Jones wants to transform the Brumbies into a world-class organisation after signing a three-year deal to become the Super Rugby province's third boss in the space of 14 months.

Jones spent three of his first four hours in the job on Monday working on finding a major sponsor before the season starts with a match against against the Queensland Reds at Canberra Stadium on February 13.

While he said the Brumbies' financial plight was not good and he predicted another loss this financial year, he was confident of turning it around and making a profit the following term.

Jones joins the Brumbies following the resignation of Doug Edwards last month. Edwards has returned to run his multi-million-dollar scrapbook company in Queensland after one of his business partners fell ill.

Jones is a director and co-founder of Canterbury Hill Advisory - which provides advice on mergers, acquisitions and business restructure - was  the founder of Rex Airlines, the boss of the Australian arm of defence contractor Raytheon and played a role in the resurgence of Australia's Olympic sailing team as their program director from 2006 to 2008.

Jones grew up in Canberra, going to St Thomas More's Primary School and then Daramalan High, before enrolling in the Royal Military College at Duntroon and becoming an officer and test pilot in the Australian Army.

He was set to take over from Fagan following his resignation in November 2013 but Jones answered a last-minute call to head Australia's America's Cup campaign.

While the bid ultimately failed, with the Oatley family withdrawing their financial backing, Jones said he learnt a lot  that would help him with his Brumbies role.

"The America's Cup had always been a life-long passion ... so when the Oatleys held their hand up and said we'll get this going and we'd like you to run it, it was an opportunity that was pretty hard to pass up," Jones told Fairfax Media.

"I learnt a lot about the commercial side of sport in that time ... I've won the [Brumbies] job twice, so hopefully I'm the right guy."

Sailing and rugby are two of Jones' passions. His brother Geoff was the Brumbies' inaugural assistant coach in 1996 and Jones represented the ACT at under-21 level.

He said  the Brumbies had been too "clubby" and that needed to change.

Jones also said a crucial role of his was to arrest declining attendances, which he said had dropped from 23,000 per game to about 12,000 over the past decade.

While he understood improved television coverage and Canberra's cold winters made it  easy to watch at home he said it was up to him to bring the crowds back to levels of the glory days.

"I'm going to change the culture of the place, I'm going to make it a world-class sporting organisation, not just a regional-Canberra organisation," Jones said.

"But it's an organisation that's going to be fully engaged with the local community and the regions that we represent as well, and we're going to be a team and an organisation that represents all of those stakeholders.

"It's been very clubby before, but we need to step it up and make it a world-class, professional sporting organisation."

The Brumbies still don't have a major sponsor, despite the start of the Super Rugby season being just seven weeks away.

Jones was hopeful of locking something in by then, but it wasn't catastrophic if they didn't have one by the first game.

"It is my No.1 priority at the moment. We have a number of really good candidates but we're going to widen the net and go out with some urgency," he said.

"But I think we've got a good story to tell and it's a good brand, so I'm confident we'll get a major sponsor.

"We're not going to give it away because it's too valuable."

New Brumbies chairman Robert Kennedy said Jones' financial background wasn't the main reason behind his signing.

"It's certainly important, by far it wasn't the major component. What I would say his proven experience in delivering change in organisations and successful change ... that strategic leadership was probably the most important," Kennedy said.