The best finance leaders at Australia's growth-stage tech, fintech and deep tech companies in 2026 include Jaco Jonker (hipages Group), Laavanya Pari (Beforepay), Damon Hauenstein (Weel), Stuart Will (EML Payments), Richard Leon (Myriota) and Reena Minhas (Airtasker), scored on delivery, scale within this cohort and tenure.
Jaco Jonker
Chief Financial and Operations Officer, hipages Group
- In seat
- Since November 2022
- Scale
- ASX-listed, FY26 revenue A$90.6M
- Why here
- FY26 net profit up 528%
The clearest delivery story on this list, on a public balance sheet anyone can check. Jaco Jonker joined the ASX-listed trades marketplace as Chief Financial and Operations Officer in late 2022, having previously run finance and operations at Open Colleges through its sale to a private equity firm, and spent eight years before that as CEO and Group CFO of bidorbuy, a South African e-commerce marketplace, where he delivered revenue growth of more than 250 per cent. hipages' FY26 result, presented in August 2026, showed net profit up 528 per cent and free cash flow up 66 per cent as the platform shifted toward an AI-led product. Four years in the seat is long enough for a result like that to be his, not a predecessor's.
Laavanya Pari
CFO, Beforepay Group
- In seat
- Since August 2025
- Scale
- ASX-listed, FY26 revenue A$43.9M
- Why here
- Cash profit up 57% in first full year
A Chartered Accountant with a finance career built inside operating businesses rather than a single long run: Head of Finance at Mamamia, then finance leadership roles at GetUp, Svitzer and I-MED Network, before Grant Thornton and Logica earlier in her career. She joined the ASX-listed earned-wage and BNPL fintech Beforepay as CFO in August 2025, and her first full year closed with cash net profit up 57 per cent to A$15.7 million and a record Net Transaction Margin, presented alongside CEO Jamie Twiss on the company's investor webinars. A one-year track record at this company; a twenty-year one behind it.
Damon Hauenstein
CFO & COO, Weel
- In seat
- CFO since 2022, CFO & COO since July 2024
- Scale
- $500M+ processed annually
- Why here
- Built the finance function from zero
The build-it-from-nothing story on this list. Damon Hauenstein joined the corporate-card and spend-management platform Weel in 2022 as its inaugural CFO, after a decade at Citi in global investment banking, where he worked on mergers, acquisitions and capital markets transactions worth a combined US$20 billion. In July 2024, Weel expanded his brief to CFO and COO, a promotion rather than a hire, as the platform grew to process more than $500 million in transactions a year. There is no predecessor's numbers to separate from his own: he is the finance function's entire history at this company.
Stuart Will
CFO, EML Payments
- In seat
- Since December 2025
- Scale
- ASX-listed, FY26 revenue A$206.8M
- Why here
- Promoted from Group Financial Controller
The clearest Controller-to-CFO promotion I could verify at this level. Stuart Will spent nine months as EML's Group Financial Controller before being promoted to CFO on 1 December 2025, succeeding James Georgeson; he is a Chartered Accountant who had already held CFO roles at Optal and Baby Bunting before joining EML. He presented the FY26 result alongside Executive Chairman Anthony Hynes in August 2026: revenue of A$206.8 million, down 6 per cent as the "EML 2.0" restructuring continues, still the largest revenue base of anyone on this list. A turnaround CFO nine months into the job, not yet a finished result.
Richard Leon
CFO, Myriota
- In seat
- Since May 2026
- Scale
- Satellite IoT, targeting an A$75M raise
- Why here
- CFO through Altium's A$9.1B sale
The strongest résumé coming into a seat on this whole list. Richard Leon was CFO of Altium across two stints, the second ending when the software company was sold to Japan's Renesas Electronics for A$9.1 billion, and led a A$45 million raise along the way. In between, he was CFO of Infomedia from 2016 to 2021, leading an A$85 million raise and a fourfold increase in its share price during his tenure. He joined Adelaide-based satellite IoT company Myriota in May 2026 to run its next capital raise and weigh up an ASX listing, with a US dual listing not ruled out. Five months in the seat; three decades of listed-company finance behind it.
