Manufacturing Financial Controller

- Succession pathway to Head of Finance
- Entrepreneurial, growth-focused SME manufacturer
- Own costing, inventory and financial control

About the company

Our client is an Australian, family-owned manufacturer and supplier of specialist construction products, serving residential, commercial and civil projects nationally. The business is entrepreneurial and growth-focused. Decisions are made quickly, leaders stay close to the detail, and there is a genuine appetite to invest in people and systems that support the next stage of growth. Products are manufactured locally and also imported from suppliers, and are sold through national retail, trade, wholesale and contractor channels. The business moves significant volumes of raw material through its production facility each month and operates at a fast pace. The result is a rich mix of manufacturing costing, inventory and supply chain challenges. The team is established, has low turnover, and holds high standards for accuracy, accountability and doing things properly in a close-knit family based culture.

About the opportunity

This is a newly created 2IC finance role, created as a deliberate succession move. You will report to the Head of Finance with fotted line to the Head of Operations and lead the a small purchasing & inventory team. This is not a traditional reporting role. Your first job is to get onto the factory floor and learn how materials move, how production is structured, and how costs flow across work centres, labour and machinery. You will then make sure the numbers reflect what is really happening.

In your first six months you will review and rebuild costing structures,



including BOMs, waste assumptions and cost allocations, so that costs link cleanly through to cost of goods sold. You will also take direct control of the inventory ordering process, fixing the gaps that have led to overstocking and reactive decisions, and put in place practical tools to track usage, flag variances and plan ahead for long lead-time imports.

Over the following six months you will embed reliable costing methods and replace manual workarounds with structured systems. You will lift the performance of the inventory team and improve supplier commercial terms. You will also progressively take ownership of reporting, compliance, audit readiness and internal controls. As your scope grows, you will oversee the business's systems and technology, with a genuine mandate to introduce automation and AI where they add value. Within the first year you will become the person who can run the finance function end to end, positioning you to step into the Head of Finance role as the business continues to grow.

About you

You are a qualified accountant who has done this before in a manufacturing, industrial or operations-led business. You have owned complex costing and inventory valuation, found and fixed stock discrepancies at their source,



and built or rebuilt Excel and ERP-based reporting tools when the system output was not enough. You have also run, or been close to running, a full financial control function across reporting, audit, BAS, FBT, payroll tax and super. Pronto experience is an advantage.

Your track record matters as much as your technical skill. You thrive in lean, entrepreneurial SME environments where you wear several hats at once and pace is a feature, not a problem. You are confident and direct with production and supply chain leaders, and you earn their trust by turning up and understanding their world. You are detail-driven with a solid controls mindset, and you would rather fix a process than write a report about it. You have a stable career history and are ready to step up into senior finance leadership.

What's on offer

This is a rare chance to join a growing business with a defined succession pathway to Head of Finance, rather than an open-ended promise. You will have real ownership across costing, inventory, supply chain and financial control, and a mandate to make lasting improvements. You will work closely with an experienced finance leadership team and have direct exposure to the CEO, gaining depth of experience beyond a typical SME finance role. The role is based primarily in the office with regular time at the nearby production site, and some work-from-home flexibility is available. For a finance professional who wants their impact to be visible and measurable, and to grow with an entrepreneurial business into its most senior finance role, this is an exceptional next step.

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