Director of Accounting, Controller

Alaska Communications Systems Group, Inc.•Anchorage, AK

31d

About The Position

Director of Accounting, Controller is a key leadership position within the Company and the Accounting Organization. This position is responsible for assisting the VP, Finance and Accounting in the coordination and production of timely and accurate financial information and reports for each of the organization's subsidiaries and submitting them to our parent corporation. This includes overseeing the month-end close process, reviewing journal entries and account reconciliations, maintenance of the general ledger and compliance with both regulatory requirements and the Company's internal control procedures. This position works extensively with other departments ensuring projects and transactions are appropriately recorded and is recognized as an authority in both Company policy, regulatory, and accounting rules. This position coordinates our tax functions between both internal and external resources and is the point of contact for our external auditors for quarterly reviews, annual audits, and ad hoc engagements. This position is also responsible for hiring, training and coaching staff for the various accounting units.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in accounting, finance, or related field required. Equivalent experience may be substituted for education plus ten (10) years professional accounting experience with increasing levels of responsibility resulting in demonstrable mastery of accounting principles concepts and applications.
Supervisory and/or staff management experience required.
Exposure to both operational and corporate financial settings in a public company.
Expertise in accounting including GAAP and SEC reporting.
Analytical Skills - Ability to use thinking and reasoning in gathering raw data and processing that data into a meaningful form.
Business and Process Leadership - (Strong expertise in telco service provider / carrier process and procedures). Ability to grasp and understand business concepts and issues. Preferably, an understanding of key telco processes (retail/sales/service, ordering/service delivery, network management, customer support) and the ability to map processes and understand inter-linkages to each other and to the systems that support the processes. Strong ability to coordinate with sales, service, engineering, field operations, finance and other departments in the company. Ability to drive process metrics and measures, measurement points in a process, and the ability to drive improvement and process change.
Communication Skills - Excellent oral and written communication skills. Position will require frequent preparation and delivery of detailed plans and proposals. Strong communication/interpersonal skills with emphasis on decision-making, conflict management, and team building and teamwork. Must have ability to develop work plans, work effectively as a member of a team, report on status of projects, and represent the team in meetings and/or with the client, and be able to coordinate issues identification and resolution between clients and the development team.
Decision Making - Ability to make critical decisions while following company procedures.
Honesty / Integrity - Ability to be truthful, ethical, and be seen as credible in the workplace.
Financial Management - Ability to work with complex ERP, billing, provisioning systems and switching records. Consistent budgetary adherence managing both capital and operating expense budget models.
Management Skills - Ability to organize and direct oneself and effectively train and supervise others.
Adaptability - Ability to preserve flexibility in a fast-paced environment, and continually evolve to meet the changing business needs.
Detail Oriented - Ability to pay attention to the minute details of a project or task while balancing multiple concurrent projects.

Nice To Haves

Prefer CPA License and Graduate degree in accounting, finance, business administration, or related field.
Experience with Workday Financials or other complex ERP system.

Responsibilities

Ensure that capabilities, methods and procedures are in place to successfully meet all external reporting requirements.
Oversight of all accounting functions, including oversight of compliance programs (e.g., Sarbanes Oxley program) related to financial reporting. Lead and develop the Finance teams, to include providing work assignments and direction/assistance, mentoring/coaching, skills & competencies development, recruiting, performance management.
Establish strong relationships with business managers based on providing expert decision support, anticipating key issues and informational needs. Collaborate with colleagues across various functional areas of business opportunity and engage in productive problem solving.
Ensure the review of monthly journal entries and account reconciliations. Reviews and assure accuracy of the monthly variance analysis performed by the accounting department.
Coordinate and lead the Company's month end close process, including designing processes and procedures to efficiently close on time, distributing workload as required.
Oversee the production of financial statements and their timely submission to our parent corporation.
Ensure the performance of all key and non-key internal controls over financial reporting by the Accounting team. Including, updating the SOX documentation on an annual basis, identifying opportunities for control improvements and efficiencies, and recommending for deletion any extraneous internal controls.
Support ad hoc requests for accounting information and analyses, including those from the CFO and VP, Finance and Accounting. Act as the key point of contact for parent company accounting requests. Act as the key point of contact for all requests from other internal and external business partners and manage the completion within the Accounting team.
Utilize financial systems to their maximum potential and make reporting effective, efficient, timely, accurate and insightful. Structure reporting to provide effective tools that allow budget managers and Finance management to understand variances and make effective decisions around resource allocation.
Coordinating with our external auditors, lead the quarterly reviews, annual financial statement audits, and ad hoc engagements.
Maintain an effective tax function with a combination of both internal and external resources.
Lead in-depth financial, variance, and trending analysis for key profitability drivers and metrics. Interpret results, and articulate actionable recommendations that maximize profitability and ensure financial targets are achieved.
Lead the implementation of new accounting pronouncements. Act as the ACS and Accounting subject matter expert for financial information system implementations and assist in all such implementations.
Coordinate the cross training of Accounting Managers and Supervisors and ensure absences are covered.
Maintain up-to-date knowledge of GAAP, SOX 404, and regulatory requirements. Perform technical research.
Other duties as assigned.