Acclime is looking for a dynamic leader to join as CFO within our Virtual CFO Services line.

The role holds primary day-to-day leadership of Acclime’s Virtual CFO client portfolio in Australia and is accountable for the quality, commerciality and profitability of CFO engagements across a portfolio of SME groups, family offices and high net worth family businesses, and for leading the onshore and offshore delivery teams that support them.

The role is the senior client-facing owner of delivery. It carries the relationship, technical and team leadership responsibilities of a Partner-level engagement lead, without carrying service line strategy, group representation or service line P&L; ownership, which remain with the Service Line Lead. It is a deliberate succession and capacity role: freeing service line leadership to focus on growth, integration and new market development, while ensuring existing clients experience no reduction in seniority or continuity.

Key Responsibilities:

- Act as the primary relationship owner for a portfolio of Virtual CFO clients, including the group’s largest and most complex engagements
- Hold the CFO seat for clients — attend board and management meetings, present financial performance, and provide commercial recommendations to owners, boards and management teams
- Own the annual engagement cycle for each client: scoping, budgeting, reporting calendar, board pack cadence and review points
- Anticipate client needs and issues ahead of them arising, maintaining the proactive engagement standard the portfolio is built on
- Manage escalations and sensitive client matters, engaging the Service Line Lead only where the matter warrants it

2. Technical & Advisory Delivery





- Oversee delivery of core CFO outputs: management reporting and board packs, three-way financial models, budgets, rolling forecasts, cash flow and working capital management, and KPI/performance reporting
- Lead client financing and banking workstreams, including facility reviews, term sheet analysis, covenant monitoring and lender relationships
- Provide commercial input on structuring, remuneration and incentive design, shareholder and governance arrangements, and succession planning, coordinating specialist input from Tax, Corporate Advisory and legal referral partners
- Support transaction activity across the portfolio — due diligence, financial modelling, earn-out and completion mechanics — in conjunction with the Corporate Advisory service line
- Maintain technical currency across Australian accounting, tax and corporate compliance matters relevant to privately held groups
- Lead delivery of the full function finance team model across the portfolio — CFO, financial controller and treasury, data and analysis, payroll and bookkeeping
- Direct the Pune-based delivery pods supporting the portfolio: allocation, capacity planning, quality control, escalation and career development, in partnership with the India operations leadership
- Own the onshore/offshore work split for each engagement to protect both client outcomes and engagement margin




- Drive adoption of the standard technology stack and workflow automation across the portfolio, and identify processes suited to automation or AI-enabled delivery
- Maintain and improve standard templates, working papers and delivery procedures so that engagements are repeatable and transferable between team members
- Accountable for revenue, margin and recoverability across the client portfolio
- Set and negotiate fees, prepare engagement letters and scope variations, and manage scope creep and out-of-scope work
- Monitor and manage WIP, lock-up, billing and debtor outcomes for the portfolio
- Manage team utilisation and resourcing to meet portfolio commitments
- Contribute to service line budgeting and forecasting, and provide the portfolio-level input the Service Line Lead requires for planning

People Leadership & Capability Building

- Lead, mentor and develop Senior Managers, Managers, Controllers and Analysts across onshore and offshore teams
- Own workflow allocation, review standards and turnaround expectations across the delivery team
- Build depth beneath the role so that client relationships are held by more than one person, and support progression aligned with Acclime job levelling and career pathways
- Support performance reviews, remuneration discussions and talent decisions in collaboration with the Service Line Lead and People & Culture
- Foster a high performance, inclusive and values driven culture across a distributed team
- Ensure engagements comply with skilled standards, independence requirements, regulatory obligations and internal policies
- Provide final technical review on client deliverables issued

📌 CFO – Virtual CFO Services (Melbourne)
🏢 Acclime
📍 Melbourne