Your Role

Tax advisory is an operational business. Every booking, every payroll, every closing follows a process – and most of these processes have never been systematically questioned. They work because experienced people know their workarounds, not because they are well thought out. This is precisely the leverage that no one in this industry has yet owned.

Vogel acquires independent advisory firms and develops them further, rather than melting them down. Several thousand medium-sized companies entrust us with their tax, commercial, and strategic matters. This only works if there is something solid underneath: processes that run the same way at every location, technology that is actually used in everyday life, and integration that is faster with the fifth acquisition than with the first. You will build this layer. It does not exist today.

You bring experience from building operational systems – from a B2B scale-up, a company builder, a consultancy with its own implementation responsibility, or from your own startup. You are making a move because your mandate has become smaller than your processing power: too much coordination, too little leverage, too many concepts that others implement. At Vogel, you will find the opposite of both – structures that provide support, with established clients and a strong growth base, and at the same time a setup that moves forward every day.

You will be responsible for Vogel's operations in their entirety: the automation of core business processes, internal tools and data architecture, IT and identity infrastructure including end devices and security, the technical integration of every acquired entity, and the processes around the entry, contract, systems, and exit of our own people. You will build the team that supports these areas and distribute the focus within it. Because the department is newly being established at the Munich location and there is no higher level above you, you will report directly to the management and work closely with Moritz Vogel – this is the foundational character of this first role, not a permanent state. As the department grows, your mandate will expand to overall responsibility for operations.

Your Responsibility

Automation of the Core Business

• Analyze the processes in financial accounting, payroll, closing, and consulting at the locations – on-site, with the real process, with the people who execute it daily – and automate the parts that can be automated.

• Be responsible for the tool stack for the core operational business and the company-wide standards on it: what we buy, what we build ourselves, what we switch off. You decide this, not a committee.

• Get the most out of what is already there. A significant portion of the functionality we pay for is not being used today.

• Your benchmark: Every process must work with double the client volume without requiring double the number of people.

Integration of Acquired Entities

• Be responsible for the technical takeover of each new location – system connection, data migration, access, security, operability from day one.

• Turn integration into a repeatable process instead of a project: what takes three months for the first location must take weeks for the fourth.

• Bring the acquired teams onto the processes and tools that apply here – and recognize where the acquired entity does things better than we do.

Team Building and Operational Responsibility

• Build the operations team to six to seven people who work generally and each have a designated focus – you make the selection, you define the focus areas.

• Take on the topics for which there is not yet a dedicated person, for as long as needed: Tech Operations & Cloud Infrastructure as well as the automation of our HR processes from onboarding logistics to location setup during integrations. Both will grow into their own focus areas with the team – until then, they belong to you.

• Be responsible for the key performance indicators that precede revenue: degree of digitalization, adoption rate of new tools, throughput times per location – and investigate their causes yourself, rather than just reporting them.

• Stay with the system. This role leads a team and still builds things itself – anyone who only distributes tasks and follows up loses their judgment in this area within a year.

Your Perspectives

After 6 months, you will have presented a robust overview of all processes across the locations – with numbers, not impressions. At least two core business processes will be automated and in daily use. You will have accompanied the technical connection of an acquired location. Your first direct hire will have been selected.

After 12 months, you will have a team of three to four people with clearly distributed focus areas. Operational KPIs will be collected and not estimated, and you will know the cause for every deviation. The integration pipeline will be a documented, repeatable process. The tool stack will have been decided.

After 24 months, you will have established Operations as a department that works without daily involvement from management. Every further acquisition will run according to the same pattern, and the effort per location will decrease instead of increasing. The processes will support multiple times the current volume.

Where the position is heading: The second part of the title is not a decoration. This role is designed as the first head of the department and will grow with it – from responsibility for Operations to overall responsibility for the business. This is management careers in their most consistent form. Whether this path is successful depends on your contribution, not your years of service.

What You Bring

Experience & Track Record

• You have built operational systems in a growing company – typically as an Operations or Chief of Staff role in a B2B scale-up after Series B, as an Operator at a Company Builder like Rocket Internet or Razor Group, as a Forward Deployed Engineer with client contact on real processes, or in your own startup.

• A strong consulting background is explicitly welcome – McKinsey, BCG, Bain, or comparable. What interests us about it is the analytical skill: breaking down problems, quickly getting to the core of unfamiliar material, making decisions under uncertainty.

• The crucial point is where you stand: You want to be responsible for results yourself, not just recommend them. Anyone who has already taken this step and can demonstrate a role with its own implementation responsibility starts at the upper end of the role.

• You have successfully implemented something across multiple locations simultaneously and know why this is something entirely different than doing it at one.

• You have your own building track record: automations, scripts, agents, data models – things you have built yourself and that ran productively.

