Executive Search · F&A · Financial Services · Trading & Energy · DFW & National

I only work in markets I understand.

Finance & Accounting · Financial Services & Banking · Trading & Energy. Fletcher Search places the hire that moves your business forward, or provides senior interim coverage during a transition, across three productized engagement models built around how you actually hire. Every search personally run by Bryan Fletcher, start to finish.

Engagement Models Start a Search
CFO Search·Controller Placement·FP&A Leadership·SBA Business Development·VP Finance·Interim Controller·Prop Trading Professionals·ETRM Specialists·Chief Lending Officer·Fractional CFO Coverage
Core Practice

Finance & Accounting. Where the bottleneck sits.

For most companies scaling through a critical phase, the finance and accounting seat is where growth actually gets stuck. The month-end that won't close. The lender covenant nobody can report on cleanly. The board deck the executive ends up building themselves.

"Most recruiters learn about your world from job descriptions. I learned mine from working in it — and recruiting exclusively within it for years."

Six-plus years and hundreds of searches later, I've placed people across the full CFO organization, from Senior Accountants and Finance Managers up through Controllers, VPs of Finance, and CFOs, for mid-market and growth-stage companies in real estate, private equity, technology, manufacturing, energy, and professional services.

This is industry-agnostic by design. For finance and accounting, the market is the function, not the sector. The CFO organization is substantively similar whether it sits inside a real estate operator, a PE portfolio company, a tech business, or a manufacturer.

Volume of placements
F&A First
More successful finance and accounting placements than any other vertical.
Seniority range
Full Stack
Every level of the CFO organization, manager through C-suite.
Repeat client rate
72%
Majority of revenue from clients who've hired through Fletcher Search before.

Seniority range. Full CFO organization.

C-Suite

CFO

Strategic finance leadership. P&L ownership, board-level communication, capital structure, M&A, investor relations.

VP Level

VP of Finance

Senior finance leadership. FP&A oversight, business partnering, financial strategy, often CFO succession track.

Director / Sr. Manager

Controller

Accounting leadership. Financial reporting, close process, technical accounting, compliance, team management.

Director Level

Director of FP&A

Planning and analysis leadership. Forecasting, budgeting, scenario modeling, strategic business partnership.

Manager Level

Finance & Accounting Manager

Functional management. Team leadership, process ownership, bridge between individual contributors and senior leadership.

Senior IC

Sr. Financial Analyst / Sr. Accountant

High-impact individual contributors. Strong technical skills, low ego, high output.

Specialized Practices

Where I go further than most.

Two practice areas built through years of recruiting exclusively inside these markets. The hires here are referral-driven and judgment-heavy. Most finance recruiters can't credibly operate in either, and AI-augmented generalist firms can't fake the relationship capital.

01

Financial Services & Banking

Years of recruiting inside banking, private credit, SBA lending, and specialty finance have built a network and market knowledge that generalist firms simply don't have. From SBA production teams and credit analysts to private credit associates, bank CFOs, and chief lending officers, I know what hiring executives in this space are actually evaluating, and I screen for it accordingly.

SBA BDO · SBA Underwriter · Credit Analyst · Private Credit Associate · Bank CFO · Chief Lending Officer · Loan Originator · CRE Underwriter · Relationship Manager · Portfolio Manager
Fluency built through years of active recruiting inside banking, private credit, and SBA lending, not borrowed from a job description.
02

Trading, Energy & Prop Firms

A practice built through years of recruiting for prop trading firms, FX operations, and energy trading and risk management environments, alongside a personal background as a sell-side FX professional. I know how AI is reshaping trading orgs — what's compressing, what's growing, and where firms still need humans on the desk, on the operations bench, and on the risk seat. I staff against that picture, not against a job description from two years ago.

FX Trader · Prop Trader · Trading Operations · Risk Manager · ETRM Specialist · Energy Credit Risk · Trade Settlements · Quantitative Analyst · Trading Technology
Sell-side FX background, systematic strategy research, and active recruiting relationships inside prop firms and ETRM environments — with an active view on where the function is going, not just where it is.
Engagement Models

Three ways to engage. Built around how you actually hire.

Search shouldn't feel like an ER bill. Every engagement is handled personally. The model adjusts to what you actually need, with productized pricing that's transparent before kickoff and structured to fit your hiring cadence rather than reset to lottery economics on every search.

Flat-Fee Search

Per Hire · Single Searches

Predictable fixed fee for one-off searches. Controller, Director of Finance, VP, or CFO. Single seats you want filled well, with no surprise invoice tied to comp.

  • Fixed fee, agreed before kickoff
  • Full sourcing, screening, and Fletcher Candidate Brief on every finalist
  • Coordinated interview process and offer support
  • Reference checks up to three per finalist
  • 90-day replacement guarantee
Typical Range
$15K – $40K by seniority
Most Popular

Embedded Talent Partner

Month-to-Month · Multi-Seat

I run as an extension of your team. Dedicated bandwidth, market intel, and continuous candidate flow across the function for companies hiring five or more seats a year.

  • Up to three active searches at any time
  • Weekly cadence with your designated point of contact
  • Monthly market intelligence report
  • Quarterly Business Review
  • 90-day replacement guarantee on every placement
  • Cancel anytime, 30-day notice
  • One name to call across the function
Typical Structure
$5–8K/mo + $7–10K/hire

Annual Cohort

Fixed Annual · Procurement-Friendly

For PE platforms and banks with planned hiring cadence. Fixed annual fee, quarterly billed, with a defined hire cap and overage protection. A budget line item.

  • Annual commitment, quarterly billing
  • Defined hire cap with overage protection
  • Same scope and SLAs as Embedded
  • Cancel anytime, pro-rata credit on unused months
  • Designed for procurement and finance teams
  • Sponsor- or portco-level engagement
Typical Structure
$120 – 200K/yr up to 10–15 hires

Building a leaner finance team in an AI-leveraged world? Let's talk about the right shape before you write the next job description.

AI & The Human Work

What AI does here. What stays human.

The honest version of the conversation every sophisticated client and candidate is now having about their recruiter. I use AI deliberately to map markets and surface signal at a depth no generalist firm could reach manually. Every judgment, every conversation, every recommendation is mine. The accountability is mine. The relationship is mine.

What AI Helps With

  • Deeper market mapping. Coverage of relevant candidates and signals at a depth that previously required a research team.
  • Faster, more honest research. Background context on companies, candidates, and competitive landscape — done in hours, not days.
  • Better preparation. Every intake call, every candidate conversation, and every client briefing is built on stronger underlying work.
  • Throughput, not volume. Same constrained number of searches per year. Each one worked harder.

What Stays Human

  • Every candidate conversation. Screening calls, calibration calls, references — I make them. No bot, no AI-generated outreach, no offshore screener.
  • Every recommendation. The Fletcher Candidate Brief is written by me, against the spec we agreed on, with a direct view on fit.
  • Every judgment call. Cultural fit, leadership signal, candidate trajectory, comp negotiation — these are decisions, not classifications.
  • Every relationship. Six-plus years of trust capital with hiring executives and senior candidates. AI can't synthesize that, and it can't replace it.

The recruiting market is bifurcating fast. AI-spam outreach is replacing the commoditized end. The specialist end — domain-fluent, judgment-heavy, personally accountable — is becoming more valuable, not less. That's the seat Fletcher Search has always occupied.

The Negative Differentiator

What I don't do.

In a market where anyone can spin up an AI recruiting workflow over a weekend, the moat is best stated negatively. Here's what isn't getting commoditized at Fletcher Search.

No junior associates.

You hired Bryan Fletcher. Bryan Fletcher runs the search. Every call, every brief, every interview prep.

No offshore screeners.

Every candidate I send has been on a call with me. Period.

