Finance and Data Hiring in Australia: What Leaders & Professionals Need to Know in 2026

The finance function is at an inflection point. For a finance leader building a team right now, the talent required looks very different from what many teams were hiring for five years ago. 

Across Australia and globally, AI and data analytics have moved from the edges of the finance function. They are now at the core of how finance operates, reshaping forecasting, reporting, cost management and strategic planning. 

The professionals who can work confidently at this intersection are among the most sought-after hires in the market. And the hiring managers who understand this data-led shift will be the ones who build teams fit for the decade ahead. 

For hiring managers, the challenge is becoming more practical: how do you define the capability you actually need, assess whether candidates have it, and build a finance team that can turn better data into better commercial decisions? 

4) Finance and Data Roles Are Rising

• Demand is growing for hybrid finance talent and specialist data roles that sit closer to reporting, governance, systems and automation.

Key Insights for Finance Leaders

1) The CFO Role Has Expanded

• Finance leaders are expected to connect strategy, data, technology and talent, and that is changing the capability needed around them.

3) The Candidate Market Is Tightening

• Finance leaders need stronger data capability at the same time accounting supply is under pressure and competition for analytical talent is rising.

2) Data Foundations Are a Talent Issue

• AI value depends on clean, governed finance data, which means hiring people who understand both the numbers and the systems behind them.

5) What to Look For When Hiring

• The strongest candidates combine finance rigour, data literacy and commercial judgement, not just a long list of tools.

According to Deloitte's Finance Trends 2026 report, which surveyed more than 1,300 global finance leaders, more than half now count themselves among the top leaders influencing strategy across their organisation. That's a meaningful shift from even five years ago, when most CFOs were primarily focused on reporting, compliance, and cost management. 

PwC Australia's Five Trends Shaping the CFO's Agenda in 2026 reinforces this locally: Australian CFOs are now expected to connect finance to strategy, technology and talent simultaneously, allowing investment decisions, digital priorities and workforce capability to move in lockstep. Yet, only 24% of Australian CEOs believe their leadership teams are currently equipped to seize opportunities arising from disruption. The pressure on finance leaders to bridge that gap is real and growing. 

What's enabling the best finance leaders is data 

Those who have invested in connected analytics and built data literacy across their teams are making faster decisions, demonstrating clearer ROI on their investments, and influencing the strategic agenda in ways their peers cannot. Those who haven't are finding that more data doesn't automatically mean better decisions. This challenge affects 57% of Australian CFOs who still struggle with unpredictable conditions despite having access to more information than ever before. 

The practical implication for hiring

The finance function being built now needs to do more than process and report. It needs to analyse, interpret, and advise. And that requires a different kind of talent at every level. 

That shift is now showing up directly in role design, candidate assessment and team structure. Finance leaders are not only asking whether someone can report accurately. They are asking whether that person can interrogate the data, understand the systems behind it, and translate what they find into decisions the business can act on. 

What Australian Finance Leaders Are Actually Grappling With 

CFOtech Australia's analysis of the three trends shaping Australian finance leadership in 2026 paints a picture that will resonate with most people reading this. 

• The sheer volume of data now flowing through organisations has outpaced the capacity of most finance teams to manage it meaningfully. 
• Finance leaders are pivoting from cost-cutting to growth, which demands more sophisticated analytical capability. 
• The talent gap is widening at exactly the moment when the function needs to become more capable. 

The FTI Consulting 2026 Global CFO Survey, which includes specific Australian insights, found that Australian CFOs are focused on improving resilience and optimising operations while responding to concerns around regulatory change and access to capital. 

Notably, nearly 80% of CFOs are now turning to outsourcing and flexible talent strategies to overcome skills shortages and manage complex processes. This can be read as a signal that the internal talent pipeline alone is no longer sufficient. 

AI has moved from experimentation to operational necessity across Australian finance functions. 

For hiring managers, these pressures are shaping the roles being created, the skills being prioritised, and the level of competition for people who can operate across finance, systems and data. 

The Data Foundation Problem and Why It's a Talent Issue 

Here's the challenge that sits at the heart of every conversation I have with finance leaders right now. Deloitte found that 63% of finance departments globally have already deployed AI solutions. Yet only 21% believe those investments have delivered clear, measurable value. 

The gap between deployment and value comes down, almost entirely, to data. 

Data is central to everything in finance, from cost management and performance to growth, talent and compliance, and yet most organisations still don't treat it that way. 

Finance data sits fragmented across multiple systems. Processes rely on institutional knowledge rather than structured logic. And governance, including who owns the data and who is accountable for its quality, is often informal at best. 

CFOtech Australia's analysis of AI moving into finance workflows makes the same point from an operational angle. AI tools have delivered genuine value in pockets: automating invoice processing, flagging anomalies, and drafting variance commentary. That impact remains contained when the underlying systems and data aren't ready to support it. Until the data is clean, consistent, and governed, the ceiling on what AI can actually do for a finance function stays low, regardless of the technology in place. 

This is fundamentally a people problem. Getting data right inside a finance function requires professionals who understand the numbers, as well as how data is structured, governed, and connected across the business. That combination of financial acumen and data literacy is precisely what is hardest to find right now. 

The Skills Gap Is Acute and the Market Reflects It 

The data on Australia's finance talent pipeline is stark. CPA Australia has forecast that an additional 32,400 accountants will be needed over the next decade. Yet the pipeline feeding into the profession is shrinking at an alarming rate. Enrolments in the Accounting Professional Year Program, a key pathway for early-career professionals, collapsed from 7,122 in 2018 to just 340 in 2024, a decline so significant that CPA Australia, CA ANZ, and the Institute of Public Accountants announced their intention to cease the programme entirely. 

