What are the responsibilities and job description for the Accounting Manager ( Multi-State Construction / Manufacturing Operations ) position at W3Global?
Accounting Manager
Accounting Services
Reports to: Director of Accounting Services
Location: Tempe (Greater Phoenix), AZ - on-site
Travel: Minimal; occasional jobsite or production floor visits
Do not post publicly or circulate outside the retained search. Approach candidates confidentially, on a no-names basis until mutual interest is established.
NOTE
This is not a seat dedicated to one operating company. Our accountants sit in one shared services entity and are assigned across the group by our VP of Accounting through his two directors, based on where the work is. Assignments change. We need people who are comfortable with that and who get better at the business rather than territorial about a piece of it.
So the profile is a strong generalist with real depth in at least one specialty - the list is in this document. We would rather have three managers with complementary depth than three who all do the same thing.
What we are not looking for is a mechanical accountant - someone whose value is that journal entries get processed accurately. We have automation for that. We want someone who understands the economics of the business they are accounting for, who can look at a number and say what it means and what to do about it.
Every finalist sits a timed, closed-book written exercise: real arithmetic on this business, plus written judgment on situations they would face in the seat. Candidates who are strong on process and thin on reasoning do not survive it. Please screen for that yourself before you send them - it saves everyone a fortnight.
NetSuite is our ERP and this is a hands-on seat. Please confirm hands-on use, not exposure.
Three things we check early and would rather you check first. Tenure: a pattern of five- and six-month stints is a hard stop for us. Ownership: whether the candidate performed the work as an employee or advised on it as a consultant - both are valuable, but they are not the same and we need to know which. And credentials: if a résumé says CPA, we want the state and the license number.
How This Function Is Built
The organization operates a centralized shared accounting function for a diversified group. Every accountant sits within the shared services organization, and the group's operating subsidiaries are served from here rather than each carrying its own accounting silo.
That is a deliberate design, and it has two consequences worth understanding before you apply.
We hire top down. The technical foundation is the base of the pyramid: essential, and assumed. We select on the three layers above it.
Our Pyramid of Priorities - Apex to Base
Alpha / Lead
You take ownership and lead, with or without the title; you set the standard, drive the outcome, and make the people around you better.
Positive Temperament
Resilient, constructive, and energizing; steady under pressure, and you lift the room rather than drain it.
Solution-Driven
You show up with answers, not just problems; you own the outcome and find a way through.
Skill Set
The technical foundation the role requires: essential and assumed - the base we build on, not the summit.
In this seat the apex looks like ownership without supervision. You will be given an area and left to run it, and we will measure whether it is right - not whether it was checked.
About The Company
The company is an equity-backed residential energy infrastructure business operating across multiple U.S. states, with hundreds of employees spanning engineering, technology, operations, finance, customer experience, installation, and multi-channel sales.
The group comprises multiple wholly owned subsidiaries across three primary areas:
One is a live residential construction and installation business with crews operating across multiple states and a substantial number of jobs open at any time.
The other is a hardware manufacturing operation that is being brought in-house and scaling rapidly.
Depending on where you are assigned, you could work on either - or on the group consolidation that sits above both.
The Mandate
We are rebuilding this function, with the systems investment to build it properly rather than patch it. The close is being put on a committed calendar, the process library is being written for the first time, and automation is taking the repetition out of the work so the team spends its time on judgment.
You are joining that build, not administering a steady state. Expect the first year to involve fixing things that are not right yet, writing down how they should work, and holding the new standard once it is set.
What This Role Is Not
Whatever your assignment, these travel with the seat.
Close and Reconciliation
This is the part of the role that separates the people we want from the people we do not. Whatever you are assigned, you are expected to produce, explain and defend its operating economics - not to report them once a month, but to know them well enough that the business comes to you before it decides.
We expect real depth in at least one of the following, owned as an employee rather than advised on as a consultant. Tell us which one is yours and be honest about the rest - we would rather know than guess, and an overstated answer costs you more than a gap does.
