From Flying Dark to Lighting the Way in Treasury

Too many treasury professionals feel like they’re flying dark, navigating their careers without clear visibility or a sense of direction. Job titles and responsibilities may seem straightforward on paper, but the reality can be murky. Many are uncertain about what “good” looks like at their level, how to grow, and what to expect as they climb the ladder. In this edition of The Treasury Market Playbook, I’m shedding light on the silent confusion that too often accompanies treasury career progression. Let’s talk about how to break free from the fog, redefine career clarity, and empower you to navigate your treasury journey with confidence.

In my world, I call this "flying dark." And it’s exactly why I created The Treasury Market Playbook.

Over the past few years, I’ve seen brilliant treasury professionals, from Analysts to Heads of Treasury, navigating their careers with blurred lines, second-hand context, and surface-level information. Titles may look similar on paper, but in practice, they’re worlds apart. Roles can be poorly defined, hiring processes opaque, and feedback loops non-existent. Treasury sits at the intersection of liquidity, risk, capital markets, and strategy. It’s commercially critical, real-time, high-stakes. Yet, externally, it’s often treated as a back-office afterthought. Internally, it’s misrepresented and buried under accounting-led hierarchies.

I didn’t start this newsletter to kill time, as a dad of two, I consider solo supermarket trips a holiday. I started it because I’ve spent years in conversations that shouldn’t be happening in isolation. The kind that lift the lid on job specs, challenge outdated hiring assumptions, and help professionals make smarter, more confident career moves. This newsletter isn’t just for those actively job hunting. It’s for anyone who wants more visibility into the broader treasury world. If you’re a Treasury Analyst wondering if your role is “normal” or a Group Treasurer seeking real insight into the market, not just recycled information, this is for you.

This is my personal weekly commitment to offer honest, behind-the-scenes insight into how the treasury opportunity market really works. No jargon. No guesswork. Just real, actionable information. I hope The Treasury Market Playbook can become that guiding light for those who’ve worked in silos too long. A direct line to the messy middle, where titles don’t always align with tasks, and promises fall short of reality. This is about visibility, benchmarks, and challenging outdated norms. Ultimately, it’s about helping you avoid flying dark, because treasury deserves better. And so do you.

So what should exposure and clarity look like at each stage of a treasury career? Let’s break it down.

Before I Jump Right In: One Size Doesn’t Fit All

I’ve touched on this in a previous article, but it’s worth repeating: exposure looks very different depending on team size. In a three-person treasury, an Analyst might be drafting policies or managing FX trades simply because there’s no one else to do it. In a global team of thirty, those same tasks could be split across multiple roles and regions.

Neither structure is inherently better, but it’s a crucial reminder that exposure must be assessed in context. A junior in a lean setup might gain broad experience but miss out on technical depth. Meanwhile, someone in a centralized treasury hub might become highly specialized without ever seeing the full picture. The key is alignment, between role scope and personal goals, and between day-to-day responsibilities and long-term development.

Breaking In: What Good Looks Like for Junior Treasury Talent

At entry-level, exposure is often defined by how much context is given. Many junior treasury roles focus solely on payment runs and bank reconciliations, but real development begins when someone explains the "why" behind these tasks.

A strong entry-level role introduces the fundamentals of liquidity management, not just how to check balances, but how inflows, outflows, and forecasts impact funding needs. It offers space to shadow deal settlements, banking relationships, and compliance management. Exposure to KYC processes, user access requests, and banking documentation should never be treated as admin, it’s where understanding governance and structure begins. Support-level involvement in FX confirmations, cash visibility reporting, and TMS testing can offer a window into the bigger picture. The goal isn’t instant technical mastery but sparking commercial curiosity and helping juniors connect their tasks to the broader strategy they support.

Clarity at the Start: Empowering the Next Treasury Generation

For Treasury Assistants and Junior Analysts, the stakes are deceptively high. These professionals are ambitious but often unsure of what they should be learning or even asking for. They trust the process, assuming the title tells the full story. When that story turns out to be hollow, the result isn’t just poor retention, it’s missed learning and development opportunities.

These roles should provide hands-on exposure to liquidity management, hedging mechanics, and short-term forecasting. They should involve collaboration with banks, not just processing statements. They should build cross-functional confidence, not just technical accuracy. When we underserve this level, we stunt the next generation of senior leaders before they even had a chance to take off. Worse, we send them into their next role carrying imposter syndrome they never had to bear.

