Finance Associate, Accounting

Bridgewater Associates•Westport, CT

3d•Hybrid

About The Position

Bridgewater Associates is seeking a Finance Associate, Accounting to join their Corporate Accounting team. This role offers the opportunity to develop a diverse skill set and broad knowledge highly valued within the Finance Department. The associate will be responsible for supporting monthly close deliverables, preparing financial information for internal stakeholders, managing aspects of the financial audit with direct interaction with external auditors and internal teams, and processing accounting for various balance sheet accounts. A key aspect of the role involves process and controls improvement, where the associate will explore how process changes and technology can streamline operations and strengthen the control environment. This includes critically evaluating existing internal processes for manual, fragile, or redundant steps, assessing potential external tools, building cases for beneficial changes, and implementing them in partnership with Finance, technology, and vendor teams.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree or higher in accounting, with a strong academic track record
1-3 years of accounting or audit experience
CPA, or actively working toward the certification
Advanced Excel skills
Experience working with AI tooling, paired with the subject matter expertise to review AI-generated output for accuracy and completeness (we currently use Claude, though our tooling may change over time)
Experience with other financial systems such as Workday, Office Connect, and Workiva
Exceptional ownership mentality, willing to roll up your sleeves and problem solve
Strong critical thinking skills, with a natural curiosity to ask “why” and question the status quo
Genuine appetite for rethinking how the work gets done — questioning processes and tools and pushing for better, better-controlled ways to account and report, rather than settling for incremental tweaks
Enjoy making sense out of white-space and ambiguous situations
Think analytically, logically and agilely; can quickly iterate in a fast-paced environment and high-performance culture
Excel at relationship building across stakeholders at all levels of the company
Possess excellent independent thinking, ask questions and take the initiative to improve current processes and metrics
Highly organized, reliable and detail oriented, with an eye for spotting and correcting errors
Use AI fluently in your work while bringing enough technical depth of your own to review its output for accuracy and completeness

Nice To Haves

Big 4 accounting firm background a strong plus

Responsibilities

Support the Corporate Accounting team with fulfilling monthly close deliverables
Prepare financial information for internal stakeholders
Manage various aspects of the financial audit, which will involve direct interaction with the external auditors as well as with other areas within the Bridgewater organization
Responsible for the execution of accounting processes over various balance sheet accounts
Support ad hoc requests as necessary
Proactively explore how process change and technology can streamline our operational accounting and strengthen our control environment — critically evaluating our existing internal processes to find where they are manual, fragile or redundant, and assessing potential external tools and solutions
Build the case for the changes worth making and see them through from idea to implementation, partnering with stakeholders across Finance and with our technology and vendor teams