Embedded CFO Innovation Businesses

Help Ambitious Founders Build Better Businesses

We're looking to add our next CFOs within the next few months as demand for ARQ's services continues to grow.

At ARQ, we believe finance leadership is about far more than reporting.

Great CFOs help founders make better decisions, navigate uncertainty, raise investment, improve performance and build stronger businesses.

We're building a team of commercially minded finance leaders who want to work closely with ambitious businesses across the North of England.

This is an opportunity to join ARQ at an exciting stage as we expand our presence across the Lancaster, Manchester, Newcastle and Leeds areas.

ARQ provides embedded CFO and finance leadership support to growing innovation, technology and founder-led businesses.

Our clients trust us to provide strategic financial leadership, commercial challenge and the visibility they need to scale confidently.

We combine finance expertise with modern systems, structured processes and an AI-enabled operating model that helps our team deliver high-value work consistently.

Most experienced finance leaders eventually face a choice:

• Stay in corporate and lose variety.
• Go independent and build a portfolio from scratch.

We're building a third option.

ARQ combines:

• Interesting growth-company work
• Direct founder relationships
• Shared infrastructure and support
• Peer collaboration and learning
• The opportunity to help build something ambitious

You’ll have the autonomy to do meaningful strategic work, while being part of a team that’s genuinely invested in each other’s success.

You’ll work alongside founders and leadership teams to:

• Improve visibility and control
• Build forecasting and planning capability
• Support strategic decision-making
• Prepare businesses for growth and investment
• Improve cashflow, performance and financial discipline
• Help leadership teams make confident decisions

This is strategic finance leadership, not compliance-led accounting.

We’re interested in speaking with people who have experience in one or more of the following:

• CFO
• Finance Director
• Head of Finance
• Commercial Finance Leadership
• Fractional CFO
• Scale-up Operator
• Senior Finance Leadership roles

We’re more interested in commercial judgement, founder partnership and growth experience than job titles alone.

You:

• Enjoy working directly with founders.
• Like solving commercial problems.
• Want to make a visible impact.
• Enjoy variety without chaos.
• Have experience helping businesses grow.
• Value autonomy but don’t want to operate alone.

We’re currently building regional hubs across:

• Lancaster
• Manchester
• Newcastle
• Leeds

We’d welcome conversations with candidates based anywhere in these regions.

While our immediate focus is on building our teams across Lancaster, Manchester, Newcastle and Leeds, we’re actively planning further expansion and would welcome conversations with exceptional finance leaders from other regions who may be interested in joining us as ARQ continues to grow.

You don’t need to be actively looking for a move.

You don’t need an up-to-date CV.

If you’re curious about what we’re building and think your experience may be relevant, we’d love to have a confidential conversation.