Regional Product Owner, Accounting & Tax

Overview

This leadership role is accountable for the end-to-end ownership of the Accounting & Tax (A&T) product, including its global scope, standards, commercial logic, processes, and economics. Reporting to the Chief Delivery Officer, you drive growth, profitability, and reputation for A&T worldwide.

The primary objective is business growth through flawless delivery. You serve as the senior product and delivery authority for A&T, acting as the trusted partner to Revenue and Sales to win and expand business. You stay close to market trends and customer demands, translating them into how the service is designed, packaged, priced, and delivered.

Regionally, you lead A&T through the Outsourcing Control (OC) leads. You build the delivery organization to meet market opportunity and client expectations, set and defend global standards for scalable and sustainable delivery, and lead the teams delivering A&T.

Responsibilities

Commercial Leadership & Growth

• Own the growth agenda for A&T, including revenue, win rate, retention, and expansion.
• Act as a senior, client-facing product authority for A&T by anchoring 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 expansion of accounts.
• Define and evolve commercial logic (packaging, bundling, premiums, and guardrails) to enable profitable selling and delivery at scale.
• Own the product’s reputation in the market.

Product Strategy & Standards

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

Market Insight & Service Design

• Maintain a current 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 client 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 prior to delivery rollout.
• 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 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 keep delivery economics healthy as the product scales.
• Diagnose cost pressures, identify root causes, and lead corrective action with Finance on modeling and analysis.

Regional Delivery Governance & Team Leadership

• Lead the Outsourcing Control leads accountable for regional delivery outcomes and economics.
• Provide the 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 and 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 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 through 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 delivery maintains internal controls and regulatory adherence in every jurisdiction served.
• Engage with internal and external audit on A&T product-level matters.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Work 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 the gravitas to operate as a senior commercial and product leader.
• Demonstrated track record 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 acting 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 that supports global standards as the foundation for scalable, sustainable delivery, with judgment on where flexibility benefits clients.
• Strong analytical and strategic problem-solving skills, including comfort with financial modeling, scenario analysis, and unit economics.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder-management skills, with the ability 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.

Location

Not specified. (Role involves regional leadership across APAC, EMEA, and ideally the Americas.)