Construction and Job Cost
Work-in-progress schedules you have built, estimated cost at completion, percentage-of-completion or over-time recognition under ASC 606, job-level P&L, retainage, subcontractor accounting and lien waivers, cost capture from field crews.
Manufacturing Cost
Standard cost setting, variance decomposition into price, usage and volume, absorption and normal capacity, inventory valuation and cycle counting, landed cost and purchase price variance, warranty reserve.
Fixed Assets and Capital
Building and owning a fixed asset register, capitalization policy and thresholds, construction in progress and placed-in-service determinations, disposals and gain or loss, subledger-to-ledger reconciliation.
Revenue and Contracts
ASC 606 applied to customer contracts, unbilled receivables and contract assets, billing and revenue cutoff, deferred revenue, commission accounting.
Group and Consolidation
Multi-entity close, intercompany transactions and eliminations, allocations across entities, consolidation preparation, audit schedule ownership.
Over time we will deliberately broaden you into a second. That is how directors get made here.
The Path
You report to a Director of Accounting Services. The director seats are a real destination, not a dangled one - we are a multi-entity group that is scaling rapidly and standing up new subsidiaries, and we would rather grow our directors than keep hiring them from outside.
So We Will Tell You Plainly What The Ladder Requires Rather Than Leave It Vague. To Be a Credible Candidate For a Directorship Here, Three Things Would Need To Be True
We will tell you this up front because it is unusual and because it works. Our process has three parts:
Qualifications
Required
Everything above is the job. What decides it is the top of the pyramid: the drive to own the number rather than to report it, the temperament to stay constructive when the answer is unwelcome, and the judgment to know what a number is telling you before anyone asks.
We can teach our business to a sharp accountant. We cannot teach sharpness to someone who has only ever done the mechanics.
Accounting Services
Reports to: Director of Accounting Services
Location: Tempe (Greater Phoenix), AZ - on-site
Travel: Minimal; occasional jobsite or production floor visits
Do not post publicly or circulate outside the retained search. Approach candidates confidentially, on a no-names basis until mutual interest is established.
NOTE
This is not a seat dedicated to one operating company. Our accountants sit in one shared services entity and are assigned across the group by our VP of Accounting through his two directors, based on where the work is. Assignments change. We need people who are comfortable with that and who get better at the business rather than territorial about a piece of it.
So the profile is a strong generalist with real depth in at least one specialty - the list is in this document. We would rather have three managers with complementary depth than three who all do the same thing.
What we are not looking for is a mechanical accountant - someone whose value is that journal entries get processed accurately. We have automation for that. We want someone who understands the economics of the business they are accounting for, who can look at a number and say what it means and what to do about it.
Every finalist sits a timed, closed-book written exercise: real arithmetic on this business, plus written judgment on situations they would face in the seat. Candidates who are strong on process and thin on reasoning do not survive it. Please screen for that yourself before you send them - it saves everyone a fortnight.
NetSuite is our ERP and this is a hands-on seat. Please confirm hands-on use, not exposure.
Three things we check early and would rather you check first. Tenure: a pattern of five- and six-month stints is a hard stop for us. Ownership: whether the candidate performed the work as an employee or advised on it as a consultant - both are valuable, but they are not the same and we need to know which. And credentials: if a résumé says CPA, we want the state and the license number.
How This Function Is Built
The organization operates a centralized shared accounting function for a diversified group. Every accountant sits within the shared services organization, and the group's operating subsidiaries are served from here rather than each carrying its own accounting silo.
That is a deliberate design, and it has two consequences worth understanding before you apply.
- You are not hired into one entity. You are hired into the function, and the VP of Accounting - through the two Directors of Accounting Services - assigns you across the group based on bandwidth and what needs doing. Your assignment on day one is unlikely to be your assignment in year two.
- No process depends on one person. Coverage is built in on purpose, so that a vacation, a departure or a surge somewhere in the group does not put a close at risk. That means documenting your work properly is part of the job, not an afterthought.
We hire top down. The technical foundation is the base of the pyramid: essential, and assumed. We select on the three layers above it.
Our Pyramid of Priorities - Apex to Base
Alpha / Lead
You take ownership and lead, with or without the title; you set the standard, drive the outcome, and make the people around you better.