Reena Minhas
CFO & Company Secretary, Airtasker
- In seat
- Since August 2026, handover to 30 Sep
- Scale
- ASX-listed, FY26 group GMV over A$240M
- Why here
- Sixth ASX-listed CFO seat in her career
Too new to score on her record at this company, so this entry ranks the seats behind her instead. Reena Minhas trained as a Chartered Accountant at PwC and KPMG, then spent 17 years as CFO and Company Secretary across four ASX-listed companies - IMEXHS, Konekt, ILH Group and Energy One - including managing Konekt's acquisition by APM. She started at the ASX-listed gig-work marketplace as incoming CFO and Company Secretary on 3 August 2026, working alongside outgoing CFO Mahendra Tharmarajah through a handover that completes 30 September 2026. Watch this seat once she has a full year of Airtasker's own numbers behind her.
Offshore seats
Six finance leaders I researched for this list turned out to be based outside Australia, at companies that are either Australian- founded or carry a significant Australian operation. This is the same pattern the tech CFO list names at Canva, Atlassian and Xero, playing out a stage or two earlier: quantum-computing company Q-CTRL's Head of Finance, Donna Hacker, is based in California; Silicon Quantum Computing's new CFO, John Hollister, appointed in August 2026, is also US-based; Melbourne-headquartered Linktree's Head of Finance and Corporate Development, Alex Meyerguz, works out of New York; Go1's CFO, Caitlin Haberberger, is based in the San Francisco Bay Area; Skedulo's CFO, Anne Meisner, is US-based; and Airwallex's CFO, Pranav Sood, appointed in mid-2026, is based in London. Six data points is enough to call it a pattern rather than a coincidence: as an Australian-founded company scales, the senior finance seat quite often follows the capital and the customer base offshore, well before the company reaches IPO scale.
Seats in flux
Several vacancies and departures turned up during this research, worth naming for anyone tracking where finance talent moves next. Culture Amp's CFO seat has been vacant since Caroline Rawlinson was promoted from the role to CEO in January 2026, with no successor named as of September 2026. Amber Electric and the Sydney gaming company Immutable are both currently advertising for a CFO and a Head of Finance respectively. Share-trading app Stake is advertising for a Head of Finance. Biotech Vaxxas made CFO Doug Cubbin redundant in August 2025 amid wider layoffs. Cultivated-meat company Vow's Head of Finance, Nick Barnes, left for beverage company Karma Drinks. And receipts fintech Slyp's CFO, Ashley Davies, has moved on to become CFO, International at Cotality. A seat like any of these resets a finance career, and a founder watching this space should read a vacancy as a live signal, not a gap in the research.
What this list tells founders
Set the six ranked seats next to each other and a pattern holds: every one of them carries the CFO title, regardless of whether the company behind it is a $90 million-revenue ASX small-cap or a private deep tech company still five months into its new finance hire. The Head of Finance and Financial Controller tier proved almost invisible from outside these companies - either offshore, as above, or simply undocumented anywhere I could verify. For a founder reading this, that is itself useful information: at seed and Series A, in my searches the finance hire who will actually run the function is usually a Head of Finance, not a CFO, and that person is far less likely to have a public profile than the CFOs on this page.[1] The paths behind these six also say something: one rose from Group Financial Controller inside the same company, one built the function from nothing and was promoted into it, and two are repeat CFOs who have already taken a company through a nine-figure exit or raise. None of that shows up on a LinkedIn headline; it shows up when you check the seat against a dated source, which is the whole discipline this page is trying to model.[2]
For the stage-by-stage version of that decision, read when to hire a CFO.
References
- A pattern from my own searches: at Series A with $5 to $15 million raised, the finance hire who actually runs the function day to day is typically a Head of Finance, and that person publishes far less than the CFOs on this page.
- The discipline this page tries to model: check the seat against a dated, published source before naming someone in it, not just their LinkedIn headline.
These guides set out how we see it, drawn from the searches we run and the finance leaders we place. They are general information about the market, not financial, accounting or legal advice, and they are no substitute for advice on your own circumstances.