No AI-generated outreach.

Outreach is personal, specific, and written. Templates are visible from a mile away and candidates have stopped responding to them.

No mass mailers.

No "send me 5 resumes by Friday" lottery economics. Volume isn't the value proposition. Fit is.

No handoff after kickoff.

The person you talked to about the role is the person you talk to about the candidate. Same human, start to offer.

No ghosting candidates.

Every candidate who has a real conversation with me gets a real answer. That reputation compounds.

Fletcher Interim Finance Network

Senior interim coverage when you need it.

In addition to permanent search, Fletcher Search operates a small, curated network of senior F&A leaders available for interim and fractional engagements. Interim CFOs, Controllers, VPs of Finance, and Fractional CFOs for PE-backed and founder-led mid-market companies.

For Clients

Senior interim coverage during a transition, an active search, a special project, or post-acquisition integration. The network is built around quality of bench rather than size. Fewer, better matches.

For Senior Advisors

Retired, semi-retired, and independent senior F&A leaders interested in substantive engagements without rebuilding the marketing, contracting, and collections side of independent consulting work. The Network handles the rest.

Discuss an Interim Engagement For Senior Advisors
My Edge

What separates this from every other recruiter you've tried.

01

You work with me. Start to finish.

You hire Bryan Fletcher and Bryan Fletcher works your search. 100% personal execution. No handoff, no junior associate running screens in the background, no bait-and-switch after the kickoff call.

02

Real market knowledge. Honestly earned.

A decade on the sell-side in spot FX and as an NFA-registered fund manager across seven asset classes. Years of recruiting exclusively inside banking, private credit, SBA lending, prop trading, and ETRM environments. Background you can't synthesize.

03

The Fletcher Candidate Brief.

I don't send resumes. Every candidate submission includes a plain-English write-up: production metrics or technical depth, leadership indicators, compensation context, and a direct recommendation. See a sample below.

04

Fewer searches, worked harder, finished.

I take on fewer searches than most because I finish them. When I commit to a search, it gets completed with the same urgency and quality on week six as week one.

The Process

From intake to offer. No surprises along the way.

1

Deep Intake

Not a form. A real conversation. I want to understand the role technically, culturally, and strategically before making a single outreach call.

2

Active Market Mapping

Direct outreach to passive candidates in my network, augmented by AI-enabled research that goes deeper than any generalist firm could manually. I target people who are performing well, not just those who happen to be looking.

3

The Candidate Brief

Multi-stage vetting followed by the Fletcher Candidate Brief: a plain-English assessment of each finalist before you spend an hour of your time.

4

Close & Transition

Active management through offer, counter-offer, and resignation. I stay involved until day one, not just until you say yes.

The Fletcher Candidate Brief · Redacted Sample

The artifact, not just the name of it.

In a market where anyone can generate a polished-looking document in thirty seconds, the proof has to be visible. Below is a representative finalist write-up, redacted. Every candidate submission you receive from Fletcher Search reads like this — every time.

