Engineering Finance Director

FD Capital recruits Finance Directors for UK engineering businesses — civil and structural engineering consultancies, mechanical and electrical contractors, systems integrators, specialist engineering design firms, and engineering businesses with mixed business models combining project work, product sales and long-term service agreements. Engineering finance has a distinct technical profile: project cost accounting and WIP management, R&D tax credit claims under the merged RDEC scheme, grant funding from Innovate UK and EPSRC, and the financial management of long-term contracts and service agreements — all require a Finance Director who has operated in engineering environments rather than arriving from a purely commercial background. Adrian Lawrence FCA, founder of FD Capital and a Fellow of the ICAEW, leads our senior finance recruitment practice.

Call 020 3287 9501 or email recruitment@fdcapital.co.uk. Shortlists within three to five working days.

Adrian Lawrence FCA — Founder, FD Capital
Fellow of the ICAEW | ICAEW-Registered Practice | Engineering sector finance placements since 2018

Engineering businesses — particularly project-based consultancies and contractors — have a financial profile that is significantly more complex than their revenue figures suggest. A £20m engineering consultancy with twenty active projects across four clients, two Innovate UK grant-funded programmes, and a long-term service agreement on a major infrastructure installation has financial reporting, cash flow management and compliance obligations that exceed those of many businesses twice its size. The Finance Director who arrives from a simpler commercial environment typically underestimates this complexity. The Finance Director who has spent their career in engineering understands it immediately — and knows where the material risks are before they look at a single management account.

What Makes Engineering Finance Distinctive

Project cost accounting and WIP management

Project-based engineering businesses — consultancies, contractors, systems integrators — recognise revenue and cost against individual projects, each of which has its own budget, timeline, billing schedule and profitability profile. The Finance Director maintains the project cost accounting framework that tracks actual costs against budget at the project level, calculates work-in-progress (WIP) and accrued income at each month end, and produces the project profitability reporting that allows the business to identify underperforming projects before they become a material financial problem. In businesses running fifteen to fifty simultaneous projects, the WIP position can represent a significant proportion of the balance sheet — and WIP that is incorrectly valued or inadequately reviewed is one of the most common sources of unexpected profit deterioration in engineering firms.

R&D tax credits under the merged RDEC scheme

Engineering businesses are among the most active claimants of R&D tax incentives in the UK. Following the merger of the SME R&D scheme and the RDEC scheme from April 2024, most engineering businesses now claim under the merged RDEC framework — a payable credit at 20% of qualifying R&D expenditure, generating an effective rate of relief of approximately 16.2% after tax. The Finance Director manages the R&D tax strategy: identifying qualifying projects and activities, maintaining contemporaneous documentation that meets HMRC’s requirements, coordinating with R&D tax specialists where appropriate, and ensuring claims are accurate and defensible. Engineering businesses that do not have a Finance Director actively managing their R&D claim frequently under-claim or miss qualifying expenditure entirely.

Innovate UK and research grant management

Many engineering businesses — particularly those in deep tech, advanced manufacturing, cleantech and defence electronics — receive grant funding from Innovate UK, EPSRC, Horizon Europe or other public research funders. Grant management is a material Finance Director responsibility: ensuring costs claimed against grants are eligible under the relevant funder’s terms, maintaining audit trails that meet the funder’s monitoring requirements, managing the cash flow implications of grant payments (which are typically made in arrears against milestones or periodic claims), and ensuring grant income is recognised in the accounts in accordance with SORP and the funding agreement terms. Funder audit findings, grant clawbacks and ineligible cost claims are costly and reputationally damaging — preventing them requires active Finance Director engagement throughout the grant lifecycle.

Long-term service agreements and aftermarket contracts

Engineering businesses with installed equipment bases — particularly in industrial automation, building services, specialist plant and infrastructure — often generate a significant proportion of their revenue from long-term service agreements (LTSAs), maintenance contracts and aftermarket parts supply. The Finance Director manages the revenue recognition and deferred income accounting for these agreements, models the lifecycle profitability of the service contract portfolio, and ensures that the financial terms of new LTSA negotiations reflect the true cost of service delivery over the contract term. Contracts that are priced without adequate financial modelling frequently become loss-making as maintenance costs escalate and parts pricing assumptions prove optimistic.

Mixed business model financial management

Many mid-market engineering businesses operate across multiple commercial models simultaneously — project fees from engineering consultancy, product sales from proprietary equipment, service revenue from maintenance contracts, and occasionally licensing income from intellectual property. Each model has a different revenue recognition treatment, margin profile, working capital requirement and risk profile. The Finance Director provides the financial architecture that allows the business to understand the performance and profitability of each model separately — which is essential both for internal commercial decisions and for investor or lender reporting, where blended financials can obscure significant variation in the quality and sustainability of different income streams.

Engineering Finance Director Salary Guide UK 2026

Business Type and Scale	Typical Salary
Finance Director — engineering consultancy (£5m–£25m)	£80,000 – £110,000
Finance Director — engineering contractor / integrator (£25m–£100m)	£95,000 – £130,000
Finance Director — technology-led engineering business	£100,000 – £145,000
Fractional FD — engineering SME	£400 – £600/day
Interim FD — engineering	£500 – £750/day

Related Sector and Senior Finance Services

Find an Engineering Finance Director

FD Capital recruits Finance Directors for UK engineering businesses — consultancies, contractors, systems integrators and technology-led engineering companies. Candidates with genuine project accounting, R&D tax and grant management experience in engineering environments. Permanent, fractional and interim. Shortlists within three to five working days.

📞 020 3287 9501
✉ recruitment@fdcapital.co.uk

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