Director Tax

The Opportunity

The tax consultancy is undergoing a transformation. Thousands of firms are seeking successors, and most buyers are merely adding revenue without developing the underlying area. Those who build a practice area here are doing so in a market that is currently dynamic.

Vogel acquires independent consulting firms and develops them into the strongest address in their region. Several thousand medium-sized companies trust us with their tax, commercial, and strategic issues. Tax consultancy is not just one business area among many, but the core.

You will be responsible for an entire practice area of tax consultancy: strategy, output, development, and growth in full scope. You are the escalation endpoint for your area and only escalate matters of corporate strategic significance. You will independently develop the area strategy and actively integrate your topics into the corporate strategy.

Your Responsibilities

Area and Growth

• Take full responsibility for an independent practice area or location, from strategy to output to contribution to business results.

• Independently develop the area strategy and integrate your topics into the corporate strategy.

• Drive growth through your own acquisition, collaboration across all Vogel areas, and the professional integration of acquired client bases.

Leadership of the Line

• Lead your own management line across multiple teams, three to five people at the area level, with deep indirect responsibility for the portfolios below.

• Bear full personnel responsibility for your area: hiring in the multi-stage Vogel process, developing your senior managers, performance management, and, where necessary, separations.

• Set the professional standards and methodology for your area. You are the methodological authority and remain operationally competent.

Clients and Market

• Remain the personal contact for the strategically most important clients and owners of your portfolio.

• Represent Vogel externally, in networks, in the industry public, and in associations, and build the reputation of your area.

• Initiate impulses for our positioning instead of waiting for them.

Questions You Will Find Answers To

• What structure makes your area more than the sum of its portfolios?

• How much of your own mandate do you need to be able to assess your line without blocking it?

• An acquired firm brings its own professional style. What will you standardise, and what will you adopt from there?

How We Measure Success

• After 6 months: You independently manage your area, the line operates through you without the management interfering in standard operations. You have integrated your senior managers into your team and presented your own growth line.

• After 12 months: Your area is growing measurably, through acquisition, cross-departmental collaboration, and integrated client bases. You have further developed your management line and hired at the area level.

• After 24 months: Your area makes a recognisable, independent contribution to business results, professional standards are established, and reputation is built externally.

• Where it leads: to entrepreneurial responsibility for an entire strategic pillar along with shared responsibility for the corporate strategy. This is management career in its most consistent form, determined by contribution rather than years of service.

What You Bring

• You have passed the tax advisor exam and have led at the area level: a sub-organisation, multiple teams, or a location.

• You have not only led an area but have also enabled it to grow, with a proven contribution to output and results.

• You have led executives, set professional standards, and taken deep personnel responsibility.

• You master the mechanics of a tax business, from client management to utilisation to results, and manage it across multiple teams.

• You work with AI as a natural lever and drive the automation of your area instead of waiting for it.

• You think entrepreneurially, engage with medium-sized owners on equal terms, and set the highest standard for yourself and your line, as mediocrity is not an option for you.

A Plus, Not a Requirement

• Experience with integrating an acquired firm into an existing line.

• A specific industry or thematic depth that gives the area a profile.

• No canonical CV required: Director or partner candidate from a large firm with a medium-sized wavelength, firm leader on the verge of taking on their own area responsibility, owner who wants to contribute their practice and continue building as an area owner. We assess based on contribution, not label; the stated range refers to the primary profile, and a different background starts at a different market price and converges after twelve months of proven performance to the role level.

What This Role Is, and What It Is Not

• Owner, not a title. You bear the strategy, output, and results of your area, not a sign on the door.

• Close to the line, not from a distance. You remain closely involved with the most important clients yourself. Pure top-down management does not exist here.

• Growth, not an inheritance. Your mandate is to expand the area, not to manage the existing stock.

Why Vogel

• An area that grows without you having to invent it. The existing stock supports, and every acquisition brings mandates that come into your line.

• The hard work takes the system off the area. We automate the declarative work ourselves, and our own annual financial statement with AI is the proof. Your line thus gains time for consulting.

• You want to decide: Structure, standards, and growth line of your area. Vogel is hierarchical in decision-making, flat in communication, and autonomous in execution, without competing self-interests of a partnership.

• Substance behind you. A profitable, growing company with established clients and long experience.

1. What is Vogel - and where do you work?

Vogel is one of the leading medium-sized consultancies in Germany - since 1959, owner-managed in the second generation, with its own capital - and builds the leading consulting platform for medium-sized businesses from this. We operate at three locations: Aalen as the established headquarters, Bopfingen in the core business, and Munich as a new hub. At all three, we are looking across functions - from tax consultancy to consulting to the teams that build the foundation underneath.

2. How are the salary bands to be understood?

Deliberately broad - and stated at every point before you apply. We differentiate based on track record and market value, not based on qualifications: scarce, highly sought-after profiles at the upper end, less scarce at the lower. The stated range is not a negotiation margin but a profile scale - two people with similar experience can earn differently with us. What determines the upper end is the maturity level, not the number of years in the profession and not negotiation skills.

3. How much - and how - is worked at Vogel?

Measured by what you move, not by hours. But honestly: those looking for 9-to-5 are not our first choice. We seek people who work intensively out of their own drive because the tasks are worth it. How you distribute your time is largely up to you. What we share: we work together in person and usually see each other daily in the office - culture, sparring, and the best ideas arise in daily proximity. We are not a remote company and have no large home office policies; individual remote days are not a problem.

4. How does the application process work?

Slim, fast, transparent - and structured by profile. Typically, there are four steps: a written task where you respond to eight questions - AI is expressly allowed, we just ask for a brief self-disclosure about it; a half-hour conversation; a joint working session on a real problem from our daily work; and an on-site appointment with the team and a shared meal. How many steps it actually takes depends on the role: for internships and student jobs, the on-site appointment is omitted, for student jobs, a conversation suffices, and for senior roles, a joint working afternoon is added. In advance, you can book a ten-minute call where you only ask questions. Typically, you hear from us within 48 hours after each step.

5. How does the variable compensation work?

Quarterly linked 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 assessment by your supervisor based on six criteria: Impact, Judgement, Communication, Execution, Growth, and Values.

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

Two active paths: the IC career (professional depth, expert career) through the stages Expert, Senior, Lead, and Principal - and the management career (leadership, personnel responsibility) through Manager, Senior Manager, Director, and VP. Both are equally compensated, and neither has to lead upwards: staying at one level and going deeper there is equally valid with us. You choose the direction after onboarding, usually in year 1-3. Entry into the profession is not a special 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, Holiday?

The shared lunch is the daily anchor point - whoever is in the office eats together; expected, not controlled. Dinner is the same offer without any expectation. Both without personal contribution. In addition, social events and offsites occur regularly - not as a mandatory program, but because a good team also shares time outside of work.

Benefits are not the icing on the cake for us, but what makes intensity sustainable over the years: exam support with €25,000 qualification budget and three months of leave, 100% coverage of childcare, EGYM Wellpass, company pension scheme, job ticket with 90% subsidy, home office equipment and a device of your choice from our catalogue, a book a month from the Vogel canon - and AI tools without token limits and without budget caps. Holiday: 28 days.