Fletcher Candidate Brief
Confidential · Finalist Profile
Search
Controller / Manager of Internal Audit · Mid-Market REIT · Dallas, TX
[Treasurer & Director of Finance][Dallas-based mission-driven org] · Current
  • Promoted from Controller (2019–2022) to current seat. Oversees treasury, financial reporting, and finance team.
  • Cross-functional partner to executive leadership and audit committee.
Assistant Manager, Internal Audit[Global Financial Services Firm] · 5 yrs
  • Implemented SOX control framework for a commercial real estate acquisition.
  • Led process walkthroughs across multiple operating units; strong calibration on real-estate-specific controls.
Enterprise Risk Services Consultant[Big 4] · 1 yr
  • Early-career foundation in audit methodology and risk frameworks.
Profile Highlights
  • CPA (active, in-state).
  • MS, Management Information Systems · BBA, Accounting (top Texas state university).
  • Current compensation: $130K base + bonus. Targeting comparable structure.
  • Seeking a return to a for-profit Internal Audit or Accounting leadership seat in DFW.
  • Strong real-estate-adjacent technical foundation; SOX implementation experience uncommon at this seniority.
Logistics & Timing
  • Available to start within 30 days of accepted offer.
  • Hybrid Dallas — flexible. Open to Toledo travel for the right team.
  • One active process, early stage.
Candid Notes
  • Background is mission-driven nonprofit since 2019; the for-profit re-entry will need a sponsor on the hiring side who can vouch for translation.
  • Comp structure may need to be benchmarked carefully — current bonus structure differs from REIT norms.
Recommendation — Strong fit for Manager, Internal Audit at a mid-market REIT. SOX-on-real-estate experience and CPA credential clear the technical bar; the leadership signal (Controller-to-Director promotion) reads as the strongest one in the slate. Suggest first-round Zoom this week, with logistics conversation handled candidly up front given the team's mixed Dallas/Toledo footprint.
Names, employers, and identifying details redacted. Compensation ranges and dates representative.
Client Testimonials

What clients say.

"
I have not been able to stump him yet in dozens of searches over 6+ years working with him. He is unmatched in how quickly he turns around high-quality candidates with detailed write-ups on each which make it easy to quickly identify which I want to interview most. Bryan keeps at it too; he never stops screening and presenting the best candidates until the search is complete. I highly recommend Fletcher Search to any busy hiring executive who needs high quality with speed and who is tired of the spray-and-pray approach of most recruiters.
Richard Bayyouk · Director, Financial Services · MMC Group
"
I have had the pleasure of working with Bryan on multiple occasions over the last few years. Bryan has consistently and quickly produced top-quality prospects in a very competitive hiring environment. To take this further, I am willing to speak as a reference anytime to people especially if they seem on the fence.
Adam Rice · CFO · SWK Holdings
Insights

From the desk of Fletcher Search.

Market observations, hiring guides, and plain-English advice from six-plus years of finance and accounting search. The Fletcher Brief, my monthly market and hiring dispatch, drops first Tuesday of each month.

AI & The CFO Org · Strategic

How AI Is Reshaping the CFO Organization — and What It Means for Your Next Five Hires

The middle of the finance org is compressing. The top is becoming more valuable. The honest framework for thinking about your next five hires in an AI-leveraged environment — and why generic FP&A and senior-accountant searches are starting to look different than they did 18 months ago.

Read Article →
Financial Services · SBA Lending

The Quiet Realignment in SBA Lending That Most Banks Are Missing

The most important conversations in SBA lending this year aren't happening in the trade press. They're happening between bank CEOs and the producers thinking about where to build next.

Read Article →
Financial Services · SBA Lending

What to Look for When Hiring an SBA Business Development Officer

Production numbers tell part of the story. Here's what CLOs and Regional Presidents should actually be evaluating, and why most SBA BDO searches go wrong before they start.

Read Article →
Finance & Accounting

How to Hire a Controller for a Mid-Market Company

The Controller role has evolved. It's no longer just a technical accounting hire, and treating it like one is the most common mistake mid-market CFOs make in the search process.

Read Article →
About Bryan Fletcher

I've been in the room.

Bryan Fletcher, Fletcher Search
Markets I've worked in or recruited exclusively within Spot FX · Sell-Side Fund Management · SBA Lending · Prop Trading · FX Brokerage Operations · Energy Trading & ETRM · Private Credit · Community Banking

Fletcher Search exists to place the hire that moves your business forward, in markets where most recruiters wouldn't know where to start. Before recruiting I spent a decade in financial services: sell-side in spot FX at FXCM, then as an NFA-registered fund manager across seven asset classes. That background is why I recruit the way I do. I know what real performance looks like in a market, not just on a resume.

I started Fletcher Search to work directly with clients and candidates, not to build a firm and step away from the work. Six-plus years in, I still personally work every search, and the majority of revenue comes from clients who've hired me more than once.

