Controller, Accounting, Financial Compliance

Description

The Controller will serve as the senior accounting leader and will be accountable for ensuring financial results are accurate, complete, timely, well-supported, and ready for CFO, executive, board, lender, and private equity sponsor review. This individual must bring strong technical accounting judgment, disciplined execution, process improvement capability, and the leadership presence needed to build accountability across the accounting team.

The Controller will serve as the senior accounting leader and will be accountable for ensuring financial results are accurate, complete, timely, well-supported, and ready for CFO, executive, board, lender, and private equity sponsor review. This individual must bring strong technical accounting judgment, disciplined execution, process improvement capability, and the leadership presence needed to build accountability across the accounting team.

This is not a purely technical or review-oriented role. The successful candidate must understand the business, lead through complexity, identify root causes, challenge incomplete work, develop managers, reduce single points of failure, and create a repeatable accounting operating model.

Accounting Leadership and Ownership

• Lead the accounting function and own the accuracy, completeness, and integrity of the company's financial results.
• Set clear expectations for accounting managers and team members, including deadlines, quality standards, documentation requirements, and escalation protocols.
• Ensure the accounting team operates with defined ownership, accountability, and follow-through across close, reconciliations, journal entries, accruals, AP, cash operations, reporting support, and audit readiness.
• Serve as the primary accounting leader for the CFO, executive leadership, external auditors, and other key stakeholders.
• Build a culture of discipline, accountability, transparency, continuous improvement, and proactive issue resolution.

• Own the end-to-end month-end close process, including close calendar, task ownership, deadlines, issue tracking, review standards, and final close readiness.
• Ensure financial statements and supporting schedules are CFO-ready before submission.
• Improve close timeliness, accuracy, and predictability through better processes, clearer ownership, and disciplined review.
• Identify and resolve close bottlenecks, recurring errors, late deliverables, unsupported balances, and areas requiring rework.
• Ensure journal entries, accruals, reconciliations, and reporting schedules are complete, accurate, reviewed, and appropriately supported.
• Maintain a close dashboard or similar tool to provide visibility into status, risks, delays, and open issues.

• Own balance sheet integrity and ensure reconciliations are completed timely, reviewed appropriately, and supported by sufficient documentation.
• Identify high-risk accounts, aged reconciling items, unsupported balances, recurring variances, and unresolved accounting issues.
• Establish standards for reconciliation quality, review signoff, issue resolution, and escalation.
• Partner with accounting managers to ensure account ownership is clear and issues are resolved at the appropriate level rather than pushed upward without analysis.

• Lead audit readiness efforts and ensure the accounting organization is prepared to support external audit requirements efficiently and accurately.
• Maintain an audit-readiness tracker, open item list, and supporting documentation standards.
• Identify control gaps, process breakdowns, documentation weaknesses, and areas of manual reliance or tribal knowledge.
• Partner with the CFO and external auditors to resolve audit issues, improve audit support, and reduce last-minute scrambles.
• Strengthen internal controls across close, reconciliations, journal entries, accruals, AP, cash disbursements, vendor master, approvals, and financial reporting processes.

• Assess current accounting processes and implement improvements that increase efficiency, accuracy, visibility,…