Free Guide

Building Your 2026 Finance Dream Team

The Hardware & Manufacturing Leader's Guide to Attracting and Securing Top Finance Talent Before Your Competition

With 93% of finance leaders reporting talent shortages, senior roles taking 90 to 120 or more days to fill, and the CPA pipeline shrinking year over year, the pressure to build high-performing finance teams has never been greater. This guide gives you a 5-step framework to win.

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Building Your 2026 Finance Dream Team guide on tablet

Why This Guide Exists

The Talent War in Manufacturing Finance Is Already Here

You know the difference between hiring an Impact Player and settling for a "good enough" finance leader. One reduces your close cycle by 30% while improving forecast accuracy and building the infrastructure that carries your company from Series B to IPO. The other costs you hundreds of thousands in lost productivity, missed strategic milestones, and team attrition.

For hardware, manufacturing, and med device companies, the challenge is uniquely sharp. Most available finance talent comes from SaaS and software backgrounds. The intersection of deep finance expertise and real operational experience in physical product companies is exceptionally rare. If you're posting job ads and waiting, you're fighting over a fraction of the available market.

This guide gives you the framework to compete differently and win.

The Math Is Unforgiving

The Numbers Driving the Crisis

0 %

Of Finance Leaders Report Talent Shortages

0 %

Decline in CPA Candidate Pipeline Since 2016

90 - 120 Days

Time to Fill Senior Finance Roles

0 %

Of Workforce Are Passive Candidates Job Boards Miss

What You'll Learn

Inside the Dream Team Guide

01

The 5-Step Framework

A repeatable structure for securing finance leaders in hardware and manufacturing before your competitors even post the job.

02

Accessing Hidden Talent

How to reach the passive candidate pool that traditional recruiting methods miss entirely. The talent that never sees your job posting.

03

Pipeline Strategy

How to keep your finance leadership bench strong year-round, not just when you're scrambling to fill an open seat.

04

5 Costly Mistakes

The five most common mistakes that derail executive finance hires, and exactly how to avoid each one in your next search.

05

Compensation & Positioning

How to position your opportunity to compete for talent against software companies, including realistic compensation benchmarks.

06

Two Paths Forward

A clear-eyed look at what happens to companies that wait versus those that act strategically. Your next move determines your outcome.

Sabina Levin, founder of Altitude Search Group

About the Author

Written by Someone Who's Lived Both Sides

I'm Sabina Levin, founder of Altitude Search Group. Before I became a recruiter, I spent 10 years as a CPA in finance and accounting roles. I closed books, navigated audits, built forecasting models. I know these jobs because I did them.

Over the past decade in executive search, I've placed more than 150 senior finance executives across hardware, manufacturing, and med device companies. The frameworks in this guide come directly from that work, refined through hundreds of conversations with finance leaders who've navigated exactly the challenges you're facing.

The goal of the guide is simple. Help you make the next exceptional hire signs with you, not your competition.

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