Position Title: Finance Leader
Location: New Berlin, Wisconsin
Position Summary:
This is a rare opportunity to build the finance function inside a fast-growing, privately held innovator in the liquid food and beverage manufacturing space. Our client is a technology-driven, vertically integrated contract manufacturer and store-brand supplier that has grown from a single-product beginning into a diversified, multi-category operation — and they're just getting started.
Founded and led by a scientist-entrepreneur, the company is now expanding into new product categories and manufacturing capabilities that few competitors nationally can match. As they scale, they need a Finance Leader who can be both a strategic partner to ownership and hands-on enough to stay close to the numbers on the plant floor. This role will own financial planning, reporting, and cost accounting across the organization, working shoulder-to-shoulder with operations, supply chain, and sales leadership. If you thrive in a business that moves fast, sometimes pivots on short notice, and wants a true partner — not just a scorekeeper — this is the seat for you.
Why this role?
- Build and shape the finance function at a company in true growth mode, with visible, lasting impact
- Partner directly with ownership and operating leadership as a trusted strategic advisor, not just a back-office function
- Join a business entering new product categories and manufacturing capabilities that set it apart in its industry
- Competitive compensation, a collaborative culture, and real influence over how the finance organization is built
Responsibilities:
- Own financial planning, budgeting, forecasting, and long-range planning for the organization
- Lead monthly close, financial reporting, and communications with executive leadership and ownership
- Partner with operations on cost accounting, plant-level P&Ls, yield analysis, and COGS management across multiple production lines
- Collaborate in real time with supply chain and operations on costing — not waiting for month-end to surface issues
- Manage cash flow, working capital, and banking/lender relationships
- Oversee treasury, tax, audit, and compliance functions, including managing the annual audit and outside advisor relationships
- Build financial models to support pricing decisions, customer profitability, and capacity investments
- Lead commodity and input cost risk management for key raw materials and packaging
- Partner cross-functionally with sales and pricing teams to support commercial decision-making
- Develop and mentor a growing finance and accounting team; upgrade systems, processes, and talent as the business scales
- Simplify and strengthen accounting processes, and align the organization around consistent definitions of margin, revenue, and cost
- Get out of the office and onto the production floor — this leader stays close to the business, not just the spreadsheets
Required Qualifications:
- 10+ years of progressive finance leadership experience, ideally including manufacturing environments
- Strong expertise in cost accounting and manufacturing finance in a high-volume, continuous production setting
- Familiarity with private-label, co-manufacturing, or contract manufacturing economics, customer pricing, and deductions management preferred
- Bachelor's degree in Finance, Accounting, or related field; CPA and/or MBA strongly preferred
- Strong technical accounting foundation (GAAP) paired with commercial and operational instincts
- Experience with modern ERP and FP&A systems and tools
- Proven ability to manage budgets, lead audits, and build financial models that support pricing and investment decisions
- Excellent communicator who can translate financial complexity for non-finance leaders and ownership
- Comfortable operating in a dynamic, occasionally ambiguous environment that moves and pivots quickly