Cost Accountant

Tenneco • South Bend, IN

3d • Onsite

About The Position

The Cost Accountant supports plant and business-unit profitability by maintaining accurate product costs, analyzing manufacturing performance, and providing timely financial insights. The role partners with Operations, Supply Chain, Engineering, Procurement, and Finance to strengthen cost control, inventory accuracy, budgeting, forecasting, and management decision-making. This position is also responsible for contributing to a safe workplace and minimizing negative impacts by complying with the EHS policies, procedures, work instructions outlined in the EHSMS Training Assessment for this position.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in accounting, finance, business, or related field
• Accounting experience; preferably in a manufacturing environment.
• Working knowledge of standard costing, inventory accounting, variance analysis, month-end close, and general accepted accounting principles.
• Cost accounting experience preferred including recording variances.
• Experience supporting audits, internal controls, and cross-functional business reviews preferred.
• Advanced Microsoft Excel skills, including pivot tables, lookups, analytical formulas, data validation, and large-data analysis.
• Experience with an ERP system such as SAP or a comparable manufacturing platform.
• Ability to extract, reconcile, and interpret general-ledger, inventory, purchasing, and production data.
• Strong understanding of bills of material, routings, work centers, production orders, and inventory movements.
• High attention to detail, accuracy, and data integrity.
• Strong analytical thinking and ability to translate financial results into clear operational actions.
• Effective communication and business partnering across finance and non-finance teams.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with Power Query, Power BI, reporting tools, or process automation is advantageous.

Responsibilities

• Maintain standard costs for materials, labor, overhead, routings, and bills of material; coordinate periodic cost rolls and validate results.
• Monitor and analyze actual versus standard manufacturing costs, including purchase price, usage, labor efficiency, overhead, scrap, freight, and other production variances.
• Prepare monthly close entries, account reconciliations, inventory reserves, absorption analysis, and supporting schedules in accordance with accounting policies and deadlines.
• Support cycle counts and physical inventories; investigate discrepancies and coordinate timely corrective actions.
• Partner with operations leaders to explain cost drivers, identify unfavorable trends, and develop practical cost-reduction and productivity initiatives.
• Support the finance leader with budgets, forecasts, standard-rate calculations, and profitability analyses by product, customer, program, or production line.
• Review new products, engineering changes, sourcing decisions, and capital projects for cost and margin impact.
• Maintain strong internal controls and documentation, support SOX compliance where applicable, and provide schedules for internal and external audits.
• Improve cost-accounting processes, reports, master data, and system controls while promoting consistent practices across the plant.
• Develop recurring and ad hoc management reports using ERP data and analytical tools.
• Promotes and actively supports a safety-first workplace culture, identifies and reports unsafe conditions, and stops work when necessary to ensure safety.
• All team members abide by the location’s Environmental, Health, and Safety (EHS) policy which is enforced by the local leadership, complies with the legal and other requirements and operational controls established under its EHSMS, works towards achieving established objectives and targets, and conforms to procedures consistent with the ISO 14001 standard.
• All team members will understand all the environmental aspects of his/her job. An employee should report, and if necessary, stop any activity that does not conform to the policy or may injure himself/herself.
• Identifies and addresses non-conforming work, materials, or procedures within a timely manner.
• Each team member has the authority to initiate action to prevent the occurrence of non-conformities relating to the product, process and quality system and has the authority to stop further work on non-conforming suspect product until the deficiency or conditions have been corrected.
• Takes ownership of work by demonstrating accountability for results and being honest and transparent when things do not go plan.
• Follows 5S principles by maintaining, cleaning, organizing, and improving the areas. Also, by making suggestions to get to the next level of excellence and then doing it again.
• Consistently meets high standards of safety, quality, integrity, and performance.
• Demonstrates a commitment to continuous learning and improvement.
• Maintains regular attendance and punctuality.
• Demonstrates a willingness to hold tough conversations with others while seeking first to understand, speaking with respect, and with the purpose of making things better.
• Supports the leadership team as needed to meet the plant and business unit objectives.
• All other duties as assigned

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level