Cost Accounting Manager

Job Details Level: Management

Job Location:

Dayton Office - Dayton, MN 55369

Position Type:
Full Time Education Level: 4 Year Degree Salary Range: $ - $ Salary/year

Job Shift: First Job Category:
Finance

Gradian is an engineering-led, full-line thermal solutions partner serving data center and other mission-critical, commercial, and industrial markets. Headquartered in Maple Grove, MN, with additional facilities across North America, we design and manufacture liquid cooling systems, air handling equipment, heat rejection units, and modular, factory-assembled thermal management solutions.

Gradian was founded through the unification of four complementary, established brands: MAS HVAC, Daedex, DeepCoolAI, and Eco Chillers. Together, we act as a single-source provider, deploying cooling technologies as scalable systems optimized for efficiency, spatial constraints, and overall performance. With a vertically integrated engineering and manufacturing model, we pair rapid design turnaround with precision fabrication, so customers can move faster on complex projects where reliability, timeline, and quality all matter.

At Gradian, you'll work alongside others who get genuinely fired up by complex problems, see your work go from first sketch to job site in weeks, not years, and know that while we're developing the technologies critical for AI infrastructure to scale, our culture remains people-first by design.

It is core to our identity that we operate as one team — driving to win together, energizing others, and building lasting relationships that make the work fun and rewarding.

The Cost Accounting Manager is responsible for leading and standardizing cost accounting processes across multiple manufacturing facilities while directly managing all cost accounting activities for two assigned plants. This role will serve as the organization's subject matter expert for manufacturing costing and will lead the implementation of a standardized cost accounting system, including the company's first-time adoption of standard costing.

The Cost Accounting Manager will partner closely with Operations, Supply Chain, Engineering, Sales, and Finance leadership to improve cost visibility, strengthen margin analysis, establish consistent costing methodologies, and support strategic decision-making. The role will also provide project-specific costing support for customer quotations and sales opportunities while driving actionable variance analysis related to labor, materials, manufacturing overhead, and inventory performance.

• Lead the development, implementation, and ongoing management of standard costing across a low volume high cost manufacturing organization as well as our purchased finished good product lines.
• Design and deploy standardized costing policies, procedures, and controls across multiple manufacturing facilities.
• Establish governance and consistency in inventory valuation, labor costing, overhead allocation methodologies, and product costing processes.
• Develop and maintain standard cost models for raw materials, purchased components, labor, and manufacturing overhead.
• Ensure alignment of costing methodologies across all plants and business units.

• Serve as the primary cost accounting resource for two manufacturing plants with support of cost accounting team.
• Partner with plant management teams to monitor manufacturing performance, inventory accuracy, and cost improvement opportunities.
• Review and analyze inventory transactions, cycle count results, physical inventory adjustments, and inventory reserves.
• Ensure accurate valuation of raw materials, work-in-process, and finished goods inventories.
• Support month-end close activities related to inventory and manufacturing accounting.

• Prepare and analyze labor, material, purchase price, usage, yield, and overhead variances.
• Identify root causes of unfavorable variances and partner with plant leadership to develop corrective actions.
• Provide monthly reporting and actionable insights regarding manufacturing cost performance.
• Develop dashboards and key performance indicators to improve operational visibility.
• Monitor project profitability and manufacturing efficiency trends.

• Partner with Sales, Engineering, and Operations teams to develop accurate cost estimates for customer projects and quotations.
• Review material requirements, labor content, production processes, and overhead impacts to support pricing decisions.
• Analyze project profitability and compare actual results to estimated costs.
• Assist commercial teams in evaluating margin opportunities and business cases for new products and projects.
• Support large customer bids and strategic commercial initiatives through detailed cost modeling.

• Lead the organization's transition from current costing methodologies to a comprehensive standard…