Positive Temperament
Resilient, constructive, and energizing; steady under pressure, and you lift the room rather than drain it.
Solution-Driven
You show up with answers, not just problems; you own the outcome and find a way through.
Skill Set
The technical foundation the role requires: essential and assumed - the base we build on, not the summit.
In this seat the apex looks like ownership without supervision. You will be given an area and left to run it, and we will measure whether it is right - not whether it was checked.
About The Company
The company is an equity-backed residential energy infrastructure business operating across multiple U.S. states, with hundreds of employees spanning engineering, technology, operations, finance, customer experience, installation, and multi-channel sales.
The group comprises multiple wholly owned subsidiaries across three primary areas:
- Core technology and engineering
- Residential sales and installation
- Finance and insurance
One is a live residential construction and installation business with crews operating across multiple states and a substantial number of jobs open at any time.
The other is a hardware manufacturing operation that is being brought in-house and scaling rapidly.
Depending on where you are assigned, you could work on either - or on the group consolidation that sits above both.
The Mandate
We are rebuilding this function, with the systems investment to build it properly rather than patch it. The close is being put on a committed calendar, the process library is being written for the first time, and automation is taking the repetition out of the work so the team spends its time on judgment.
You are joining that build, not administering a steady state. Expect the first year to involve fixing things that are not right yet, writing down how they should work, and holding the new standard once it is set.
What This Role Is Not
- A journal-entry job. Transaction processing is being automated deliberately - we run NetSuite alongside an in-house AI accounting agent already in production across the operating companies. You work exceptions, not repetition.
- A seat where you wait to be told. You own an area. Nobody will walk you through it every month, and we will not measure you on whether the work got checked.
- A backward-looking job. Explaining last month accurately is the floor. We are hiring for someone who sees the problem forming and moves before it lands.
- A seat you can succeed in without understanding the business. If you cannot explain how we make money and where the margin leaks, you cannot do this job well.
- A territory. See the section above.
Whatever your assignment, these travel with the seat.
Close and Reconciliation
- Your part of the monthly and quarterly close for the entities you are assigned, delivered on a committed calendar without being chased.
- Balance sheet reconciliations completed monthly with real supporting evidence, prepared for review.
- Prepaids, accruals and amortization schedules.
- Intercompany transaction processing and elimination support.
- Investigate what does not look right. We would rather you chase down a transaction than reconcile around it.
- Operate the internal controls over your area, and say so plainly when one is not working.
- Support the external audit for your areas - populate the request list ahead of the auditors rather than in response to them.
- Hold the line on judgment calls. You will be asked by operating people to treat something the way they would prefer. The answer has to be the right one, explained well.
- Work hands-on in NetSuite every day, and push the automation agenda forward with the technology group rather than working around it.
- Write the standard procedure for everything you own into the group process library, in the required template.
- Run accounting as a service to the business - fast, useful and trusted by operations, not a gate they have to get through.
- Train non-accounting staff on submission, coding and system process. Getting good data in at the source is part of this job, not somebody else's problem.
This is the part of the role that separates the people we want from the people we do not. Whatever you are assigned, you are expected to produce, explain and defend its operating economics - not to report them once a month, but to know them well enough that the business comes to you before it decides.
- On the installation side: cost per install and cost per watt by market, crew and channel; bid-to-actual variance at job level with root cause, while the job is still open; margin by job, crew and configuration.
- On the manufacturing side: fully loaded cost per unit and how it moves as volume climbs against the fixed base; standard versus actual decomposed; absorption at current volume versus normal capacity; yield, scrap and warranty cost per unit.
- Across the group: the installed-cost curve as manufacturing comes in-house, and the make-versus-buy delta that the strategy rests on.
We expect real depth in at least one of the following, owned as an employee rather than advised on as a consultant. Tell us which one is yours and be honest about the rest - we would rather know than guess, and an overstated answer costs you more than a gap does.
