Head of Finance Job Description Template

This guide gives you a Head of Finance job description you can adapt and use straight away, together with UK salary benchmarks and practical advice on specifying the role well. It is written as a working tool for employers: the template covers purpose, responsibilities, person specification, reporting lines and success measures, with notes on what to change for your circumstances. If you are still deciding whether Head of Finance is the right seat rather than a Financial Controller or Finance Director, read our guide to what a Head of Finance does, and how the role’s scope and seniority vary first — this one assumes the decision is made. The role is placed through our Head of Finance recruitment practice.

Before you write: three decisions to make

A job description is only as good as the thinking behind it, and three decisions shape everything in the template.

• Reporting line. Most Heads of Finance report to a CEO or Managing Director as the senior-most finance person; some report to a COO or an FD. State it, because candidates read it as the clearest signal of the role’s standing.
• Team. What exists beneath the role today, and what the hire is expected to build. A Head of Finance with a functioning team is a different job from one inheriting a single bookkeeper.
• Trajectory. Is this a settled leadership seat, or a role intended to grow toward Finance Director as the business scales? Both are legitimate, but say which — ambiguity that feels flexible at hiring becomes friction at the first pay review and costs you candidates who need to know.

If the honest answer to the team question is “nobody yet”, our guide on when a Head of Finance is the right first senior hire covers the alternatives worth weighing first.

The job description template

Copy the text below into your own document. Square brackets mark the parts to change.

The qualification line matters: the ICAEW, ACCA and CIMA routes all produce credible Heads of Finance, and naming all three widens the pool. Templates for neighbouring roles are collected in our finance job descriptions library.

Head of Finance salary benchmarks

Head of Finance sits between Financial Controller and Finance Director in the pay hierarchy, and the range is wide because the title covers businesses of very different sizes. In London, base salaries typically run from about £68,000 to £120,000; the table shows where a given role is likely to fall.

Bonuses of around 10–20% are common, with equity or long-term incentives appearing in scaling and investor-backed businesses. For how pay develops beyond this seat — and what candidates will expect your role to lead to — see our Head of Finance career path guide. Wider benchmarks are in the Head of Finance salary guide and our full set of salary guides.

Writing the advert

The job description is an internal specification; the advert is a sales document, and they should not be the same text. Three principles improve response. Lead with the proposition, not the duties: the strongest Heads of Finance are employed and reasonably content, so the opening should say why this role is interesting — the growth story, the autonomy, the chance to build a function — before it lists responsibilities. Be specific about the state of play: honest detail attracts the right candidate and filters the wrong one; “the close currently takes fifteen days and we want it at eight” is more compelling than “excellent finance function”. Name the trajectory: if the role can grow into an FD seat, say so, because that is the most attractive feature for ambitious candidates. And state the salary range: withholding it costs applications from exactly the experienced candidates who will not speculate.

Adapting the template: four common variants

The first senior hire

Add explicit responsibility for establishing processes and controls from a low base, remove assumptions about an existing team, and be candid in the advert that the role involves building rather than inheriting. The right candidate finds that appealing; the wrong one needs to know.

The investor-backed business

Add investor reporting, covenant compliance and board-pack preparation to the responsibilities, add experience of investor or lender reporting to the desirable specification, and expect to pay toward the upper end of the range.

The regulated firm

Add the regulatory reporting obligations, any client-money or safeguarding oversight and, where relevant, the Senior Managers and Certification Regime dimension. Name the regime in the person specification, and budget for the premium set out in our regulated-firm salary guide. Where the role carries an SMF designation, sister firm SMF Capital handles SMF16/17 appointments.

The multi-entity business

Add consolidation and intercompany responsibilities explicitly, and be honest about whether the role needs genuine group-reporting experience. If it does, you may be describing a Group Financial Controller and should say so, because mislabelling narrows the pool.

