Director, Corporate Accounting

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Director, Corporate Accounting San Francisco, California, United States

Who We Are

Lightning AI is the company behind PyTorch Lightning. Founded in 2019, we build an end-to-end platform for developing, training, and deploying AI systems—designed to take ideas from research to production with less friction.

Through our merger with Voltage Park, a neocloud and AI Factory, Lightning AI combines developer-first software with cost-efficient, large-scale compute. Teams get the tools they need for experimentation, training, and production inference, with security, observability, and control built in.

We serve solo researchers, startups, and large enterprises. Lightning AI operates globally with offices in New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, and London, and is backed by Coatue, Index Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, and Firstminute.

WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR

We are looking for a Director, Corporate Accounting to own and scale critical accounting operations as Lightning grows. You will be responsible for supporting accurate financial reporting, improving close processes, strengthening internal controls, and building scalable accounting workflows across the business. This role will partner closely with Finance, FP&A, People Operations, Sales Operations, Legal, and external advisors to ensure accounting operations are accurate, compliant, and built for scale.

This is a high-impact role for someone who combines strong technical accounting knowledge with an operational mindset. You will help manage core accounting activities, payroll accounting, commissions accounting, reconciliations, journal entries, close-related processes, and cross-functional accounting operations. The accounting scope is broad, leadership visibility is high, and the work directly supports financial accuracy, operating discipline, audit readiness, and long-term business scalability.

This is a hybrid role based in either New York City or San Francisco with in-office requirements of 2 days per week. The salary range for this role is $200,000–$220,000 .

WHAT YOU'LL DO

Lead and build the Corporate Accounting team

Hire, develop, and lead a team of 6+ across workstreams including revenue accounting (ASC 606), period-end general ledger close, fixed assets, and AP and AR operations

Establish team operating cadences — close calendars, review meetings, escalation paths, and performance management

Develop and mentor the team, building the bench needed as the business scales

Own the close across three legal entities

Own the monthly, quarterly, and annual close across all entities, delivering stand-alone trial balances and a clean consolidation

Build the close playbook, calendar, and review controls, currently undocumented

Stand up the intercompany framework, elimination process, and consolidation cadence across the group

Deliver the first-year audit

Serve as 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

Manage consultant transition and efficiency

Lead the structured transition of close work from consultants to a permanent in-house team

Document every process before release, and define the scope of managed services while internal hires onboard

Ramp consultant load down to under 10% of finance capacity before year-end as full-time hires become productive

Technical accounting and complex transactions

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

Operational accounting and systems

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

Controls and audit readiness

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

WHAT YOU'LL NEED

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

Particularly strong candidates will bring:

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…