Interim CFO

We are pleased to be partnering with an established New Zealand-based professional services group to appoint an experienced Interim CFO. This is a senior, hands-on leadership role designed to strengthen financial insight, consistency, and decision-making during a period of operational complexity and group-wide transformation.

This is a deliberately interim appointment. The focus is not on running the transactional engine day to day, which is already supported by a capable and long-tenured finance team. Instead, the mandate is to lift the quality, regularity, and usefulness of management and board reporting, improve commercial insight across the business, and assess what a future-fit finance function should look like over the medium to long term.

Reporting directly to the CEO and working closely with the Senior Leadership Team and Board, you will act as the senior financial leader across a multi-entity group. You will bring structure, clarity, and discipline to performance reporting, helping leaders understand what the numbers are really telling them and how to act on that insight.

This role will suit a commercially minded CFO who enjoys stepping into complex environments, quickly diagnosing gaps, and building sustainable reporting and insight practices that endure beyond their tenure. This is a management-level finance leadership role, weighted heavily toward commercial insight and performance reporting rather than transactional execution. 

Key Focus Areas

• Lifting the accuracy, cadence, and usefulness of financial and management reporting
• Establishing consistent, sustainable management reporting and insight practices
• Strengthening financial governance, controls, and accountability across the group
• Partnering with executive leadership and the Board on performance and strategy
• Developing internal finance capability through mentoring and coaching
• Leading a discovery and recommendation process for a future-fit finance system
• Improving financial literacy across leadership teams
• Supporting M&A activity through modelling, evaluation, and due diligence

Key Responsibilities

• Deliver clear, timely monthly financial and management reports with meaningful insight
• Develop Board-level reporting to support strategic decision-making
• Provide commercial insight on pricing, margins, incentives, and cost-to-serve
• Maintain indirect oversight of payroll, accounts payable, and accounts receivable
• Lead finance systems discovery and platform recommendation
• Manage external advisors and accountants
• Support acquisition activity as required

About YouYou will have proven experience as a CFO or Interim CFO within complex, multi-entity environments, where you've develop strong management accounting and commercial analysis capability. You will have a demonstrated track record of lifting reporting quality and decision usefulness. You will have good exposure to financial systems and processes in order to effectively lead finance system discovery, change or selection. Ideally you will have had significant M&A exposure where you've developed commercial evaluation and resulting positive M&A transactions. You'll be a positive and confident communicator and able to translate financial information for non-finance leaders. You'll be a pragmatist, commercially-minded and outcomes-focused. 

Importantly, you will be comfortable operating in an interim capacity, leaving things stronger than you found them. 

Practical Details

• Hours: Approx. 20 hours per week, ideally spread across 5 working days
• Location: Predominantly Auckland based, eastern suburbs preferred
• Travel: Occasional travel to Christchurch
• Start: Late February to Mid-March, including handover
• Working Rights: Due the interim nature of the position, we will only be considering NZ based applicants who have full NZ working rights and significant NZ based experience.

Remuneration

Circa $100,000 annualised salary for approx. 20 hours per week, equivalent to approx. $200,000 full-time, with flexibility for the right interim profile. 

If you are an experienced CFO or Interim CFO looking for a part-time, high-impact role where you can genuinely shape how a business uses financial insight to drive better decisions, we would like to hear from you. Apply now or contact Troy at Magnetic for a confidential discussion. 

About Magnetic

Magnetic Recruitment is a New Zealand-based specialist recruitment partner working across technical, professional, and commercial disciplines. We partner closely with clients and candidates to deliver thoughtful, insight-led recruitment solutions, particularly where businesses are navigating growth, complexity, or change.

Our approach is consultative, pragmatic, and relationship-driven. We focus on understanding the real commercial context behind each role, ensuring the right fit for both the business and the individual, now and into the future.