Beyond the Report: What Makes a Senior Treasury Analyst Stand Out

At the Senior Analyst level, exposure should evolve into ownership. Senior Analysts shouldn’t just populate reports, they should own them, interpret them, and communicate insights. They should manage daily and weekly liquidity, support FX trade execution, and understand how funding needs evolve over time. Exposure should also extend to cross-border cash flows, early involvement in investment decisions, and collaboration with accounting, tax, or FP&A. Analysts who work across regions or legal entities begin to build the judgment that treasury careers are built on. System exposure becomes critical here. Helping improve reporting efficiency or contributing to a TMS enhancement gives Analysts operational weight that sticks with them long-term. Exposure to intercompany loans, covenant reporting, and audit interactions round out this stage.

The risk? Over-specialization. If someone’s been focused on cash positioning for years, they’ve missed a chance to grow. Breadth is key, and roles at this level should be designed to rotate or stretch.

Beyond the Badge: What Treasury Managers & Assistant Treasurers Should Really Own

By now, exposure should shift from task execution to strategic accountability. Treasury Managers should set hedging strategies, not just book trades. They should monitor exposure limits, review policy frameworks, and explain risk mitigation decisions to the wider business. Banking relationships are no longer solely the domain of the Group Treasurer, Managers/Deputies should select counterparties, renegotiate pricing, and own onboarding processes. They should lead workflows, coach juniors, and serve as a go-to point for tax, legal, and external advisors.

On the systems side, Managers should be embedded in change. Whether it’s implementing a TMS, rolling out e-banking upgrades, or driving automation, they should be the bridge between treasury’s needs and tech’s delivery. But this is also where title inflation can creep in. I’ve seen Managers/Deputies with zero risk ownership, no banking relationship exposure, and purely operational remits. Titles might be easy to hand out, but meaningful exposure, the kind that builds leaders, is harder to fake.

For Mid-to-Senior Professionals: The Stakes Are Even Higher

When you're a Treasury Manager, Head of Treasury, or Group Treasurer, you’re not just evaluating tasks, you’re evaluating trajectory. You’re asking: Who are the stakeholders? What’s the maturity of the function? Is the CFO a true strategic partner, or someone who still sees treasury as “just the cash team”? Are we working with fully integrated systems, or stitching together manual spreadsheets in a £500m+ business?

At this level, every move is a reputational investment. When the mandate isn’t clear, it’s not just frustrating, it’s dangerous. You don’t want to walk into a role that reads like a leadership opportunity and turns out to be a reactive fix-it project with no real authority. You don’t want to be sold a "strategic" position only to find yourself knee-deep in cash flow firefighting with no seat at the table. That kind of move can damage confidence, dilute credibility, and knock your career plan off course by years, not months. That’s why clarity at this level isn’t a luxury, it’s a prerequisite.

The View from the Top: Treasury’s Strategic Engine Room

At the top of the tree, exposure isn’t about routine, it’s about impact. Good treasury leadership means shaping the capital structure, owning the refinancing roadmap, and building strong lines of communication with the board, CFO, rating agencies, and investors. Strategic exposure means leading re-centralization efforts, designing global cash pools, navigating regulatory change, and managing complex cross-border funding requirements. At this level, treasury becomes transformation-led, not transaction-led.

But perhaps the most important exposure here is internal. Strong Group Treasurers lift others. They build succession plans, delegate decision-making, and expose junior and mid-level team members to the parts of treasury that drive business strategy. The flip side? I’ve seen senior treasury leaders stuck in firefighting mode, reactive, overly reliant on banks and advisors, and too operational to shape long-term direction. That’s not leadership. That’s survival.

Ultimately, the treasury market will only get better when everyone has better transparency. Better insight into roles. Clearer explanations of the responsibilities at each level. Fewer assumptions and more real conversations between job specs and lived experiences.

Whether you’re just starting out or you’ve been flying at the top for years, the Playbook aims to ensure you can all navigate these waters with clarity, not guesswork.

That’s why I feel this Newsletter matters. Because flying dark, without true insight, is a risk none of you should take.

Author – Craig Ryan Perkins