Accounting Engineer

claylabs; New York (NY); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Clay is seeking an Accounting Engineer to own core accounting operations and build the systems that power them. You will work at the intersection of accounting, finance systems, and data, using AI to scale the function and redesign the close process.

You’ll lead monthly close end-to-end, automate workflows, support external audits, and partner with product, GTM, and Operations on finance initiatives. This role offers broad exposure across the organization.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of accounting experience, mix of public accounting and high-growth startup exposure.
• Hands-on operational accounting experience: you have owned a close, managed reconciliations, and dealt with messy real-world data.
• Experience implementing or administering a finance system or ERP
• Proficiency in SQL; comfortable querying large datasets, writing joins, and debugging data issues independently
• Demonstrated use of AI tools (Cursor, Claude, ChatGPT, or similar) to accelerate and improve accounting or finance work

Responsibilities

• Own the monthly close end-to-end (journal entries, reconciliations, flux analysis, reporting) and drive finance transformation/automation initiatives across the function
• Support audit readiness as a key point of contact for external auditors, exploring real-time audit tooling using AI
• Own Clay's ERP and connected finance systems (payroll, expense, equity, billing), including integrations, data pipelines, and ongoing implementation efforts
• Evaluate and onboard new finance tooling, and maintain system documentation and SOD controls as the stack scales
• Build AI-powered workflows (Claude, Cursor, etc.) to automate reconciliations, variance analysis, and close tasks, writing SQL to extract and validate data across systems
• Systematically eliminate repetitive accounting work and build dashboards for real-time financial visibility — the goal is a shorter close every quarter
• Partner with GTM, Product, and Operations on finance-adjacent projects, and support FP&A with data infrastructure and modeling
• Act as the accounting team's connector to the broader org, helping shape how the function grows

Skills

Accounting

SQL

AI tools

Audit readiness

Cross-functional collaboration

Tools

ERP

Job description

About Clay

Our mission is to help organizations turn any growth idea into reality.

We see growth as a creative practice, not a formula. Finding and reaching your best-fit customers takes unique ideas and constant iteration. As AI makes execution faster and tactics easier to copy, creativity is the only lasting advantage. We're already helping thousands of customers — including Anthropic, Notion, Google, and Ramp — go to market with unique data, signals, and AI research.

In 2025, we raised a $100M Series C backed by world-class investors including Sequoia, CapitalG, and First Round — and crossed $100M in revenue.

In 2026, we announced our second employee tender offer in 9 months at a new $5B valuation. We also launched a community equity round, for our customers, agency partners, and club members.

Some things to know about us:

• Our community includes 11,000+ customers, 150+ integration partners, 125+ agencies, 50+ Clay clubs, and 30k members on Slack.

• Our culture is unique inside and outside of work. Our team members are also DJs, activists, writers, clowns, marathoners, skydivers, psychedelic therapists, social workers, and more.

• All employees can work for free with world-class coaches who specialize in creativity, management, and more.

• Our operating principles — including negative maintenance and non-attached action — guide our work. Read more about them here.

• Read about us in the NYT, Forbes, First Round Review, and more.

Hear from our employees directly on our Glassdoor page!

Accounting Engineer @ Clay

At Clay, we believe the future of accounting is not just about closing the books accurately; it is about closing them intelligently. Just as we pioneered the Go-To-Market Engineer (GTME) role to reimagine how sales and operations intersect with AI, we are now doing the same for finance and accounting.

The Accounting Engineer is a new discipline we are defining from the ground up. It sits at the intersection of three historically separate worlds: accounting, finance systems and data. The connective tissue between all three is AI. This is not a hybrid role as an afterthought; it is an intentional choice about how Clay's accounting function will scale.

You will own core accounting operations, build and optimize the systems that power them, and design the automation workflows that make everything faster and more accurate. Beyond the core function, you will have a seat at the table on cross-functional projects from product and GTM analytics to finance infrastructure initiatives, giving you exposure across the organization that a traditional accounting role simply does not offer.

What You'll Do

Accounting Operations

• Own the monthly close end-to-end (journal entries, reconciliations, flux analysis, reporting) and drive finance transformation/automation initiatives across the function

• Support audit readiness as a key point of contact for external auditors, exploring real-time audit tooling using AI

Finance Systems

• Own Clay's ERP and connected finance systems (payroll, expense, equity, billing), including integrations, data pipelines, and ongoing implementation efforts

• Evaluate and onboard new finance tooling, and maintain system documentation and SOD controls as the stack scales

Automation & AI

• Build AI-powered workflows (Claude, Cursor, etc.) to automate reconciliations, variance analysis, and close tasks, writing SQL to extract and validate data across systems

• Systematically eliminate repetitive accounting work and build dashboards for real‑time financial visibility — the goal is a shorter close every quarter

Cross-Functional Special Projects

• Partner with GTM, Product, and Operations on finance‑adjacent projects, and support FP&A with data infrastructure and modeling

• Act as the accounting team's connector to the broader org, helping shape how the function grows

What You'll Bring

• 5+ years of accounting experience, with a mix of public accounting and high-growth startup exposure

• Hands‑on operational accounting experience: you have owned a close, managed reconciliations, and dealt with messy real‑world data

• Experience implementing or administering a finance system or ERP

• Proficiency in SQL; comfortable querying large datasets, writing joins, and debugging data issues independently

• Demonstrated use of AI tools (Cursor, Claude, ChatGPT, or similar) to accelerate and improve accounting or finance work

Nice to Haves

• CPA license or active pursuit preferred

• Familiarity with billing and revenue platforms (Stripe, CPQ and Metering platforms) and their accounting integrations

• Experience building or contributing to financial data models, dashboards, or BI tooling