Job Placement · Finance · VP Finance
A VP finance runs the finance function: the team, the close, the forecast, the systems and the controls. A CFO also faces the board, the lenders and the investors, and owns the capital decisions. Which of those your chief executive is already carrying determines which seat you should be filling. BEG places permanent VPs of finance on Tier V milestone billing at $22,640 to $27,168.
See your placement estimate - no call required
See pricing before you talk to anyone. No demo gate, no obligation, and no co-employment.
TL;DR
VP finance is the seat that runs the function, and CFO is the seat that also fronts it. The distinction only matters in one direction: a company whose chief executive comfortably carries the board, lender and investor relationships can run indefinitely with a VP finance beneath them, and a company facing a fundraise, a transaction or a covenant conversation cannot. The title itself signals very little, which is why candidates at this level ask about scope and reporting line first. The other thing worth settling before the offer is what happens to this person if a CFO is hired above them later. BEG runs the search on Tier V milestone billing at $22,640 to $27,168, fixed before sourcing.
Reading The Title Correctly
Because the same words describe a three-person finance function in one company and several hundred people across two controllers in another, and the published wage data cannot separate them either.
Four Questions Before The Search
Who carries the outward-facing half today, what sits inside the function, what the first six months should change, and what happens if a CFO is appointed later.
| What gets decided | Why candidates care | What happens if you avoid it |
|---|---|---|
| Who owns the board and lender relationship | It determines whether they are the finance voice in the room or the person preparing the pack somebody else presents. | A VP accepts believing they will lead those conversations, discovers they will not, and starts taking calls from search firms in month nine. |
| What is inside the function | Whether accounting, FP&A, treasury, payroll, tax and systems all report here, and where the controller sits relative to them. | A shortlist of people with the same title and entirely different experience, each of whom is qualified for a different version of your job. |
| What the first six months must change | Strong candidates at this level want a mandate, not a maintenance job, and will decline a role that sounds like administration. | You appoint someone to fix a function and they arrive to find nobody senior agrees anything is broken, which is unwinnable. |
| What happens if a CFO is hired later | It is the most consequential question in this search and the one most often left unspoken until it is too late to ask politely. | A resignation on the day the CFO appointment is announced, which costs you both the VP and the continuity the new CFO needed. |
BEG raises the fourth question during screening as a matter of course, because a candidate's honest answer to it is worth more than any reference. If the conclusion is that you actually need the outward-facing seat, that is CFO executive search. Full scope sits on the finance placement service page.
Milestone Billing Against A Percentage Of A Package
Percentage pricing at this level is applied to a package that includes bonus and often equity, and is agreed after the search rather than before it. At the $166,570 BLS median for financial managers, 20% is $33,314 and 25% is $41,643, and a VP finance package in most companies sits above that median so the real invoice is higher again. BEG prices a VP finance search as a Tier V engagement at $22,640 to $27,168, agreed at the outset. The number you budget is the number you pay, and nothing on our side improves if your offer does.
What A Function Without This Seat Costs
The controller runs the function by default and the chief executive runs the parts the controller cannot. That works, in the sense that the numbers come out and the business continues. What it costs is everything that needs somebody to own finance as a whole rather than accounting as a discipline: the systems decision that keeps being deferred, the analyst who should have been hired last year, the reporting that is accurate and answers nobody's question, and a chief executive spending a day a week inside a function they are not trying to run. That last one has the highest hourly rate in the building.
