Interim Chief Financial Officer
We have partnered with our client in their search for an Interim Chief Financial Officer to provide hands-on financial leadership during a period of rapid growth and organizational change. Hybrid onsite in Raleigh, NC (open to someone traveling in for this).
Role Summary
Our client is a publicly traded, project-based services organization supporting complex infrastructure and construction-related work. The company is expanding through acquisitions and needs an experienced public-company finance executive who can immediately strengthen reporting, controls, forecasting, and financial governance.
This is a highly visible interim assignment requiring a practical, field-oriented leader who can work effectively across decentralized operations. The Interim CFO will partner closely with executive leadership, operating leaders, the finance team, external auditors, and other advisers.
The successful consultant will bring clarity and disciplined execution while helping the organization maintain local operating accountability and establish the consistent enterprise practices required of a public company.
Key Responsibilities
- Establish and execute a clear quarterly and year-end close and reporting plan.
- Define ownership, audit-support requirements, escalation procedures, and critical deadlines for financial reporting.
- Strengthen audit readiness and ensure that reporting conclusions are supported by reliable documentation and evidence.
- Evaluate project-accounting practices and document GAAP revenue-recognition judgments for long-cycle projects, variable incentives, and other complex arrangements.
- Distinguish accounting conclusions from commercial forecasts, probability assessments, and timing assumptions.
- Incorporate operating leaders' input into credible consolidated forecasts and scenario analyses.
- Assess the organization's internal-control environment and develop a prioritized remediation roadmap.
- Address segregation-of-duties risks and establish accountable ownership for control implementation across decentralized and acquired operations.
- Evaluate the current ERP environment, including project accounting, reporting capabilities, data quality, and workflow alignment.
- Develop and coordinate a practical ERP stabilization plan with finance, operations, and external advisers.
- Establish a consistent finance operating rhythm and improve coordination between corporate finance and field operations.
- Mentor finance and accounting professionals while advising executive leadership on public-company governance and decision discipline.
- Develop clear, supportable forecast, earnings, and investor-communication narratives that connect consolidated results to underlying operating drivers.
Required Qualifications
- Demonstrated senior financial leadership experience within a publicly traded company.
- Direct experience with SEC reporting, quarterly and annual close processes, audit readiness, SOX compliance, and internal controls.
- Strong knowledge of U.S. GAAP, including revenue recognition in project-based businesses with long delivery cycles and variable consideration.
- Experience developing consolidated forecasts based on operating assumptions, project economics, and scenario analysis.
- Relevant experience in construction, engineering, infrastructure, or a closely aligned project-based industry.
- Working knowledge of estimating, contract economics, project performance, and the relationship between field execution and financial reporting.
- Experience strengthening controls across decentralized, multi-location, or acquisitive organizations.
- Experience assessing or stabilizing ERP and financial-reporting environments.
- Ability to communicate effectively with executive leadership, operating teams, accounting professionals, auditors, advisers, and investors.
- Hands-on, collaborative leadership style with the ability to establish appropriate enterprise standards without unnecessarily disrupting operating accountability.
- Ability to mobilize quickly and work onsite in the Raleigh, North Carolina area three to four days per week.
About Korn Ferry
Korn Ferry unleashes potential in people, teams, and organizations. We work with our clients to design optimal organization structures, roles, and responsibilities. We help them hire the right people and advise them on how to reward and motivate their workforce while developing professionals as they navigate and advance their careers. To learn more, please visit Korn Ferry at www.Kornferry.com
