Senior Cost Accountant

Are you a manufacturing cost accounting professional who enjoys partnering with operations and influencing business decisions? Our client, a well-established and growing manufacturing organization in West Michigan, is seeking a Cost Accountant to join their team. This role offers more than traditional cost accounting. You'll serve as a key business partner, helping drive operational decisions and profitability within a growing manufacturing organization that invests heavily in its employees.

This is an opportunity to work for a financially stable company with an outstanding employee-focused culture and benefits package, including:

• Onsite fitness center
• Onsite childcare
• Onsite medical clinic
• Tuition reimbursement
• Long-term career growth opportunities
• Collaborative, team-oriented environment
• Exposure to operations and leadership teams

In this highly visible role, you'll partner closely with Operations, Industrial Engineering, Supply Chain, and Finance leaders to ensure accurate product costing, provide meaningful manufacturing analysis, and support key business decisions.

As the Cost Accountant, you will play a critical role in maintaining the integrity of product costing and inventory valuation while providing actionable insights to improve profitability and operational performance.

Cost Accountant Responsibilities:

• Develop, maintain, and update standard costs for manufactured products
• Lead annual and interim standard cost roll processes
• Analyze the financial impact of changes to labor standards, material costs, routings, manufacturing methods, and overhead allocations
• Support new product costing, margin analysis, and profitability evaluations
• Calculate and maintain direct labor rates, burdened labor rates, and overhead absorption rates
• Analyze actual versus standard labor and overhead spending and identify key cost drivers
• Partner with Operations and Industrial Engineering teams to evaluate labor content, machine utilization, cycle times, and staffing assumptions
• Review and validate manufacturing routings, BOMs, and work center data
• Support inventory valuation, month-end close activities, cycle counts, and physical inventory processes
• Analyze manufacturing variances including:
  • Labor
  • Material
  • Purchase price
  • Scrap
  • Yield
  • Overhead absorption
• Ensure compliance with GAAP inventory costing requirements
• Prepare monthly manufacturing performance reporting and financial analysis
• Support budgeting, forecasting, and annual operating planning processes
• Identify cost reduction opportunities and operational improvement initiatives
• Evaluate product and customer profitability to support strategic decision-making

• Bachelor's degree in Accounting, Finance, or related field
• 3+ years of manufacturing cost accounting experience
• Experience developing rates
• Experience working in a standard-cost environment
• Strong understanding of inventory accounting and manufacturing variance analysis
• Experience developing labor and overhead rates
• Advanced Microsoft Excel skills
• Ability to work cross-functionally with finance and operations teams
• Current authorization to work in the United States without sponsorship
• ERP experience such as Oracle, SAP, JDE, QAD, Epicor, or similar systems
• Experience working with routings, work centers, and bills of materials (BOMs)
• Strong partnership experience with Operations and Industrial Engineering teams