Regional Head of Accounting & Tax

Overview

This leadership role is accountable for the Accounting & Tax (A&T) product end to end, including its global scope, standards, commercial logic, processes, and economics. The position owns growth, profitability, and market reputation for A&T worldwide and leads the function as a Managing Director–level member of the Delivery leadership team.

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, leading strategic client 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, including packaging, bundling, premiums, and guardrails, to ensure profitable sales and scalable delivery.
• Own the reputation of the A&T product in the market.

Product Strategy & Standards

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

Market Insight & Service Design

• Maintain an up-to-date view of market trends, competitor moves, and evolving customer demands.
• Translate market and client insight into service design and delivery organization structure to meet both demand and expectations.
• 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 the enterprise AI direction and drive adoption within A&T to enable scale and quality.

Cost Management & Commercial Sustainability

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

Regional Delivery Governance & Team Leadership

• Lead the Outsourcing Control (OC) leads responsible for regional delivery outcomes and economics.
• Establish the framework for regional autonomy (in-house vs outsourced mix, capacity, and hiring proposals) and arbitrate escalated disagreements across regions or peer functions.
• 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 updates 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 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

• Partner 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 the gravitas to operate as a senior commercial and product leader.
• Track record of driving growth (revenue, win rate, retention, and expansion), not limited to delivery.
• Experience running a service-line P&L at scale, including ownership of 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 serving 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, with confidence that global standards enable scalable, sustainable delivery—plus judgment to apply flexibility where it benefits clients.
• Strong analytical and strategic problem-solving skills; comfortable with financial modelling, scenario analysis, and unit economics.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder-management skills, with the ability to influence at executive level.
• Proficiency in accounting platforms, specifically Xero (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.

Location

Global role with regional coverage across APAC, EMEA, and ideally the Americas.