• Profiles that do not fit this mold but bring automation depth and the ability to connect with the medium-sized business sector are explicitly invited – we evaluate based on contribution, not label. Specifically: tax advisors or auditors who know the industry from the inside and have built their own automation track; business information technologists with corporate beginnings and subsequent breaks into startups; industrial engineers with multi-site rollout experience; founders after selling or closing their own company. This role does not follow a standard experience grid because it builds the grid for the department itself: we are advertising it at multiple career levels, and those who are earlier in their path will start at the lower level – with the same mandate and a correspondingly different framework.

Skills & Work Style

• You quickly read an unfamiliar process and immediately see which part of it is substance and which is ingrained habit.

• You build yourself: automations, data flows, interfaces. You don't have to be a software engineer, but you must be able to build the things you decide on.

• You use AI as a natural tool for process analysis, research, and multiplying your own output. Repetitive tasks are a challenge for you to automate, not a fate.

• You explain technical decisions in such a way that a tax advisor with twenty years of experience understands the consequences and can act upon them.

• You lead a small team both technically and disciplinarily – selection, structuring, development – without withdrawing yourself from the task.

Mindset & Personality

• You have the humility to learn from practitioners. The tax assistant with twenty years of experience knows things about their process that are not in any diagram.

• You can handle being the first: no predecessor, no team, no existing structure – and you see this as the real reason to come.

• Vogel is hierarchical in decision-making, flat in communication, autonomous in execution. Performance is celebrated, not hidden – those who want to advance because they are good will find the space here, without political camouflage and without consensus theater.

• You have the ambition to set the highest standard in everything you deliver – not because someone is checking it, but because mediocrity personally bothers you.

What You Won't Find Here

• No process consulting that makes recommendations and leaves. You are responsible for implementation, not diagnosis. What you decide, you see through.

• No greenfield construction in an empty space. Vogel has established clients, DATEV is running, locations are operating. What you build must function alongside ongoing operations and must not halt them.

• No corporate corset where you wait for promotions. Growth here comes from contribution, not years of service – and the department you take over is as big as you make it.

• No pure strategy function. You are involved in on-site operations, real processes, and real people. Those who want to work exclusively at the conceptual level are in the wrong place here.

• No exit to a 45-hour week. The intensity remains high. Directed differently, with significantly more ownership – but not less.

FAQ

1. What is Vogel — and where do you operate?

Vogel is one of Germany's leading consultancies for medium-sized businesses — a family business since 1959, from Aalen — and is building the leading platform for medium-sized businesses from it. We are growing at multiple locations: in Aalen/Ostwürttemberg as our established headquarters and in Munich as a new hub. At both, we are looking for people across all functions — from tax advisory and consulting to the strategic teams building the platform.

2. How should the salary bands be understood?

Intentionally broad — and specified at each level. We differentiate by track record and market value, not by degree: scarce, highly sought-after profiles at the upper end, less scarce ones at the lower end. We calibrate exclusively on the market — two people with similar experience can earn differently with us.

3. How much — and how — do you work at Vogel?

We measure by what you achieve, not by hours. However, it's also true: if you're looking for 9-to-5, we're not the first address. We are looking for people who work intensely out of their own motivation because the tasks are worthwhile. How you allocate your time is largely up to you. What we share: we work in person together — culture, sparring, and the best ideas arise from daily proximity. We are not a remote company and do not have extensive home office policies; individual remote days are not a problem.

4. How does the application process work?

Lean, fast, transparent — and tiered by profile. For entry-level roles (internship, working student, career entry), typically two interviews and a short work sample are sufficient; experienced roles are a bit more extensive. For selected senior roles, we are exploring incorporating a joint workday in the future so that both sides can get to know each other better. Always applies: scheduled appointments, swift decision, substantial feedback — regardless of the outcome.

5. How does variable compensation work?

Tied quarterly to performance, qualitatively assessed. The scale increases with the level: up to 20% Associate, 27.5% Manager, 35% Senior Manager, 42.5% Director, 50% VP. The expected value with good performance — you meet the requirements, set your own accents, pass the keeper test — is around 50% of the maximum; the maximum bonus is not the norm. The focus is on a holistic evaluation by your manager: ownership, quality, learning curve, collaboration, impact.

6. How do I develop myself — what career paths are there?

Two active paths: Mastery (technical depth, expert career) and Pioneer (leadership, management). You choose the direction after onboarding, usually in years 1-3. Career entry is not a separate path, but the early part of the same journey — from working student or intern to Associate, for the best without a new application process.

7. Team, Culture, Vacation?

A shared lunch is an open daily offer — not mandatory; whoever wants to join, can, everyone can eat at any time. In addition, dinners, social events, and offsites at regular intervals — not as a mandatory program, but because a good team also shares time outside of work. Benefits: well-thought-out and substantial, not symbolic. Vacation: 28 days.

8. I know someone — is there a referral bonus?

Yes — €2,500 for every successfully filled position (no internships). A short context is sufficient: who you are thinking of, for which role, why. It doesn't have to be perfect, but it needs to be substantial.

Compensation: €100K – €130K

• • Fixed salary €100K – €130K

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