Construction and Job Cost
Work-in-progress schedules you have built, estimated cost at completion, percentage-of-completion or over-time recognition under ASC 606, job-level P&L, retainage, subcontractor accounting and lien waivers, cost capture from field crews.
Manufacturing Cost
Standard cost setting, variance decomposition into price, usage and volume, absorption and normal capacity, inventory valuation and cycle counting, landed cost and purchase price variance, warranty reserve.
Fixed Assets and Capital
Building and owning a fixed asset register, capitalization policy and thresholds, construction in progress and placed-in-service determinations, disposals and gain or loss, subledger-to-ledger reconciliation.
Revenue and Contracts
ASC 606 applied to customer contracts, unbilled receivables and contract assets, billing and revenue cutoff, deferred revenue, commission accounting.
Group and Consolidation
Multi-entity close, intercompany transactions and eliminations, allocations across entities, consolidation preparation, audit schedule ownership.
Over time we will deliberately broaden you into a second. That is how directors get made here.
The Path
You report to a Director of Accounting Services. The director seats are a real destination, not a dangled one - we are a multi-entity group that is scaling rapidly and standing up new subsidiaries, and we would rather grow our directors than keep hiring them from outside.
So We Will Tell You Plainly What The Ladder Requires Rather Than Leave It Vague. To Be a Credible Candidate For a Directorship Here, Three Things Would Need To Be True
- You own your areas outright - clean, documented, audit-ready, and nobody has to check them.
- You are genuinely expert in NetSuite: building and configuring in it, not operating inside what someone else built.
- You have real depth in a second specialty from the table above, not just the one you arrived with.
- Your part of the close delivered on a committed calendar, consistently.
- Every process you own written into the library, in the required template, well enough that someone else could run it.
- Audit requests in your areas answered first time, without rework.
- A problem you found and fixed that nobody asked you to look at.
- Operations telling us accounting helps them move faster. We will ask them directly.
We will tell you this up front because it is unusual and because it works. Our process has three parts:
- A short factual background form - dates, systems, volumes, and an honest self-rating of your technical exposure, including whether you owned each item or performed it under someone else. "No experience" is a perfectly good answer and costs you nothing; an overstated one costs you a great deal.
- Interviews with several people, each scoring a defined area against the pyramid above on a common scale.
- A timed, closed-book written exercise. No phone, no internet. Part of it is arithmetic on this business; part asks you to write about how you would handle real situations in the seat. We are not testing whether you can look things up - we are testing whether the economics of an operating business are intuitive to you, and whether you can think in writing.
Qualifications
Required
- 5 years of progressive accounting experience.
- Month-end close ownership and genuine balance sheet reconciliation discipline in a multi-entity environment.
- Real depth in at least one specialty from the table above, performed by you as an employee rather than advised on as a consultant.
- Hands-on NetSuite. You work in the system yourself. Be ready to describe what you personally build in it.
- Demonstrated ability to reason quantitatively about an operating business - you will be asked to do it in writing, under time, without a computer.
- US GAAP, and the judgment to know when to ask rather than assume.
- Strong Excel.
- Depth in a second specialty from the table.
- CPA, or active progress toward it.
- Construction, installation, manufacturing or other operating environments where the accounting follows physical work.
- Multi-state operations.
- Has taken a manual process and rebuilt or automated it end to end.
- Has trained non-accounting staff on systems and process.
- Has worked through an acquisition, a system migration or an ownership transition.
- Base salary: $110,000-$130,000, commensurate with experience and specialty depth.
- Annual bonus: Target based on experience.
- Equity: Stock options in a well-capitalized, high-growth group, sized against a target exit in 2029-2030.
- Medical, dental, and vision insurance
- Company-paid life insurance; voluntary supplemental life
- Short- and long-term disability insurance
- Health Savings Account
- 401(k) with a generous employer match
Everything above is the job. What decides it is the top of the pyramid: the drive to own the number rather than to report it, the temperament to stay constructive when the answer is unwelcome, and the judgment to know what a number is telling you before anyone asks.
We can teach our business to a sharp accountant. We cannot teach sharpness to someone who has only ever done the mechanics.
Salary : $110,000 - $130,000