ASSISTANT CONTROLLER - SOX COMPLIANCE

ASSISTANT CONTROLLER - SOX COMPLIANCE

Location: Fullerton, California 92835

Position: Direct Hire

QUALIFICATION

• Candidate must come from a MANUFACTURING background
• Must have SOX COMPLIANCE experience
• Must have a Bachelor's Degree in Accounting or Finance
• Minimum 5 years of cost accounting experience in a manufacturing environment operating on a standard costing system
• Full-cycle close ownership and strong technical GAAP foundation
• Ability to operate in a SOX environment
• Experience with a tier-one or mid-tier ERP; Epicor experience is a strong plus

Job Summary

The Assistant Controller is the right-hand to the Vice President of Finance and the day-to-day operating leader of the accounting function. You will own the integrity of the close, the accuracy of cost accounting in a standard-cost manufacturing environment, and the quality of the financial information that flows to operations leadership and to corporate. This is a hands-on leadership seat, not an oversight seat. You will run the work, develop the finance team, and partner directly with business unit and operations leaders to convert the value drivers into action — productivity, margin, and cash. Client is actively investing in process automation and the practical use of AI to advance the cost-productivity value driver. This role is expected to help lead that effort inside finance — finding manual work to eliminate, simplifying processes, and building better ways to turn data into decisions.

Responsibilities

• Month-end / quarter-end / year-end close — own the full cycle, including journal entries, reconciliations, accruals, and the consolidated reporting package delivered to corporate on the timeline.
• Financial reporting — prepare and review internal management reporting, variance analysis, and corporate submissions; explain the numbers, not just produce them.
• SOX and internal controls — design, document, and own the internal control environment in a SOX-compliant public-company setting; maintain segregation of duties, support 404 testing, and remediate deficiencies before they become findings.
• Audit — serves as the operating company's point of contact for corporate's internal audit and for external audit requests; manages the process, resolves findings, and closes gaps. Standard costing — own standard cost setup, annual cost rolls, and the maintenance of accurate costing across SKUs and BOMs.
• Inventory and WIP — ensure accurate valuation, cycle-count / physical inventory integrity, reserves, and reconciliation to the GL.Variance analysis — analyze and explain purchase price variance (PPV), manufacturing/labor / overhead variances, and margin by product line; turn variances into actions.
• Margin and profitability — partner with operations to understand cost drivers and surface productivity opportunities.
• Operations partner — act as a true finance business partner to business unit managers and the operations team — in the plant and in the data — to drive productivity actions and decision-making.
• Information flow — improve the speed, accuracy, and usefulness of reporting and information across the business; replace manual effort with a better process.
• Automation and AI — actively look for opportunities to automate manual work and apply new tools, including AI, to speed the close, sharpen analysis, and improve information flow; pilot, measure, and scale what works.
• Planning support — support forecasting, the Annual Operating Plan (AOP), and the value-driver discipline (pricing, productivity, profitable new business) that define performance in this environment.
• Develop the team — supervise, coach, and hold accountable the finance team; set standards and raise the bar.
• Build capacity — create the bandwidth and backup that lets the finance function scale without adding headcount.
• Capital projects & post-implementation audit — evaluate capital requests beyond payback and ROI, stress-test the productivity and savings case, and audit projects after implementation to confirm the promised productivity was actually delivered.
• Financial education & communication — train and coach non-financial managers, explain financial concepts in plain terms, and proactively surface the right month-end observations to the right people at the right time.