Staff Accountant

Our client is a well-established contract electronics manufacturer with over 30 years in the industry, serving customers across medical, industrial, IoT, and consumer hardware markets. Based in Corvallis, Oregon, the team of roughly 35 people has built a differentiated platform around prototype-to-production conversion, on-site warehousing, and design partner referrals. The company operates a modern ERP system integrated with QuickBooks Online, and partners with a national accounting firm for controller-level oversight, financial statements, and tax work.

We are looking for an operationally-minded accountant to own the day-to-day accounting function. You will run AR, AP, and month-end close preparation in the ERP and QuickBooks Online, and serve as the internal partner to an outside accounting firm on reconciliations, reporting, and technical questions.

This is a hands-on role in a manufacturing environment. You will be as comfortable walking out to the production floor to resolve a job cost question with the operations team as you are sitting at your desk reconciling the GL. The outside accounting firm backs you up for controller-level questions, GAAP interpretation, and anything that calls for senior judgment. The goal is a clean partnership: you run the mechanics on-site, they provide oversight and depth when needed.

This role is built for someone who wants to own a process and make it better — not someone who wants a binder of step-by-step SOPs to follow. The accounting function is in a transitional period following a recent ERP migration, and there is real work to do in tightening reconciliations, cleaning up the ERP-to-QBO sync, and building durable monthly close discipline. We are looking for someone who sees that as the opportunity, not the burden.

This is also a business that takes AI seriously as a tool — not as a buzzword. AI is used in operations, strategy, and increasingly in accounting work. You do not need to be an AI builder or automation engineer. You do need to be someone who already uses AI tools (Claude, ChatGPT, or similar) to make your work better, and who is curious about applying them more deliberately as the role evolves.

• Accounts receivable and accounts payable. Customer invoicing from the ERP, collections follow-up on past-due AR, vendor bill entry, payment runs, and outstanding check management. You will partner with the materials team on PO receiving accuracy, because that is where most AP and inventory issues start.
• Month-end close preparation. You will run the mechanics of close — accruals, recurring journal entries, inventory and WIP reconciliations, bank and credit card reconciliations — and hand a clean package to the outside accounting firm for review and financial statement preparation.
• ERP–QBO reconciliation. You will own the monthly sync reconciliations across revenue, COGS, inventory, and WIP. When something does not tie, you will do the operational detective work to figure out why and escalate when the answer requires deeper technical judgment.
• Job costing support. You will flag variances between quoted and actual job costs and work with the Director of Operations and Production Managers to understand root causes.
• Operations partnership. You will build working relationships with Materials, Production, Quality, and Project Management leads, and be the person who closes the loop on open items.
• Process documentation. From day one, you will document the processes you own — close checklists, reconciliation steps, recurring entries, system configurations. Good documentation protects the business and is the foundation for any future automation.
• Continuous improvement and AI-enabled workflow. As you get comfortable with the function, you will identify opportunities to make it better — through process changes, better tooling, and AI-assisted workflows where they genuinely help.

We are hiring someone who wants to grow with the role, not just fill a seat. The path below describes how we see the role evolving for a candidate who delivers and earns expanded scope over time. It is a real path, not corporate aspiration language — and like any real path, the speed depends on you.

Year 1 — Master the function

Get fluent in the ERP and QBO. Take full ownership of AR, AP, and month-end close mechanics. Stabilize and document the reconciliations. Build working relationships across operations. Get comfortable using AI tools in your daily workflow. At the end of year 1, the function should run cleanly with the outside firm’s oversight, and you should know this business inside and out.

Year 2 — Expand scope, earn Senior Accountant title

With the foundation stable, take on broader responsibilities — deeper involvement in financial reporting and analysis, cash flow forecasting, budget construction, customer profitability analysis. Begin to drive process improvements and AI-assisted workflow automation. Compensation progresses accordingly.

Year 3 — Accounting Manager track, if earned

For the right person — one who has demonstrated both the technical fundamentals and the strategic perspective — the path opens to Accounting Manager and eventually Controller-track responsibilities, with compensation following the scope. This is not guaranteed, and it is not on a fixed schedule. It is what the role becomes when it is being done well by someone who wants it.

• Two to four years of hands-on accounting experience, ideally in a manufacturing, job-shop, or inventory-intensive environment. Contract manufacturing, electronics, aerospace, metal fabrication, or similar is a strong fit.
• Experience with an ERP system and QuickBooks Online. You do not need prior experience with this specific ERP — you do need to be comfortable getting into a new system and figuring it out.
• Working knowledge of AR, AP, bank reconciliations, journal entries, and month-end close. Exposure to inventory and WIP accounting is a plus.
• Strong Excel skills — pivots, lookups, reconciliation workbooks.
• Active use of AI tools (Claude, ChatGPT, or similar) in your current work. Not curiosity — actual use. You should be able to give a couple of concrete examples in an interview.
• Accounting degree preferred but not required. What matters is that you have actually done the work.
• A self-starter mentality. We are not handing you a step-by-step SOP. You should be the kind of person who looks at a process, figures out how it works, identifies what could be better, and does something about it.
• Critical thinking and a roll-your-sleeves-up attitude. When numbers do not tie, you dig into why. When a workflow is clunky, you improve it.
• The temperament to hold your ground with non-accounting colleagues when numbers do not add up, while being someone the people on the floor actually want to talk to.
• Self-awareness to know when a question needs to be escalated. Asking for help is part of the job, not a sign of weakness.

• Experience in a company that uses an outsourced controller or CFO firm, where you were the in-house accounting lead.
• Exposure to job cost variance analysis, standard vs. actual costing, or manufacturing overhead allocation.
• Experience cleaning up an ERP-to-GL sync following a system implementation.
• Demonstrated history of building automations, integrations, or process improvements at prior roles — even small ones. The person on your current team who automated the report, built the macro, championed the new system.
• Light scripting, SQL, or familiarity with integration platforms (Zapier, Make, Power Automate). Not required — a meaningful plus.

You will work directly with the CEO and alongside a national accounting firm, in a business that is actively investing in growth. You will have real ownership of the accounting function with the safety net of senior accounting expertise behind you — a structure that lets you take on more scope than a traditional staff accountant role, while still having somewhere to escalate when you need depth.

If you deliver and earn it, the role grows with you — into Senior Accountant, then Accounting Manager, and over time into Controller-track responsibility. Clean numbers drive better pricing, better cash flow, and better growth decisions, and you will see the direct impact of your work every month.

Starting salary: $65,000 – $72,000 depending on experience. Compensation progresses with scope and demonstrated impact — Senior Accountant title and pay typically within 12–18 months for a successful path; Accounting Manager track beyond that. Standard benefits including health insurance and paid time off. On-site in Corvallis, Oregon.

Interested candidates should submit a resume and a brief note covering two things: (1) why this role and the growth path interest you, and (2) one or two specific examples of how you have used AI tools in accounting or finance work.

Please, no recruiter or agency outreach. This role is being managed directly and we will not be engaging third-party staffing firms. Direct applicants only.