Director, Corporate Accounting

Lightning AI•San Francisco, CA

8h•Hybrid

About The Position

Lightning AI is seeking a Director, Corporate Accounting to own and scale critical accounting operations as the company grows. This role will be responsible for supporting accurate financial reporting, improving close processes, strengthening internal controls, and building scalable accounting workflows. The position requires partnering closely with various departments including Finance, FP&A, People Operations, Sales Operations, and Legal, as well as external advisors, to ensure accounting operations are accurate, compliant, and built for scale. This is a high-impact role for an individual with strong technical accounting knowledge and an operational mindset, who will manage core accounting activities, payroll accounting, commissions accounting, reconciliations, journal entries, close-related processes, and cross-functional accounting operations. The role offers high leadership visibility and directly supports financial accuracy, operating discipline, audit readiness, and long-term business scalability.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Accounting, Finance, or a related field.
CPA strongly preferred.
10+ years of progressive accounting experience, with a mix of Big 4 public accounting and in-house controllership experience.
5+ years managing accounting teams of 5 or more, with a track record of hiring, developing, and retaining strong accountants.
Demonstrated experience owning the close in a multi-entity environment, including stand-alone reporting, intercompany, and consolidation.
Strong technical command of U.S. GAAP, including ASC 606, ASC 842, ASC 805, ASC 350, and ASC 360.
Experience leading or significantly contributing to a first-year audit, audit remediation, or significant control build.
Hands-on experience with NetSuite implementation or significant optimization, particularly across procure-to-pay and order-to-cash.
Experience managing or transitioning offshore or outsourced accounting work back to an in-house team.
Comfort with the technical accounting demands of an infrastructure or capital-intensive business — high-volume capex, complex revenue arrangements, leases, and recent M&A.
Excellent written and verbal communication, with the ability to brief executives and external auditors and translate accounting for non-accounting stakeholders.
Bias toward building rather than maintaining; comfort operating in a fast-paced, foundation-building environment.

Nice To Haves

Prior experience at a high-growth AI, cloud, infrastructure, data center, or other capex-intensive technology company.
Post-merger integration experience, particularly leading integration of accounting operations across acquired entities.
Experience supporting significant compliance remediation.
Direct experience with GPU capex, data center leases, or vendor financing accounting.
Experience working with Big 4 accounting firms.

Responsibilities

Lead and build the Corporate Accounting team, including hiring, developing, and leading a team of 6+ across workstreams such as revenue accounting (ASC 606), period-end general ledger close, fixed assets, and AP and AR operations.
Establish team operating cadences, including close calendars, review meetings, escalation paths, and performance management.
Develop and mentor the team, building the necessary talent pipeline as the business scales.
Own the monthly, quarterly, and annual close across three legal entities, delivering stand-alone trial balances and a clean consolidation.
Build the close playbook, calendar, and review controls, which are currently undocumented.
Establish the intercompany framework, elimination process, and consolidation cadence across the group.
Serve as the primary internal owner of the first-year audit, partnering with a Big 4 accounting firm.
Reconstruct subsidiaries' financial reporting pre- and post-merger, in partnership with external advisory teams.
Manage data requests, audit deliverables, and audit liaison support across accounting workstreams.
Partner with Tax, Treasury, and Strategic Finance on cross-functional audit areas.
Lead the structured transition of close work from consultants to a permanent in-house team, documenting all processes and defining managed services scope.
Ramp consultant load down to under 10% of finance capacity before year-end as full-time hires become productive.
Lead accounting memos under ASC 805 (purchase accounting), ASC 606 (revenue recognition for AI compute and infrastructure arrangements), ASC 842 (data center and equipment leases), ASC 360 (impairment), and ASC 350 (goodwill).
Stay current on accounting developments relevant to AI infrastructure, including evolving guidance on cloud arrangements, data center leases, and capacity contracts.
Oversee revenue accounting, GL, fixed assets (GPU and data center capex), AP, AR, payroll accounting, and balance sheet integrity.
Lead the completion of the NetSuite implementation across procure-to-pay and order-to-cash, in partnership with the Finance Systems function.
Drive integration of ancillary systems (Ramp, Jira, Rippling, Justworks) into NetSuite with audit-clean data flow.
Establish foundational internal controls, documentation, and review processes.
Build out the control framework as the business matures.
Lead remediation of any findings from the first-year audit.

Benefits

Competitive base salaries and equity with a 25% one year cliff and monthly vesting thereafter.
Equitable benefits across the globe for international employees, provided through an EOR.
Medical, dental and vision insurance (US).
Life and AD&D insurance (US).
Flexible paid time off including winter closure (US).
Paid family leave benefits (US).
$500 one time home office stipend (US).
$1,000 annual learning & development stipend (US).
100% Citibike membership (NYC only).
$45/month gym membership (US).
Additional various medical and mental health services (US).