Profusion Group is one of Australia's leading specialist search and recruitment firms, operating two complementary brands - Profusion and Kennedy Reid - across financial services, technology, projects and business support. With teams in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, we partner with some of Australia's most significant financial institutions on a daily basis, placing specialist talent across permanent, contract and project-based engagements.

We are a firm that values precision, accountability and genuine relationships with our clients, our candidates and each other. This is a business where the quality of your thinking and the depth of your client relationships are what drive outcomes.

THE OPPORTUNITY

This is an exceptional and genuinely rare opportunity for a senior relationship professional to step into one of the most strategically significant client-facing roles in Australian specialist recruitment.

As Strategic Account Director covering a 12-month maternity leave you will assume institutional account ownership across Profusion's three most important client relationships: two of Australia's major banks and one of the country's largest investment managers. These accounts collectively represent the Group's highest-volume, highest-priority client portfolio.

This is not a traditional recruitment role, and it is not a sales role. It is a senior institutional relationship and account coordination position, one that requires executive credibility, exceptional organisational rigour, and the ability to hold complex, multi-stakeholder relationships with confidence. If you have managed large, strategic accounts in financial services, HR, consulting, or professional services, and you understand what it means to be the single point of accountability for a client at the institutional level, this role was designed for you.

WHAT YOU WILL DO

You will be the Group's senior institutional point of contact for its three most strategically important accounts. In practice, that means:

- Building and sustaining executive-level relationships across each institution with procurement, talent acquisition, business line leaders and RPO/MSP intermediaries.
- Coordinating the Group's multi-desk, multi-brand delivery teams across each account to ensure the client receives a coherent, consistently excellent proposition not a fragmented or duplicated one.
- Actively driving commercial conversion translating strong institutional access into placement outcomes by working with internal teams on pipeline management, brief quality, candidate supply and conversion discipline.
- Developing and maintaining structured account plans for each client stakeholder maps,



chance pipelines, transformation priorities and quarterly engagement roadmaps.
- Facilitating warm-introduction opportunities between Profusion and Kennedy Reid specialist desks across accounts.
- Leading Executive Business Reviews and strategic planning sessions with client stakeholders at the institutional level.
- Monitoring account performance metrics (win rates, pipeline velocity, contractor numbers) and translating data into specific, desk-level improvement actions.
- Maintaining comprehensive account documentation ensuring all relationship intelligence is fully transferable at the conclusion of the contract.
- Presenting quarterly account performance updates to the Executive Chairman, Senior Leadership and to the Board periodically.

WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR

We are deliberately casting this search broadly. You do not need to come from recruitment. What you must bring is senior account management capability, financial services sector knowledge, and the personal presence to hold executive relationships with confidence.

The following backgrounds are likely to be strongly relevant

- Senior Key Account Manager or Strategic Account Director from a financial services, professional services, consulting, HR/talent management, or workforce solutions organisation.
- Client Director or Account Lead from an RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing), MSP (Managed Service Provider) or workforce advisory firm particularly with institutional banking or investment management clients.
- Senior HR Business Partner, Talent Acquisition Leader or Workforce Planning Manager with cross-functional stakeholder management experience at a major financial institution.
- Senior Relationship Manager from a major financial services firm looking to apply institutional relationship skills in a new context.
- Project-oriented professional with a track record of managing complex, multi-stakeholder programmes in a financial services environment.

Essential attributes

- Proven senior-level relationship management experience, you are credible in executive-level settings and can hold institutional client relationships independently.
- Financial services sector knowledge, you understand how major Australian banks and investment managers operate, who makes decisions,



and how supplier relationships work.
- Exceptional organisational discipline, this role involves inheriting and expanding a complex, multi-account knowledge base. Detail orientation is non-negotiable.
- Strong internal collaboration skills, you will be coordinating multiple specialist teams without direct line authority. Influence, diplomacy and clarity of communication are essential.
- Commercial acumen, you will be accountable for translating relationship strength into revenue outcomes.
- Analytically capable, comfortable reading placement data, win/loss metrics and pipeline reporting and turning these into specific operational actions.
- Proactive by disposition, this role is explicitly designed to shift from reactive to proactive client engagement. You share that orientation.

SKILLS PROFILE

Strategic Account Management

Institutional Relationship Leadership

Executive Stakeholder Engagement

Multi-Team Coordination

Account Planning & Governance

RPO / MSP Partnership Dynamics

Documentation & Knowledge Transfer

Workforce / Talent Management

Cross-Functional Collaboration

Data-Driven Performance Management

WHY THIS ROLE

A 12-month contract with genuine strategic weight.

This is not a placeholder. You will own the Group's most important accounts, institutions that represent the largest share of the firm's revenue, and you will do so with the full backing and support of the Executive Chairman and Senior Executive Leadership.

You will have access to a firm with an exceptional multi-desk, multi-brand capability set, a genuinely collaborative internal culture, and a client portfolio that includes some of Australia's most significant financial institutions.

For the right person, this contract offers 12 months of highly visible, senior institutional relationship work, the kind of experience that broadens and deepens a career in financial services, HR, professional services or specialist staffing.

Part-time arrangements considered.

We recognise that senior professionals returning to the workforce, transitioning between roles, or managing portfolio careers may not be seeking a five-day commitment. For a candidate of the right calibre, a 3–4 day per week arrangement is genuinely on the table. The priority is finding the right person for these accounts, not filling a seat.

Working from home:

At Profusion, we have three anchor days in the office and 2 days working from home. We are a flexible work place.

We are committed to building a diverse and inclusive team. We welcome applications from candidates of all backgrounds.

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📌 Strategic Account Director (Sydney)
🏢 Profusion
📍 Sydney