking construction capital programs to financial outcomes and producing executive-level reporting.

The role focuses on building the planning model from scratch, improving the budgeting cycle with each iteration, and delivering board-ready reporting for institutional scrutiny.

Qualifications

• Evidence you've built FP&A capability rather than maintained it.
• Built a planning or reporting function from first principles.
• Experience linking construction program to financial outcomes.

Responsibilities

• Own the budget and forecast cycle for a large asset base.
• Build a model linking the construction program to financial outcomes and reporting.
• Develop a robust planning tool replacing spreadsheets and provide senior leadership with actionable insights.
• Create board and investor reporting suitable for institutional scrutiny.

Skills

FP&A

Budgeting

Forecasting

Driver-based modelling

Executive reporting

Education

CA/CPA/CFA or equivalent

Tools

Excel

Planning tool

Job description

The business

Large-scale infrastructure development. Multiple assets under construction, global institutional backing, and a lot of capital going out the door.

The economics are what make it interesting. Big upfront spend, long-dated contracted revenue, and a lag before asset earnings. There's no long history to extrapolate from and no settled view of unit economics yet. Someone has to build that view and then defend it to investors, lenders and the board.

The role

You'll own the budget and forecast cycle, help build the model that links the construction program to the financial outcome, and produce the reporting the executive actually runs the business off.

The first year is mostly building:

• The group planning model from scratch. Capex phasing, funding drawdown, the ramp from an asset going live to full contribution
• A budget and reforecast cycle that gets better each time it runs
• The metrics that define performance here, and executive agreement on them
• A planning tool. Right now it's spreadsheets, and that won't hold
• Board and investor reporting that stands up to institutional scrutiny

Who it suits

There are two routes in, and we're open on both.

You might come from a scale-up, where you built the reporting function yourself and worked without much precedent. The thing to be honest with yourself about is the balance sheet. This business carries a very large asset base and revenue turns up after the spend.

Or from infrastructure, energy, resources or transport, where you've modelled projects from investment decision through construction to revenue. Then the question is pace. There's no process to inherit here and no team of analysts (yet), and decisions happen faster than they do inside a large corporate.

Either works. What matters more is whether you've built something before. If your best work has been running a well-oiled cycle someone else designed, this will frustrate you.

What you'll bring

• CA, CPA or CFA, or the equivalent in experience
• Evidence you've built FP&A capability rather than maintained it. What you inherited, what you built, what changed
• Driver-based modelling across capex, funding and long-dated revenue, not just P&L
• You've implemented or rebuilt a planning tool
• The confidence to bring a view to an executive team, not just a number