KPIs and how to measure the role

Beyond the twelve-month success measures, agree a small set of ongoing measures at the outset, both to focus the hire and to keep performance conversations objective:

• Close speed and reliability — working days to management accounts, and whether the date holds.
• Forecast accuracy — variance between forecast and actual cash and profit, tracked and improving.
• Audit outcome — findings raised, findings closed, time consumed.
• Budget delivery — to timetable, owned by budget holders rather than imposed by finance.
• Control environment — documented, reviewed, with issues found internally rather than externally.
• Leadership-team confidence in the numbers — less measurable but most important; ask about it directly each quarter.

Keep the set short: six measures the person can influence beat twenty that dilute focus.

Common specification mistakes

Four errors recur and each costs shortlist quality. The shopping list — every finance task the business might ever need, producing a specification no real candidate matches. The inflated title — advertising Head of Finance for what is genuinely a Finance Manager role, which attracts candidates who leave when they discover the scope; our comparison of Financial Controller and Head of Finance helps settle the label. The silent trajectory — not saying whether the role grows toward FD. The unstated mess — describing an idealised function and letting the new hire discover the reality in week two, which is the most reliable way to lose a good appointment inside a year. All four are avoidable with an honest hour on the specification, and a specialist recruiter will push back on each of them before the search starts.

From specification to shortlist: running the search

The strongest candidates are passive. Heads of Finance in good roles are not scanning job boards, so a search that relies solely on advertising reaches the actively looking minority. Direct approach, through your own network or a specialist desk, surfaces the rest. Speed matters. Senior finance candidates in demand often run two or three processes at once, and the business that takes four weeks between interviews loses to the one that takes four days — diarise the stages before the search starts. Interview for the whole role. Test technical ownership, leadership and commercial partnering separately, and give finalists time with the CEO or MD they will partner, because that relationship decides whether the appointment works. Our Head of Finance interview questions and guide to competency-based finance interview questions give you a structure for each stage.

Interim and fractional alternatives

Not every Head of Finance need is permanent and full-time. Interim suits a defined gap — cover for a departure, a bridge while a permanent search runs, or a project such as a systems implementation or fundraising — at typical day rates of £500–£750 in London and £450–£650 regionally. It also suits the business unsure the permanent role is justified: an interim proves the scope, and the permanent specification is then written from experience. Fractional suits a genuinely part-time need — senior finance leadership one or two days a week, costing roughly £52,000–£78,000 a year at two days a week rather than a full salary — and pairs well with an in-house Management Accountant, the model described in our guide to the fractional-plus-in-house hybrid. See interim vs fractional finance for how the two differ. The template adapts to either: the responsibilities stay, the commitment and success measures scale down.

Onboarding: making the specification real

A job description does its final work after the hire. Transfer authority explicitly: the most common cause of a disappointing appointment is withheld authority — the founder who recruits a finance leader and keeps approving every payment has bought a salary rather than a function. Agree a written delegated-authority schedule in the first month. Introduce them properly to the leadership team, because the partnering half of the role depends on relationships formed early. Agree the first-year measures from the template in writing. Protect time for the build, accepting slower business-as-usual for a quarter or providing interim support. And hold an honest three-month conversation: what have they found that you did not know, what do they need, and is the role as described? Make sure the written contract matches the specification too — GOV.UK guidance on employment contracts sets out what the written statement must cover.

Frequently asked questions

Is Head of Finance more senior than Financial Controller?

Usually, in that it implies a leadership and commercial dimension the FC title does not, though usage varies and the written scope matters more than the label.

Should the salary range go in the advert?

Yes in almost all cases. Withholding it costs applications from experienced candidates and wastes everyone’s time if expectations do not align.

Can a Finance Manager step up to Head of Finance?

Often, where the business is growing and the individual has the leadership range; be honest in the specification that it is a step up, with support to match.

Do we need a qualified accountant?

At this level, almost always — ACA, ACCA or CIMA is the market standard and gives the role credibility internally and externally.

How long does the search take?

Permanent shortlists typically arrive within one to two weeks, with four to eight weeks to offer depending on notice periods; interim and fractional cover can usually be shortlisted within days.

What if we cannot afford the range?

Consider the fractional or interim routes before compromising on calibre — a strong Head of Finance two days a week generally beats a weak one five days a week.