Sr. Director/Director of Accounting, Controller

Alantra•Anchorage, AK

About The Position

The Senior Director/Director of Accounting, Controller is a key leadership role in the Company’s Accounting Organization. The position assists senior Finance leadership in coordinating and producing timely, accurate financial information and reports for the Company’s subsidiaries for submission to the parent corporation. It oversees the month-end close, journal entries, account reconciliations, general ledger maintenance, financial reporting controls, and compliance with regulatory requirements and Company procedures. The role works across departments to ensure projects and transactions are properly recorded and serves as an authority on Company policy, regulatory requirements, and accounting rules. It coordinates tax functions using internal and external resources and serves as the contact for external auditors. The position also hires, trains, coaches, and develops accounting staff. The Controller leads the Accounting team’s reporting, close, internal-control, audit, tax, financial analysis, and accounting systems activities. It partners with business managers to provide decision support, supports requests from the parent company and internal and external stakeholders, and leads implementation of new accounting pronouncements and financial information systems. The role maintains current knowledge of GAAP, SOX 404, and regulatory requirements and performs technical accounting research.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in accounting, finance, or a related field; equivalent experience may be substituted for education.
For the Senior Director level, at least 12 years of professional accounting experience with increasing responsibility and demonstrable mastery of accounting principles, concepts, and applications.
For the Director level, at least 10 years of professional accounting experience with increasing responsibility and demonstrable mastery of accounting principles, concepts, and applications.
Supervisory and/or staff-management experience.
Experience in both operational and corporate financial settings in a public company.
Expertise in accounting, including GAAP and SEC reporting.
Strong analytical skills and ability to turn raw data into meaningful information.
Strong business and process leadership, including the ability to coordinate across departments, understand business processes and their systems, and drive process measurement and improvement.
Excellent oral and written communication skills, including preparing and delivering detailed plans and proposals.
Strong interpersonal, decision-making, conflict-management, team-building, and teamwork skills.
Ability to develop work plans, contribute effectively on a team, report project status, represent a team in meetings, and coordinate issue identification and resolution.
Ability to make critical decisions while following company procedures.
Honesty, integrity, and credibility in the workplace.
Ability to work with complex ERP, billing, provisioning systems, and switching records, and to manage capital and operating expense budget models consistently.
Ability to organize and direct work, and effectively train and supervise others.
Adaptability in a fast-paced environment and ability to evolve with changing business needs.
Attention to detail while balancing multiple concurrent projects.

Nice To Haves

CPA license.
Graduate degree in accounting, finance, business administration, or a related field.
Strong expertise in telecommunications service-provider/carrier processes and procedures.
Understanding of key telecommunications processes such as retail, sales, service, ordering and service delivery, network management, and customer support.
Ability to map processes, understand links between processes and supporting systems, and coordinate with sales, service, engineering, field operations, finance, and other departments.

Responsibilities

Ensure capabilities, methods, and procedures are in place to meet external reporting requirements.
Oversee accounting functions and financial-reporting compliance programs, including Sarbanes-Oxley.
Lead and develop Finance teams through work direction, mentoring, coaching, skills development, recruiting, and performance management.
Build relationships with business managers by providing decision support and anticipating key issues and information needs.
Collaborate across business functions to solve problems productively.
Ensure monthly journal entries and account reconciliations are reviewed.
Review and assure the accuracy of monthly variance analysis prepared by the Accounting Department.
Coordinate and lead the month-end close, designing efficient processes and procedures and distributing workload as needed.
Oversee production of financial statements and their timely submission to the parent corporation.
Ensure the Accounting team performs key and non-key internal controls over financial reporting; update annual SOX documentation, identify control improvements and efficiencies, and recommend removal of unnecessary controls.
Respond to ad hoc accounting information and analysis requests, including those from the CFO and VP, Finance and Accounting.
Serve as the key contact for parent-company accounting requests and other internal and external business-partner requests, coordinating completion within Accounting.
Use financial systems effectively to make reporting efficient, timely, accurate, and insightful.
Structure reporting to help budget managers and Finance management understand variances and make resource-allocation decisions.
Coordinate with external auditors and lead quarterly reviews, annual financial statement audits, and ad hoc engagements.
Maintain an effective tax function using internal and external resources.
Lead financial, variance, and trend analysis of key profitability drivers and metrics; interpret results and recommend actions to maximize profitability and achieve financial targets.
Lead implementation of new accounting pronouncements.
Serve as the ACS and Accounting subject-matter expert for financial information system implementations and assist with those implementations.
Coordinate cross-training of Accounting Managers and Supervisors and ensure coverage during absences.
Maintain current knowledge of GAAP, SOX 404, and regulatory requirements, and perform technical research.
Perform other duties as assigned.