Finance and accounting is the core of what I do, the function where I've placed the most people, built the deepest relationships, and developed the most market knowledge. The specialized practices in banking, trading, and energy came from years of recruiting exclusively within those markets, developing fluency that most finance recruiters simply don't have.

The practice is deliberately narrow and the workload is deliberately constrained. I take on fewer searches because I finish them, and because the work I want to do can't be done at volume — and won't be done by an AI agent on someone else's behalf.

If you're a CFO trying to fill the seat that's holding the business back, a CLO building a lending production team, or a prop firm COO looking for trading operations talent, the conversation will feel different from the first call.

Years in Search
6+
Years in Finance
10+
Asset Classes
7
Personal Execution
100%
Get In Touch

Ready to find the right person?

Whether you're filling a critical seat, evaluating an embedded talent partner engagement, need contract or interim coverage fast, looking for a specific professional in a specialized market, or thinking through what your finance team should actually look like in an AI-leveraged environment — reach out directly. I personally respond to every inquiry, usually the same business day.

Bryan Fletcher, Managing Principal

Fletcher Search
Dallas–Fort Worth, TX · Nationally Active

bryan@fletchersearch.com
469-994-9924
linkedin.com/in/bryanfletcher01

Start a Conversation

AI & The CFO Org · Strategic

How AI Is Reshaping the CFO Organization — and What It Means for Your Next Five Hires

By Bryan Fletcher · Fletcher Search · Dallas–Fort Worth

Ken Griffin said the quiet part out loud last week: at Citadel, work that used to take master's-level finance professionals weeks or months is now being done by AI agents in days. He went home that Friday depressed about it. He was right to.

The same compression is now showing up across the finance function — variance analysis, DD packs, credit memos, FP&A buildouts, reporting workstreams that used to be three-person efforts are increasingly one-person-with-AI efforts. If you run a finance org, the shape of your next five hires is starting to look meaningfully different from your last fifteen.

What's compressing fastest

Structured, output-measurable, analyst-and-associate-level work is being eaten first. The pattern is consistent across the firms I recruit for: companies that staffed three FP&A analysts a year ago are now staffing two strong ones with AI leverage and a clearer FP&A director above them. Companies that ran a five-person reporting team are doing it with three. The bottom of the pyramid is thinning. The top is becoming more valuable.

What's not compressing

Three categories of finance work are getting more valuable in an AI-leveraged environment, not less:

  • Judgment under accountability. The CFO who signs the 10-K. The Controller who owns the close. The credit officer who carries the losses. These are roles where the value is being the human whose name is on the decision, and they're not going anywhere.
  • Relationship and trust capital. Investor relations, banker relationships, board communication, deal-making. AI can prep the deck. It can't take the meeting.
  • Managing humans and AI together. The senior Controller who can run a leaner team because they know how to deploy AI tools across the workstream. The VP Finance who can lead a five-person team doing what used to take twelve. These hires are becoming dramatically more valuable, very fast.

What this means for your next five hires

The honest framework: stop hiring linearly off the org chart you built in 2022. The next time a senior accountant or FP&A analyst seat opens up, ask a different question — not "who do I backfill with," but "what shape does this team need to be in 18 months." For most mid-market companies I'm working with, the answer is: fewer seats, higher caliber per seat, more AI fluency expected at every level, with the seniority mix shifting upward.

That doesn't mean hiring fewer people overall. PE-backed mid-market clients are actually pushing for more CFO and VP Finance talent, not less — someone has to be accountable, run boards, manage capital, and lead the leaner teams underneath. The CFO seat is becoming more critical, not less. The middle is what's getting squeezed.