The Australian Bureau of Statistics projects the country will need an accounting workforce of over 340,000 by 2026, a target that current supply falls well short of. Accounting roles remain on the Jobs and Skills Australia Skills Priority List, with more than 25,000 vacancies recorded annually. 

Layer onto this the demand for data-capable finance professionals and the picture becomes even more challenging. A study by RMIT Online and Deloitte found that data analysis represents Australia's single largest digital skills gap, that is costing Australian businesses $3.1 billion annually. 

The competition for professionals who sit at the intersection of finance and data is, therefore, intense, extending well beyond other finance teams. When you're competing for data talent inside finance, you're competing with the entire business world. 

Nearly two-thirds of finance leaders plan to bring more technical skills and capabilities into their function over the next two fiscal years. AI and automation top the priority list, followed by data analysis and technology integration. These are also among the skills finance leaders are finding the hardest to attract and retain. 

Finance and Data Roles on the Rise

As finance teams become more data-led, demand is increasing across two broad categories of roles: hybrid finance professionals with stronger analytics capability, and specialist data professionals sitting closer to the finance function. 

In recruitment terms, this is changing both the brief and the candidate market. The strongest candidates are often not sitting neatly inside traditional finance job titles. Some come from commercial finance with strong systems and analytics exposure. Others come from data, BI or transformation backgrounds and need to be assessed for how well they understand finance context, stakeholder needs and commercial decision-making. 

What Finance Leaders Hiring Well Are Doing Differently 

The finance leaders building the strongest teams are not simply adding "data analytics" to existing job descriptions. They are rethinking the composition of their teams. That means reconsidering who they hire, where they look, and how they develop people once they're in the door. 

They're broadening where they look for talent 

Rather than recruiting exclusively from traditional finance and accounting backgrounds, leading finance functions are bringing in professionals with skills in data analysis, business intelligence, and financial systems. They are then pairing them with experienced commercial finance professionals. 

As Deloitte's research describes it, the most effective approach pairs strong accountants with data-capable colleagues on shared analytics and reporting teams, creating a convergence that neither group could achieve alone. 

For hiring managers, that means being more open to adjacent profiles. A candidate may not have followed a linear finance pathway, yet they may bring the systems, reporting or analytics capability the team now needs. The key is knowing what must be learned on the job and what capability needs to be present from day one. 

They're investing seriously in upskilling 

In early 2026, the emphasis across Australian CFO functions is shifting from seeking outside to capability-building within. They are training existing teams in tools like Power BI, Tableau, and ERP platforms while using contract talent to manage workload in the interim. 

Nearly 80% of CFOs are now combining outsourcing and flexible talent strategies with internal development programmes to bridge the gap. That means treating people development as a strategic investment, rather than a perk or an afterthought. 

This also changes the way finance leaders should think about hiring. The best appointment may not be the person who already has every tool listed in the brief. It may be the person with the right finance foundation, learning agility and evidence of applying new capability quickly. 

They're rethinking career paths 

If your finance function doesn't offer clear career paths for data-capable professionals, you will lose them. Consulting firms, tech companies, and competitors who have thought this through will be eager to offer that development to them instead. Creating defined pathways for analysts and finance professionals who want to develop in this direction is increasingly a retention issue, not just a recruitment one. 

This matters at offer stage as well as retention stage. Data-capable finance professionals are looking closely at the work they will get access to, the systems they will use, and whether the organisation is serious about developing this capability. A generic finance role with light analytics language added to the job description is unlikely to be enough. 

They're hiring for curiosity as much as credentials 

Across the market, the finance leaders building the best teams are looking for evidence that candidates are genuinely engaged with how the function is changing, rather than technically qualified for where it's been. PwC Australia's CFO agenda research identifies adaptability as one of the defining attributes of the next generation of finance professionals. In a hiring context, that shows up in how candidates talk about learning new tools, approaching ambiguous problems, and working across functional boundaries. 

It also shows up in how they explain their work. Strong candidates can usually talk clearly about the problem they were solving, the data they used, the limitations they had to work around, and how their analysis changed a decision or improved a process. 

What to Look for When Hiring Finance Talent in 2026 

The brief needs to go deeper than technical accounting competence or general “data analytics” exposure. Hiring managers need to understand how candidates have used data in a finance context, how close they have been to systems or transformation work, and whether they can translate analysis into decisions. 

Useful questions include: 

• How have they worked with large or complex datasets? 
• What tools have they used, and how deeply? 
• Have they contributed to a finance transformation, systems implementation or reporting automation project? 
• Can they explain how they have improved the quality, consistency or usability of finance data? 
• How have they turned analysis into commercial recommendations for senior stakeholders? 
• How do they approach learning when tools, systems and expectations are moving quickly? 

The strongest candidates are not always the ones with the longest list of tools on their CV. They are the ones who can connect financial rigour, data literacy and commercial judgement in a way that helps the business make better decisions. 

The Conversation Has Changed. Has Your Hiring Approach? 

If you're a finance leader hiring right now, you have to recognise that the brief has shifted. Technical accounting competence remains the foundation. 

The finance professionals who will deliver the most value over the next five years will be the ones with the financial rigour to ask the right questions, the data literacy to find the answers, and the adaptability to keep pace as both continue to evolve. 

As a recruiter specialising in finance, David Wood works with CFOs, Finance Directors and Financial Controllers across Australia who are navigating exactly this challenge. If you’re reviewing your finance team structure, reshaping a role brief, or trying to understand where the market is moving, reach out to David for a conversation.