The Opportunity

“We’ve grown from a 10-person Charlotte startup to 20+ professionals across four cities in five years. The first Controller we hire will help us figure out how to keep going.” – Our Client’s Managing Principal

Our client is at an inflection point. The firm has grown rapidly, now operating in Charlotte, Greenville, Charleston, Raleigh, and the principals know it’s time to stop running the business in the margins of their calendar. The owner has been managing payroll, the general ledger, and the books himself while leading project delivery. That season is ending.

This is the first Controller hire in our client’s history. That means you arrive to clean books, a single LLC entity, and significant year-over year revenue growth and strong projections, with no entrenched legacy systems to undo and no bureaucracy to navigate. You’ll have a clear mandate, direct access to the principals, and the latitude to own the financial function end-to-end and shape how it evolves.

For the right person, this is a career-defining seat: a chance to step into something small enough to feel everything, strategic enough to matter, and growing fast enough to keep you challenged.

About Our Client

Our client is a firm built on a deceptively simple idea: the only way we succeed is if the project, and the people behind it, succeed. The firm has grown from a Charlotte startup into a multi-city practice by staying deeply embedded in delivery and earning client trust the hard way.

Our Client’s Footprint

Headquartered in Charlotte, NC, with active teams in Greenville, Charleston, and Raleigh. 20+ professionals and growing – with new markets on the horizon.

Our Client’s Culture

Our client runs flat, moves fast, and operates on mutual accountability. The three principals are still in the work every day. Quarterly manager-employee check-ins keep the team aligned and heard. When the firm wins, everyone wins, literally: Our client’s 2026 profit-sharing plan distributes remaining profit to every employee proportionally. This isn’t a discretionary bonus, it’s a calculated, transparent plan designed so that every team member has skin in the game.

Leadership You’ll Work Closely With

You’ll report directly to the Managing Principal, someone who has been in the work himself, understands what the financial function demands, and is genuinely ready to hand it off to the right person. You’ll also work regularly with the Co-principals. These are not executives who disappear into strategy meetings; they are practitioners who know their business and are excited to have a financial partner who knows it just as well.

The Role

You will own the financial operations of the firm. Not manage up to them, not support them, own them. Day one, you inherit clean books. Your first 30 days are about immersion: learn how things work, sit alongside leadership, absorb the operation without trying to change it. By day 60, you’re running everything independently. After that, the real work begins: evaluating tools, improving workflows, building reporting visibility by geography and vertical market, and helping position the firm for the next phase of growth.

This is not a bookkeeping seat. The ideal person will see the current state QuickBooks, ~40 manually generated invoices per month, bi-weekly payroll, expense reimbursements, and immediately start asking how to make it better. The platform you inherit may not be the platform you keep.

What You’ll Own

  • Full-cycle accounting: A/R, A/P, general ledger, and monthly close
  • Payroll processing (currently bi-weekly via QuickBooks Online, including employee expense reimbursements)
  • Client invoicing (~40 invoices/month; currently manual and you’ll decide if that stays)
  • Cash flow tracking and financial reporting to leadership
  • Budget and forecast development as the firm scales
  • Vendor relationships and payments
  • Benefits and insurance administration; coordination with external CPA, tax, and payroll partners
  • Systems evaluation – including a cost/benefit analysis of PEO options for payroll, benefits, and insurance

What You’ll Build

  • A financial reporting infrastructure that gives leadership clear visibility by geography and vertical market
  • Documented processes and internal controls that scale as the team grows
  • A platform recommendation (QuickBooks may stay, or something better may replace it—that’s your call to make)
  • A seat at the table as our client grows toward $10M+ and beyond

Your 30/60/90-Day Roadmap

  • Days 1–30: Deep immersion. Learn every process as it exists today. Don’t change anything yet—understand everything.
  • Days 31–60: Full autonomy on current operations. You run what was running previously, independently.
  • Days 61–180: Identify improvements. Better tools, smarter workflows, sharper reporting. Make the load better, not just lighter.

What Our Client is Looking For

We’re not recruiting a number-cruncher. We’re looking for someone who is organized, curious, and entrepreneurial and who sees “the books are clean” as a starting line, not a finish line. Enough experience to lead with confidence. Not so set in their ways that they can’t appreciate why a 20-person firm building its financial infrastructure for the first time is genuinely exciting.

Experience

  • 5–10 years in accounting or finance; strong full-cycle accounting
  • Experience owning month-end close and financial reporting as the primary responsible party
  • Comfortable operating as a sole contributor in a lean, hands-on environment
  • Background in private industry or public accounting (including those serving professional services, construction, or GC clients) – no specific industry preference
  • CPA preferred but not required; entrepreneurial mindset matters more than credentials

Character

  • You own your work, fully, without needing to be checked on
  • You communicate directly and clearly, including when the numbers tell a hard story
  • You’re organized and methodical, but you don’t lose the forest for the trees
  • You’re looking for a place to grow and not a rung on a ladder to somewhere else
  • You can be trusted with everything and you understand what that trust requires

Compensation & Benefits

Base Salary is competitive and commensurate with experience.

Profit-Sharing Bonus

Our client’s 2026 profit-sharing plan is real, calculated, and transparent. After accounting for payroll, tax set-asides, and a rainy-day fund, remaining profit is distributed company-wide, each employee’s share is proportional to their salary as a percentage of total payroll. This is not a discretionary bonus at the principals’ discretion. When the company wins, you win, and your peers hold the whole team accountable for making that happen.

Benefits Package

Full benefits package including health, dental, and vision insurance.

Location

In-office, Charlotte, NC. This person needs to be present and plugged into daily operations. The financial picture and the operational reality need to stay in sync, and that doesn’t happen from a distance.

Why This Role, Why Now

There is a short window in the life of every growing professional services firm when someone can walk in and shape what the financial function becomes—before it gets over-engineered, before someone else defines it, before the company outgrows the flexibility to do it right the first time. Our client is in that window right now.

You won’t be rebuilding someone else’s mess. You won’t be maintaining a system that’s already optimal. You’ll be stepping into a function that has worked well enough to get a great firm to $7.5M, and making it work at a level that takes them well beyond that.

If you’ve been waiting for a chance to own something, build something, and grow with the organization you help strengthen – including a credible path to a CFO seat as our client continues to scale, this is it.