Cost Accountant

RK Industries•Denver, CO

7d•Onsite

About The Position

RK Mission Critical is seeking a Cost Accountant with strong manufacturing cost accounting experience to support the transition from Viewpoint Vista to IFS. This role is responsible for maintaining and analyzing standard costs, reconciling cost variances, and ensuring accuracy across project and product costing. A key focus of this position is proactively managing labor cost accuracy by using variance analysis to regularly evaluate and update standard labor rates. The goal is to keep recurring labor variances minimal, explainable, and aligned with actual operating conditions.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in accounting.
3–5 years of cost accounting experience in a manufacturing, fabrication, production, or industrial environment.
Strong understanding of standard costing, variance analysis, inventory valuation, work order costing, and manufacturing cost flows.
Experience reconciling labor, material, overhead, burden, inventory, and manufacturing variance accounts.
Ability to communicate financial concepts clearly to non-accounting stakeholders.
Experience with manufacturing cost accounting and standard cost maintenance
Experience with labor, material, overhead, and burden variance analysis
Ability to translate variance insights into actionable improvements (e.g., labor rate updates)
ERP adaptability and continuous improvement mindset
Strong analytical, reconciliation, and problem-solving skills
Effective cross-functional communication

Nice To Haves

Experience with ERP systems, preferably IFS, or similar manufacturing/accounting platforms.
Experience supporting ERP implementations or system transitions.
Familiarity with project-based manufacturing or engineer-to-order environments.
Advanced Excel skills (pivot tables, data analysis, modeling).

Responsibilities

Maintain, review, and update standard costs in IFS, including labor, materials, burden, overhead, inventory, work orders, and manufactured products.
Analyze labor, material, overhead, burden, inventory, and work order variances on a weekly and/or monthly basis in alignment with payroll cycles and financial close requirements.
Perform payroll and labor variance reconciliations to identify recurring gaps between standard labor rates and actual labor costs.
Recommend and support updates to standard labor rates when trends indicate misalignment due to wage changes, labor mix, overtime, or burden assumptions.
Ensure standard costing structures accurately reflect operational realities and production processes.
Prepare and post journal entries to allocate, clear, and reclassify variance accounts as needed.
Partner with operations, project managers, and payroll teams to validate cost drivers and improve cost accuracy.
Support ERP transition activities, including data validation, testing, and process alignment within IFS.
Assist in month-end close activities related to inventory, WIP, and manufacturing cost reporting.
Comply with all company policies, procedures, and safety requirements.
Support and maintain all company safety and health programs and immediately report unsafe conditions.