If You Were Searching For An Executive Staffing Or Fractional Firm
All three are marketed to companies at the same stage of growth. The separating question is whether the person is in the building when the operating leaders need finance in the room.
| Model | Who employs the executive | How you pay | Right when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fractional or interim finance executive | The provider | Monthly retainer or day rate for as long as it runs | You need senior finance judgement part time, the function already runs, and there is no live transaction or fundraise. |
| Retained or contingency percentage search | You | Percentage of first-year compensation, $33,314 to $41,643 at the BLS financial manager median and typically more in practice | You accept a fee that is unknown when the search begins and increases with everything conceded at the end of it. |
| BEG permanent placement | You | Tier V milestone fee, $22,640 to $27,168, fixed before sourcing | The function needs an owner who is present for every operating decision, not only for the monthly review. |
BEG does not employ executives and does not bill monthly, so fractional leadership is not something we sell and we will say so when it is genuinely the better call. The arrangement worth questioning is the fractional finance leader retained for years in a business that has grown past the point where part-time judgement is enough, which is usually noticed by an investor rather than by the company. Related: director of accounting recruiting.
FAQ
Which way the job faces. A VP finance runs the function: the team, the close, the forecast, the systems and the controls. A CFO faces outward as well, to the board, lenders and investors, and is accountable for the capital decisions that follow from the numbers. Many companies have a VP finance doing an excellent job of everything except the half that faces outward, which is usually being done by the chief executive.
When the chief executive is genuinely capable of carrying the investor and board relationship and simply needs the function run properly beneath them. That is a common and perfectly stable structure. It stops working the moment there is a transaction, a fundraise or a covenant conversation, because those need somebody whose full-time job is to lead them rather than to support them.
Both, depending on the company, which is why the title on its own is close to useless as a signal. In one business a VP finance has four hundred people and two controllers; in another it is the finance function in its entirety, comprising three people. Candidates know this, so they will ask about scope and reporting line long before they ask about the title.
Not directly, and that is worth knowing. BLS publishes a $166,570 median for financial managers and a $108,780 median for top executives. Those two codes cover very different populations and are not comparable to each other, which illustrates the underlying point: seniority of title is not a reliable guide to the size of a seat or to what it should pay.
Mostly from controller and finance director seats, and BLS describes the general path, noting that experienced financial managers may advance to become chief financial officers. A VP finance is usually part way along that route. Which means two things: they are ambitious, and they will ask what happens to their title if you later hire a CFO above them.
It is a common sequence and it needs to be discussed before the offer rather than eighteen months later. Some VPs are entirely comfortable with a CFO arriving above them and some will resign the week it is announced. Asking the question during the process is not awkward, it is the single most useful thing you can establish about a candidate for this seat.
A Tier V search at $22,640 to $27,168, billed against defined milestones. A 20% to 25% contingency or retained percentage benchmarked to the $166,570 BLS median for financial managers would be $33,314 to $41,643 for the same permanent hire, and at this level the package usually exceeds that median, so the percentage figure understates what would actually be invoiced.
No. Interim and fractional finance executives are employed by their provider and billed monthly or by the day. BEG runs permanent placement and the VP finance becomes your employee. If the situation genuinely calls for interim leadership through a transaction or a gap, we will say so rather than open a permanent search.
An average of 23 to 35 days from discovery call to signed offer, based on isolved placement data, with an 86% fill rate on active searches. At this level the offer stage is where time goes, because bonus timing, equity and notice periods all have to be reconciled, and a candidate leaving a senior finance seat frequently owes a quarter end.
Whoever the VP finance will have to influence without authority. That means the operating leaders as well as the chief executive, because this seat succeeds or fails on whether the commercial side of the business treats finance as a partner or as a reporting department. A process that is entirely finance interviewing finance tests the wrong half of the job.
Whether they have built a function rather than inherited one. Ask what the finance team looked like when they arrived and what it looked like when they left, and what they stopped doing to make that possible. VPs who have genuinely built will describe something they cancelled; the ones who have only administered will describe things they added.
A 45-day replacement guarantee and 50% off a repeat search for the same seat. At this level the guarantee is a formality rather than a safeguard, because a VP finance appointment is judged over several quarters. The meaningful protection is agreeing what the first six months should change and who is entitled to say whether it happened.
Sizing the finance leadership team? See CFO, controller and FP&A manager, or all finance placement.
More finance hiring
Ready?
Answer a few questions, get your placement estimate in about 90 seconds. No call required, no commitment.
See your placement estimate - no call required
