Finance & Accounts

Rival; India; On-site; INR 600,000 - 1,000,000; Full time

Job summary

Rival in India is seeking a Finance & Accounts professional to own day-to-day accounting, compliance, and financial operations for our India entity, emphasizing an automated, lean finance function built on AI tools and automation.

You will drive 80% of reconciliations through systems, manage month-end close, AP/AR, and GST/TDS filings, while coordinating with auditors and tax consultants to keep books audit-ready and compliant.

Qualifications

• 2–5 years of experience in accounting/finance operations, ideally at a startup or fast-growing company (SaaS experience is a strong plus).
• Strong working knowledge of Indian accounting standards, GST, TDS, and statutory compliance.
• Hands-on experience with an accounting system (Zoho Books, Tally, QuickBooks, or similar); ERP exposure (NetSuite) is a bonus.
• Comfortable owning the full close cycle independently, not just executing assigned tasks.

Responsibilities

• Books & Compliance: Day-to-day bookkeeping, invoicing, GST/TDS filings, payroll compliance, and statutory filings for the India entity.
• Reconciliations: Bank, vendor, and intercompany reconciliations with system-based exception flags.
• Month-end close: Own the close calendar, journal entries, accruals, and reporting packages.
• AP/AR operations: Invoice processing, payment runs, collections follow-up, and expense management.
• Audit & compliance readiness: Coordinate with auditors and tax consultants; maintain audit-ready documents continuously.
• Process automation: Identify manual workflows and use AI/no-code automation to remove yourself from repetitive tasks.

Skills

Accounting & finance operations

GST/TDS compliance

ERP knowledge

Automation mindset

Close cycle ownership

Tools

Zoho Books

Tally

QuickBooks

NetSuite

Job description

We're hiring a Finance & Accounts professional to own day-to-day accounting, compliance, and financial operations for our India entity. This isn't a traditional bookkeeping role. You'll be expected to run a lean, largely self-operating finance function — using AI tools and automation to eliminate manual, repetitive work, and spending your own time on judgment calls, exceptions, and analysis instead.

We'd rather hire someone who can build a system that does 80% of the reconciliation for them than someone who reconciles quickly by hand.

What You'll Own

• Books & Compliance: Day-to-day bookkeeping, vendor and customer invoicing, GST/TDS filings, payroll compliance, and statutory filings (ROC, PF, PT, etc.) for the India entity.
• Reconciliations: Bank, vendor, and intercompany reconciliations — ideally with a system in place that flags exceptions rather than requiring line-by-line manual matching.
• Month-end close: Own the close calendar, journal entries, accruals, and reporting packages; work toward shrinking close time quarter over quarter.
• AP/AR operations: Invoice processing, payment runs, collections follow-up, and expense management.
• Audit & compliance readiness: Coordinate with auditors, tax consultants, and company secretary; maintain audit-ready documentation continuously rather than scrambling at year-end.
• Process automation: Identify manual, repetitive finance workflows and either configure existing tools or use AI/no-code automation to remove yourself from the loop.

What We're Looking For

Core finance skills

• 2–5 years of experience in accounting/finance operations, ideally at a startup or fast-growing company (SaaS experience is a strong plus).
• Strong working knowledge of Indian accounting standards, GST, TDS, and statutory compliance.
• Hands‑on experience with an accounting system (Zoho Books, Tally, QuickBooks, or similar); ERP exposure (NetSuite) is a bonus.
• Comfortable owning the full close cycle independently, not just executing assigned tasks.

AI & automation fluency (this matters as much as the accounting knowledge)

We're not looking for someone who has "used ChatGPT a few times." We want someone who thinks about their own job as a process to be systematized. Specifically, you should be able to:

• Use AI tools (ChatGPT, Claude, or similar) fluently for drafting communications, summarizing policies, researching compliance questions, and building financial models or analyses.
• Build or configure spreadsheet/AI‑assisted workflows that automate recurring tasks — e.g., auto‑categorizing transactions, flagging reconciliation mismatches, generating draft journal entries, or summarizing vendor statements.
• Work with (or be willing to quickly learn) low‑code/no‑code automation tools like n8n, Zapier, or Google Apps Script to connect finance systems (accounting software, Gmail, Google Sheets, Slack) so routine tasks run without manual intervention.
• Use AI to accelerate reconciliation and variance analysis — e.g., feeding bank statements and ledgers into a tool to auto‑match entries and surface only genuine exceptions for human review.
• Show a track record (even informal) of having automated something in a past role — a reconciliation macro, an auto‑generated report, a Slack/email alert for overdue invoices, anything that reduced manual effort.

In your application, tell us about one manual finance process you've automated or streamlined — however small — and how you did it.

How we'll evaluate automation-mindedness

Expect a practical exercise during the interview process: we'll walk through a real (anonymized) recurring finance task and ask how you'd approach automating or AI‑assisting it, not just how you'd execute it manually.

What Success Looks Like in 6 Months

• Close timelines shortened, with reconciliations largely self‑flagging exceptions rather than requiring manual review of every line.
• At least 2–3 previously manual, recurring finance tasks automated or AI‑assisted end‑to‑end.
• Clean, audit‑ready books maintained continuously, not reconstructed at deadline time.
• You're spending most of your time on judgment‑heavy work (variance analysis, compliance risk, vendor negotiations) rather than data entry.

Why Join Drivetrain

You'll be one of the first finance hires shaping how a fast-growing AI‑native company runs its own finance function — with full latitude to bring in the same kind of automation and AI tooling we sell to our customers.