Harper MayInsights
CFO Recruitment

Senior CFO recruitment for mid-market and PE-backed businesses.

Harper May runs CFO searches for UK businesses, retained or contingent, each one run by a director. Talk to Dan Mackenzie about your CFO seat and we will come back the same working day with a view on the market, the likely shortlist, and how we would run the process.

Tell us about the CFO role

Who we place CFOs for

Harper May's CFO recruitment practice sits in the UK mid-market. We run searches across three ownership structures:

  • PE-backed businesses in year two to year four of the hold, hiring a CFO for the exit process.
  • Founder-led businesses hiring their first proper CFO, usually around a fundraise or a scale-up inflection point.
  • Listed and IPO-track businesses replacing a departing CFO with a candidate who can hold the audit-committee and investor-facing dimensions of the role.

How we run a CFO search

Every search is run by a director, retained or contingent as agreed with you:

  1. The brief. We meet you to take the brief properly, challenge the title, level or must-haves where the market says otherwise, and check the package against the live Finance Pay Index.
  2. Finding people. We headhunt directly rather than relying on adverts, because in our experience many of the strongest CFOs are not looking.
  3. The shortlist. Usually six to eight candidates, each with our written view, and short recorded introductions when it helps.
  4. Interviews and references. We pass feedback between both sides throughout. We take two references, or support you in taking them, as agreed, and can arrange a call between your chair and the candidate's previous chair if you would like one.
  5. Offer and after. We handle the offer, the negotiation and the counter-offer risk, and check in with you and the new CFO through the first 90 days.

Across 149 of our placements, the median time from the first CV we sent to an offer was 19 days, with half landing between 11 and 29 days; the notice period comes on top. The full process is on how a Harper May search works, and for planning a whole hire see How long a finance hire takes.

What we test for in a CFO shortlist

Beyond the technical fit, the specific signals we test for in every CFO shortlist:

  • Governance instinct. Will the candidate push back on the CEO when the situation warrants? Tested through specific scenario questions.
  • Second-tier readiness. Can the candidate name the specific shape of the finance team they will build below them in the first 12 months?
  • Comfort with ambiguity. Particularly for founder-led briefs.
  • Audit-relationship health. The cleanest read on operational maturity we have found.
  • Cash discipline. Tested by asking about the tightest cash position they have personally managed a business through.

Deeper on the interview design: Why the best CFO interviews now include a live modelling question and The interview question that reveals a CFO's cash discipline.

Why boards work with Harper May

Three specific things clients tell us we do differently:

  • We push back on the brief when it is wrong. Rewriting a brief before a search saves far more than sharpening a shortlist inside a broken one.
  • We stay involved through the first 90 days after the CFO starts, catching landing-issues early rather than reading about them at year-end.

What a CFO costs

On the Finance Pay Index (80 UK CFO salaries, data to 16/10/2026), the median CFO base is £165,000 and the middle half earn between £144,000 and £201,000, with a median bonus target of 20% of base. Treat it as a guide, not a rule: if you like someone and their ask is within a range you are comfortable with, pay it so they join happy. The split by London, ownership and company size is in the free CFO pay report.

Talk to us about your CFO seat

Send us the brief and we will come back the same working day with a view on the market, the likely shortlist, and how we would run it. Dan Mackenzie personally reads every CFO enquiry.

Ready to run a CFO search?

Tell us about your CFO vacancy. We will reply the same working day.

Tell us about the role

Further reading on CFO hiring

Your hiring toolkit for a CFO

What it costs
£165k

Median base on the Finance Pay Index, with the middle half between £144k and £201k (80 responses). Median bonus target 20% of base.

A guide, not a rule: if you like someone and their ask is within a range you are comfortable with, pay it.

Who is out there
153

CFOs registered with Harper May in the last six months. 78% have run group consolidation; 65% have worked on M&A from the finance side; 58% have taken a business through a full exit.

Our own applicant flow, not the whole market.

Free tools for this hire

Two recent searches

A founder-led specialist financial services firm

Newly created CFO roles rarely run to a tidy timetable, and being honest about that from the start protects the search. A specialist financial services firm first spoke to us about a CFO, a new role for the business, several months before the specification was finalised. Once it was, they engaged us on a retained basis.

The client was open that the process could be drawn out. The Founder and CEO travelled a lot and could be called away at short notice. Because we told candidates this up front, a month's wait for feedback on CVs did not put them off.

That gave us room to source and speak to people properly. We presented 18 CVs alongside short introduction videos on our client portal, so a time-pressed leadership team could get a feel for personality before committing deeper time. They interviewed four people, spent longer in person with two, and the interviews themselves took only a couple of weeks.

From taking on the role to an accepted offer took 15 weeks, with 65 people shortlisted along the way.

Setting expectations about pace with candidates at the outset keeps a strong shortlist intact when a busy leadership team needs longer to respond.

An early-stage energy business

Early-stage businesses often need a CFO who can raise money, not just report on it. An early-stage energy business was introduced to us through a mutual contact, with a brief for a CFO who had capital raising experience. Our next step was to sit down with the Chair to agree the specification and the kind of profiles worth considering.

Most of the time in this search came before the first interview. After that, things moved quickly. Our candidate met the business by video first, then came in for a hybrid CFO interview, and a formal offer followed three days later.

The candidate asked to talk the offer through in person rather than over email. Salary and start date were then discussed openly, the contract was revised, and the offer was accepted about two and a half weeks after it was first made.

From first introduction to accepted offer took roughly four months. In our experience, getting the Chair's view of the role agreed early means the interviews that follow are about fit, not about what the job is.

In our experience, agreeing the CFO profile with the Chair before shortlisting saves time later, especially when capital raising is at the heart of the role.

Hiring a CFO?

Talk it through with Dan: the role, the budget and who is out there. No obligation.

Book a call with Dan07785 425484

Pay figures: Finance Pay Index, data to 16 October 2026.

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