Regional Head of Accounting & Tax

Overview

This leadership role owns the Accounting & Tax (A&T) product end to end, including global scope, standards, commercial logic, processes, and economics. The position drives business growth through flawless delivery and serves as the senior product and delivery voice for A&T in the market.

You will lead the A&T function regionally through the Outsourcing Control (OC) leads, setting and defending global standards to enable scalable and sustainable delivery. Reporting to the Chief Delivery Officer, you are accountable for worldwide growth, profitability, and reputation of A&T.

Responsibilities

Commercial Leadership & Growth

• Own the growth agenda for A&T, including revenue, win rate, retention, and expansion.
• Serve as the senior client-facing product authority for A&T, anchoring strategic engagements, pitches, high-stakes decisions, and escalations.
• Partner with Revenue and Sales to qualify opportunities, shape scope and pricing, and support conversion and account expansion.
• Define and evolve the commercial logic (packaging, bundling, premiums, and guardrails) to sell and deliver profitably at scale.
• Own the reputation of the A&T product in the market.

Product Strategy & Standards

• Own regional scope, service definitions, and standards for A&T (what is in/out and how it is delivered).
• Set regional execution standards, SLAs, and compliance expectations across all regions and delivery models.
• Drive consistency across regions while enabling flexibility within agreed guardrails.

Market Insight & Service Design

• Maintain a deep, current view of market trends, competitor moves, and evolving customer demands.
• Translate market and client insight into service design and delivery organization structure.
• Shape the product roadmap and delivery-model choices (in-house, outsourced, automated) to capture growth opportunities.

Process Standardisation & Continuous Improvement

• Set the regional A&T operating model and process standards; approve processes, SOPs, and control frameworks before they enter delivery.
• Support enterprise AI direction and drive adoption within A&T to enable scale and quality.

Cost Management & Commercial Sustainability

• Own product-level cost-to-serve and drive efficiency, productivity, and long-term economic sustainability.
• Make deliberate trade-offs across scope design, automation, sourcing, and delivery-model choices to keep delivery economics healthy as the product scales.
• Diagnose cost pressures, identify root causes, and lead corrective action with Finance support for modelling and analysis.

Regional Delivery Governance & Team Leadership

• Lead the Outsourcing Control leads accountable for regional delivery outcomes and economics.
• Provide a framework for regional autonomy (in-house vs outsourced mix, capacity, and hiring proposals) and arbitrate cross-regional or peer-function disagreements when escalated.
• Lead, mentor, and develop the OC leads; build product, commercial, and delivery capability across the global A&T team.

Scope & Commercial Governance

• Propose and own changes to product scope, service tiers, and commercial logic, routing them through the agreed approval framework for impact assessment and implementation readiness.
• Support enabling functions on scope-to-catalogue mapping, SKU registration, and pricing alignment.
• Validate post-implementation effectiveness of scope and commercial changes using defined metrics and refine as needed.

Compliance, Audit & Risk

• Set the regional compliance posture for A&T across accounting standards (IFRS, local GAAP), tax legislation, and statutory reporting requirements.
• Ensure A&T delivery maintains internal controls and regulatory adherence in every jurisdiction the product serves.
• Engage with internal and external audit on A&T product-level matters.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Collaborate closely with the Chief Delivery Officer, peer Global Product Owners, Revenue, Technology, and enabling functions across Delivery.
• Represent the A&T product in cross-functional and executive forums.

Key Performance Indicators

• Revenue growth and win rate for the product
• Retention and net revenue retention (NRR)
• Margin and cost-to-serve
• Delivery SLA attainment and quality
• Client satisfaction (NPS)

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, Finance, or a related field; CPA, CA, ACCA, or equivalent professional accounting qualification preferred. MBA or equivalent is a plus.
• 15+ years of experience in accounting, tax, or finance operations, with at least 5 years owning a product, service line, or regional/global function end to end.
• Managing Director–level leadership experience, with gravitas to operate as a senior commercial and product leader.
• Track record of driving growth—revenue, win rate, retention, and expansion—not only delivery.
• Experience running a service-line P&L at scale, owning cost-to-serve, productivity, margin, and pricing logic.
• Strong working knowledge of IFRS and local GAAP, tax legislation, and statutory reporting requirements across multiple regions (APAC, EMEA, and ideally the Americas).
• Demonstrated experience designing service standards, commercial logic (packaging, bundling, premiums), and pricing frameworks.
• Strong client-facing and business-development capability, comfortable as the senior product voice in front of clients and prospects.
• Experience leading senior delivery and product leaders (regional heads, process leads, and outsourcing-control/vendor-management leads) across multiple regions.
• Deep market awareness, with the ability to read trends and customer demand and shape the service accordingly.
• Process-oriented mindset: global standards as the foundation for scalable, sustainable delivery, with judgement to allow flexibility when it serves the client.
• Strong analytical and strategic problem-solving skills, comfortable with financial modelling, scenario analysis, and unit economics.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder-management skills, able to influence at executive level.
• Proficiency in accounting platforms—Xero in particular (the central A&T platform)—and other ERP/accounting systems (QuickBooks, SAP, Oracle, or equivalent).
• Comfort with AI-assisted tools and automation as enablers of product scale and quality.

Preferred Qualifications

• Prior experience as a product or service-line head in a global outsourced accounting/corporate-services firm or in a Big-4 advisory/managed services context.
• Experience leading a P&L turnaround, transformation, or in-housing programme.
• Experience operating in an EoR, PEO, or global business services environment.

Compensation & Benefits

• Not specified in the provided job description.

Location

• Not specified in the provided job description.