Forward Deployed Accountant

Cranston • San Francisco, CA

10d • Hybrid

About The Position

As a Forward Deployed Accountant, you will own the customer journey from signed contract through confident daily use. The role combines implementation, training, accounting judgment, and product work. You will sit with firm owners and their teams, learn how work moves through the firm, configure Cranston around that process, and train people to use it well. During tax season or month-end close, you will see where a workflow holds up and where it falls apart. You will fix the immediate problem with the customer, then work with our product and engineering team so the next firm has a better experience. The work is hands-on. One day you might lead a kickoff for a 40-person CPA firm. The next, you could review a tax package, rebuild a training plan, record a short walkthrough, or work with an engineer on an edge case in tax software.

Requirements

• 3+ years in public accounting, firm operations, client accounting services, tax, audit, or a closely related role.
• Understand how accounting firms operate and can speak credibly with a partner, a preparer, and an operations lead.
• Can teach. You explain a new workflow plainly, notice when someone is lost, and adjust without making them feel behind.
• Comfortable getting into the details of a return, close, reconciliation, document request, or review process.
• Keep projects moving. Customers trust your follow-through, and teammates know you will surface a problem early.
• Like working with software and can learn unfamiliar systems quickly.
• Can travel (rarely) when customer work calls for it.

Nice To Haves

• CPA license or progress toward one.
• Experience implementing accounting or tax software.
• Experience leading internal training, change management, or process improvement inside a firm.
• Experience at an early-stage company or in a role where you built the playbook while doing the work.

Responsibilities

• Own onboarding for new accounting-firm customers, from discovery and configuration through launch and adoption.
• Map each firm's tax, bookkeeping, document, review, and client-service workflows in enough detail to make Cranston useful in real work.
• Lead live training for partners, managers, preparers, bookkeepers, and administrative staff.
• Set clear rollout plans, define success measures, and keep customers moving when schedules get busy.
• Work inside the product with customers. Diagnose issues, find practical workarounds, and stay on the problem until the workflow is reliable.
• Turn repeatable lessons into implementation playbooks, training materials, product changes, and better defaults.
• Represent the accounting user's point of view in product decisions. Be specific about what firms need, what creates risk, and what saves time.
• Build trusted relationships that lead to deeper adoption, renewals, referrals, and expansion.
• Travel to customer offices and accounting-industry events when being in the room will make the work better.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed