Head of Finance

Scale Suite Pty; Sydney; Hybrid; AUD 160,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote by default

Direct working relationships with the

Job summary

Scale Suite Pty is seeking a senior finance lead to own the finance function end-to-end across a portfolio of Australian companies, operating with client-driven urgency and a modern AI-enabled workflow.

You will close books, oversee payroll, and model runway for funding rounds while building scalable processes and playbooks that the team will use repeatedly. This is a strategic, high-impact role in a fast-scaling firm.

Qualifications

• Own an Australian finance function end-to-end, potentially as the sole finance hire.
• CA or CPA with 3+ years of ownership, including lodging BAS and carrying payroll.
• Founder-fluent; translate numbers into clear recommendations under pressure.
• AI-driven workflow experience is expected and valued.

Responsibilities

• Manage close, obligations, payroll oversight, and cash for each portfolio company.
• Migrate clients to sensible systems and fix broken ledgers and lodgements.
• Be the founder's finance counterpart on critical decisions, same-day response.
• Define standards for the team’s work and codify processes into playbooks and automation.

Skills

Finance leadership

Payroll oversight

Migrations onto systems

Founder-facing

Education

CA or CPA

Job description

The people who join now decide what this firm becomes.

About Scale Suite

We are the finance function for growing Australian businesses, delivered as one embedded team rather than a department they have to build. The model works and it is still early: demand keeps arriving faster than we can hire, which is the good problem and the reason this role exists.

Nothing about us resembles an accounting practice. No timesheets, no charge-out rates, no partner pyramid, no interest in ever having them. We have adopted AI across the daily workflow, an engineering team arrives shortly, and the playbooks are half written. Whoever takes this role writes the rest.

The role

You have probably been the first finance hire somewhere growing quickly: closing the books, running payroll, building the board pack, modelling runway before a raise, and fixing whatever broke that week. This is that, across a portfolio of companies, with the machine-building on top.

Half the job is owning your clients: their numbers, their obligations, their cash, and the founder who messages you directly and acts on what you say. Half is what surrounds it. New clients arrive messy, on the wrong system, with obligations already overdue, and you rebuild them properly. Our team produces the day-to-day work and you are the standard it is held to. When you solve something once, you turn it into method so the firm never solves it twice.

The commercial calls are yours too: whether a surcharge gets absorbed or passed on, whether a financing facility is worth what it costs, what the stock position really implies about the next two years. You work with clients wherever they are, in Australian hours, with about a day a week at their Sydney offices when it matters.

What you'll do

• Run the finance function for each business in your portfolio: close, obligations, payroll oversight, cash, all of it owned by you.
• Rebuild what arrives broken: migrations onto sensible systems, ledgers with a thousand unreconciled lines, lodgements missed months ago.
• Be the founder's finance counterpart on the decisions that matter, same day, no relay.
• Set the standard over the work our team prepares before it reaches a client.
• Write the firm's method as you go: playbooks, automation, the way a modern finance business should actually run.

Who we're after

• You have owned an Australian finance function end to end, quite possibly as the only finance person in the building.
• CA or CPA, three or more years of that ownership, including lodging the BAS yourself and carrying payroll.
• Founder-fluent. You turn numbers into a recommendation and hold your position when it is tested.
• Energised by a mess. A clean ledger on a loop is the job you already left.
• AI is how you work, not a policy you read. Days, not weeks, is your natural speed.
• You want to build this one, not collect a title and leave.
• Early enough in your arc that this is a step up with room to run.

This isn't for you if

• You want strategy without the close underneath it.
• Your payroll and lodgements were handled by another team.
• You are after a practice job with better furniture.
• Ambiguity bothers you, or you would rather inherit a tidy roster than build the machine.

The offer

• Above market pay, and a commitment to better your current package for the right person.
• Remote by default, around one day a week at Sydney client offices when it helps.
• Direct working relationships with our founder and with every founder in your portfolio.
• A genuine hand in building the firm, at the stage where that still means something.