What to watch for in candidates now

  • How they've already integrated AI tools into their workflow — and specifically. "I use ChatGPT" is the wrong answer; "I rebuilt the variance commentary process using AI to cut 60% of the manual work" is the right one.
  • Whether they've led a team through a productivity step-change. The skill of getting more output from fewer people is now a senior-finance leadership skill, and not everyone has it.
  • Comfort with ambiguity. The finance function is reshaping in real time. The hires that will matter most are the ones who can think through what their seat should look like, not just execute what's in front of them.

This is also the conversation I'm increasingly having with clients before we write a job description. The right hire depends on the right shape of the team. Let's talk about that before you post the next req.

Get In Touch Back to Insights
Financial Services · SBA Lending

What to Look for When Hiring an SBA Business Development Officer

By Bryan Fletcher · Fletcher Search · Dallas–Fort Worth

Most SBA BDO searches start in the wrong place. A CLO posts the role, gets a stack of resumes from candidates who all claim strong production, and ends up scheduling interviews based on whoever sounds most confident on the phone. Six months later, the hire isn't performing, and the search starts over.

Production numbers alone don't tell the story

A BDO who closed $40MM last year at a bank with a strong credit team, a fast underwriting process, and an existing referral network is a fundamentally different animal from one who closed $40MM building a program from scratch. Both look the same on paper. They are not the same hire. The first question I ask every SBA BDO candidate isn't how much they produced. It's what their support infrastructure looked like.

Credit authority matters more than most banks realize

A BDO with former credit authority understands the deal from both sides. They know how underwriters think, they know which deals are worth pushing and which aren't, and they don't waste your credit team's time on deals that were never going to close. When I'm representing a candidate with credit authority in their background, that's one of the first things I tell the hiring executive, because it changes how you use that person.

Geography and vertical concentration is a real risk

Some BDOs have production that looks national but is actually concentrated in one geography, one industry, or one referral source. If that source dries up, or doesn't follow them to your bank, the production doesn't come with them. Ask specifically: where did your deals come from? What percentage came from your top three referral sources?

What you're actually trying to find

The BDO you want has genuine production across multiple geographies and industries, understands the credit side well enough to self-qualify deals before they go to underwriting, has referral relationships that are personal rather than institutional, and has been tested in an environment that wasn't already set up for them to succeed. Those candidates exist. They're just not the ones who apply to job postings.

Looking to hire an SBA BDO or build out a lending team? Let's talk.

Get In Touch Back to Insights
Finance & Accounting

How to Hire a Controller for a Mid-Market Company

By Bryan Fletcher · Fletcher Search · Dallas–Fort Worth

The Controller hire is one of the most consequential decisions a mid-market CFO makes, and one of the most commonly mishandled. Not because CFOs don't understand the role, but because the role itself has changed significantly, and most search processes haven't caught up.

The mistake most mid-market companies make

The most common Controller search failure I see is a CFO who defines the role entirely around the close process and financial reporting, and then wonders six months later why their new Controller can't lead the team, communicate upward, or think beyond the month-end checklist. Technical accounting skill is necessary but not sufficient. A Controller at a mid-market company is a leader first.

What the intake conversation should actually cover

When I take a Controller search, I spend more time on context than most recruiters spend on the entire intake. What's the relationship between the Controller and CFO meant to look like? What does the team look like and what kind of manager does it need? Is this a process improvement hire, a scale hire, or a replacement? What does the outgoing Controller's departure tell you about what went wrong?

Where to actually find good Controllers

The best Controllers at mid-market companies are almost never actively looking. In DFW specifically, the strongest mid-market Controller candidates come from three places: Big 4 alumni who made the jump to industry five to eight years ago, Controllers at slightly smaller companies ready to step up in complexity, and strong Assistant Controllers being underutilized where they are.

The brief matters as much as the search

A CFO's time is limited. Every candidate I submit comes with a detailed write-up covering technical background, leadership profile, compensation expectations, and a plain-English recommendation. By the time you're on the phone with a finalist, you already know why they're worth your hour.

Hiring a Controller or upgrading your accounting leadership? Let's talk.

Get In Touch Back to Insights