Accounting Lead

Merge Labs is a frontier research lab with the mission of bridging biological and artificial intelligence to maximize human ability, agency and experience. We’re pursuing this goal by developing fundamentally new approaches to brain-computer interfaces that interact with the brain at high bandwidth, integrate with advanced AI, and are ultimately safe and accessible for anyone to use.

About the team:

Merge is building the next generation of brain-computer interfaces by combining advances in synthetic biology, neuroscience, AI, and non-invasive imaging. As we scale the science, we re scaling the operational backbone that supports it. Finance is central to that effort: we need accurate, auditable financials; thoughtful controls; and systems that let scientists and operators move quickly while giving leadership a clear view of where resources are going.

About the role:

We re hiring our first in-house Accounting Lead to become the accountable owner of accounting  ll inherit an outsourced accounting model and a modern but still-evolving finance stack, then build the internal standards, controls, and operating cadence we need as the company scales.

This is a hands-on builder role. You will own the close, financial statements, general ledger, AP/expenses, procurement, technical accounting, controls, finance systems, audit readiness, and the accounting inputs that make budgeting and forecasting reliable. External partners will continue to support areas such as payroll, tax, FP&A modeling, and selected transaction processing, but you will own the outcome wherever their work touches the books.

You ll report to an operations and strategy leader rather than to a career accountant. That makes judgment and communication especially important: we want someone who can be the technical authority, teach the organization, push back when necessary, and reason from first principles to explain why a recommendation is right for the organization and for our mission. You ll translate financial data into clear insights that inform decisions across the company, whether you re walking leadership through burn rate or helping a non-financial team understand the impact of a purchasing decision.

If you enjoy building scalable finance operations that accelerates research, we’d love to meet you.

In this role, you will:

• Own the monthly, quarterly, and annual close, including the general ledger, chart of accounts, reconciliations, accruals, coding standards, and financial statements.

• Own procurement, AP, and expenses end-to-end, building a fast, service-oriented process that preserves appropriate controls without blocking scientists from critical vendors, equipment, materials, or services.

• Own accounting for significant Cap Ex and fixed assets across laboratory, hardware, equipment, and facilities spend.

• Establish and maintain technical accounting policies for an R&D-intensive company, including R&D spend, leases, prepaids/accruals, equity and stock-based compensation, and other material areas as they emerge.

• Build and maintain a pragmatic control environment that supports accurate, auditable financials without unnecessary bureaucracy.

• Lead audit preparation and the external auditor relationship, making financing diligence and audit support repeatable and well-organized.

• Own finance systems and integrations across Rillet, Ramp, Procurify, Rippling, Carta, and external-provider workflows, improving and automating them as the company scales.

• Own the internal budgeting-input process and ensure clean actuals-to-plan mapping, partnering with the external FP&A team on forecasting and modeling.

• Produce clear financial reporting for leadership, the board, and investors, including burn, major variances, Cap Ex, and other decision-relevant…