Right now, hiring a senior accountant or finance leader in Australia is a filtering problem, not a sourcing problem, because redundancies in 2024 and 2025 put a lot of good people on the market. The real shortage is further back: fewer graduates entering accounting. Businesses that narrow their briefs, or wait, will feel it first.
Is there an accountant shortage in Australia?
Accounting is a large profession. Jobs and Skills Australia's occupation profile for accountants counts around 215,500 people employed, with a median age of 42. The concern behind the word "shortage" is less about today's headcount and more about who replaces those people as they move on.
I was on a panel on navigating the accounting talent shortage at an accounting and business expo in Sydney this year, and my answer then is the same now. As I put it in a post in March: "The talent shortage hasn't fully arrived yet, but the businesses that aren't building an advantage now are going to find themselves competing for a shrinking pool in the next 3-5 years."
Right now, senior hiring is a filtering problem
If you are hiring a senior finance person in 2026, you will not struggle to get applicants. I typically see 200 plus applicants for a senior role, and a CFO advert I ran this year passed 200 within a month. That is not unusual even for mid-level and mid-senior roles.
The reason is the restructures of 2024 and 2025. Restructures and redundancies hit the middle bracket of finance hardest, roughly the A$180k to A$250k range, so there are more good people looking at that level than there are jobs. Many of them apply down, so a finance director will apply for a financial controller role. In our Q1 2026 State of the Market report, which polled over 1,100 finance professionals, 69% of businesses had been affected by headcount reductions in 2025.
The qualified end of the market, roughly A$120k to A$160k, is a different story. That is where the volume of accountants, analysts and business partners sits, and it is always busy, so you will compete for people there in any market.
| Senior finance hiring in 2026 | The pipeline over the next 3 to 5 years | |
|---|---|---|
| Candidate supply | Plenty of good people after the 2024 and 2025 redundancies | Fewer graduates entering accounting, so fewer future leaders |
| Applicants per senior role | 200 plus is common | A smaller pool, with the best people choosing between offers |
| The main hiring problem | Filtering: finding the few who fit | Sourcing: reaching people before competitors do |
| What gives you an edge | A clear brief and someone who can filter well | Visible leadership, a reputation candidates know, and relationships built early |
Plenty of applicants does not mean plenty who fit. Our Q1 report put it this way: businesses looking for a financial controller or head of finance who can genuinely partner with the executive team "will find the pool is thinner than the volume of applicants suggests". For a founder hiring directly, that usually means a flood of CVs, most of them not suitable, and very little time to work out which few are worth a call.
The pipeline is where the shortage is
The longer-term problem is attraction. Fewer people want to become accountants, and the pickup of accounting degrees at universities has dropped. It is something I hear quite a lot.
It is not all bad news. A lot of the work that used to need big teams of accounts payable staff and assistant accountants is being automated, so a smaller intake is arriving at a better time than it would have ten years ago. What does not shrink is the need for people who can run a finance function, partner a founder and stand in front of a board. Those people come from the same pipeline, years later.
Big 4 firms still produce a steady flow of qualified people who leave within a couple of years of qualifying, which is one reason the senior market feels well supplied today. Whether that flow suits an early-stage company is a separate question, which I cover in hiring Big 4 candidates into a startup.
Whether AI will replace accountants, and which roles it changes first.
Narrow briefs make the shortage arrive early
The quickest way to create your own talent shortage is to write a brief that rules most people out. With 200 applicants to get through, many businesses use industry experience as the first filter, and internal teams and hiring managers screen out anyone without it. In my experience the highest performers adapt their experience to any industry, and a brief that insists on it misses them.
Local experience is the other one. Australian hiring managers can be very picky about it, even for candidates from New Zealand, whose experience is about as close to Australian as it gets. I have watched strong finance leaders from much larger overseas businesses miss out on roles here for that reason alone. I wrote more on why Australian experience is overrated in finance hiring.
Then there is the office. In the same Q1 report, 44% of finance professionals said they would decline their dream role if it required five full days in the office. Each of these filters is reasonable on its own. Stacked together, they turn a market with 200 applicants into a handful of candidates, and that is when founders tell me there is a shortage.
What a founder should do now
I run two searches only: the first finance hire (head of finance or financial controller, around late seed to Series A) and the first CFO (Series A to C), for venture-backed tech, fintech and deep tech companies in Australia. For those two seats, this is what building an advantage looks like in practice.
Write the brief around capability, not pedigree. Our Q1 report's advice to finance leaders holds for founders too: define what alignment with this specific role means before you review a single CV. Keep industry, local experience and Big 4 as nice to haves unless the role genuinely cannot work without them.
Plan for the person who is not applying. The CFO I placed with a client earlier this year was not on a job board and had no plan to leave. On that search I reviewed 143 finance leaders to find the one.
Make your leadership visible. Rising finance people looking for a step up want to know the person at the top before they commit. Most finance leaders in high-growth companies are invisible online, which works when talent is abundant and gets harder as the pool shrinks. A founder or CFO who shares how they think is an advantage in a tightening market.
Treat filtering as the main job. A role in a fast-growing company has to be sold as exciting and as one of the hardest jobs the person will ever do, and then 200 CVs have to become a shortlist of people who fit. Whoever does that filtering needs to know the market well enough to see past the first screen.
How long a CFO search takes in Australia, start to finish.
If you are a finance professional
The same market looks different from the other side. At senior level there are more good people than roles, so lean into your strengths and your most marketable experience, and give a hiring manager a clear reason your background fits this role. As our Q1 report put it, a 2025 redundancy carries no stigma; what matters is how you frame the experience.
Longer term, the shrinking pipeline works in your favour, especially if you build the commercial skills that the automation of routine work will not replace. The people I worry about are the ones who have spent 20 to 30 years on purely repetitive processing work and have not kept up with the tools.
Common questions
Is there a shortage of accountants in Australia?
Not at senior level yet. In 2026 a senior finance role in Australia commonly draws 200 or more applicants, because restructures and redundancies in 2024 and 2025 put many experienced people on the market. The shortage is in the pipeline: fewer people are choosing accounting at university, and that will reach senior hiring over the next three to five years.
Why is there an accounting talent shortage?
Fewer students are choosing accounting degrees, which the profession treats as an attraction problem. Automation is reducing demand for routine processing roles, but not for people who can run a finance function or partner a leadership team, and those come from the same shrinking pipeline.
Is it hard to hire a CFO or head of finance in Australia right now?
Applicants are easy to find in 2026. The hard part is picking the right one. A senior finance advert in Australia can attract 200 or more applicants, and most will not fit an early-stage company. The difficulty is filtering, and reaching the strong people who are not applying because they are settled in their current role.
How can a startup compete for finance talent in a shrinking market?
Write the brief around what the person must deliver rather than pedigree such as industry, local or Big 4 experience, plan to approach people who are not actively looking, and make the founder or CFO visible so candidates know who they would work for. Each unnecessary filter in a brief shrinks the pool further.
Will the accountant shortage push finance salaries up?
Not yet at senior level. In 2026 senior finance salaries in Australia have plateaued because there are more good people than roles in the roughly A$180k to A$250k bracket. Competition is stronger at the qualified level, roughly A$120k to A$160k, where demand is consistently high.
These guides set out how we see it, drawn from the searches we run and the finance leaders we work with. They are general information about the market, not financial, accounting or legal advice, and they are no substitute for advice on your own circumstances.