Controller

Basis; New York (NY); On-site; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health & wellness benefits

Unlimited PTO

Daily meal stipends

Fully stocked kitchen

401(k) plan

Parental leave

Job summary

Basis is seeking a Controller to build the financial systems and operating foundation for rapid growth. You will own accounting integrity and develop a clear understanding of how the company earns and spends money, reporting to the Head of Finance.

The role emphasizes AI-driven workflows, scalable controls, and partnering with Product and Engineering to shape a future AI-native accounting function. You’ll redesign processes across close, reconciliations, spend monitoring, and reporting,

Qualifications

• 6-12 years of progressive accounting and finance experience at a high-growth company.
• Strong technical accounting knowledge across financial reporting, revenue, accruals and equity.
• Systems mindset: translate messy processes into clear workflows with controls.
• Building role experience: scalable AP, procurement, expense systems, and spend reporting.
• Strong analytical judgment: explain changes and business implications.
• Ability to partner with Engineering, Product, Sales, People and leadership.

Responsibilities

• Own the integrity of Basis’s accounting and financial systems; drive close and reporting.
• Redesign workflows across close, reconciliations, spend monitoring, and reporting.
• Determine AI ownership vs. human review, keep systems auditable and explainable.
• Partner with Product and Engineering to translate learnings into better finance systems.
• Define how a modern AI-enabled finance function operates at scale.
• Report to Head of Finance and operate in NYC Flatiron office.

Skills

Accounting depth

Systems design

Analytical judgment

Cross-functional collaboration

High-growth experience

AI-forward mindset

Job description

About Basis

Basis builds real agents that do real work in the real economy. Our agents operate for hours at a time, performing end-to-end work for some of the largest accounting firms in the world.

We recently raised $100M at >$1B valuation and are racing to deploy the most advanced applied ML at production scale.

Our investors include: Khosla Ventures (Keith Rabois & Vinod Khosla), Accel (Miles Clements), Google Ventures, Nat Friedman & Daniel Gross, Adam D'Angelo, Jeff Dean, Jack Altman, Noam Brown, Kyle Vogt, Amjad Masad, Clem Delangue and many other operators/technical leaders.

Basis is on the frontier of building production-grade, long-horizon agents. They've pushed the limits of what we thought our models could do on real-world, economically valuable, complex accounting tasks. They've been a great collaborator in helping us shape what the future of agents looks like. — Prashant Mital, Applied AI Lead, OpenAI

What You’ll Be Doing

Basis is looking for a Controller to build the financial systems and operating foundation for our next stage of growth. You’ll own the integrity of our accounting and help us develop a clear, timely understanding of how the company earns and spends money. This role reports to the Head of Finance.

What makes this role unique is that you’ll be the Controller at a company working to automate accounting itself. Basis’s own finance function should be a proving ground for the future we’re building: a place where we apply AI to real accounting work, learn where it creates leverage, and set a high bar for speed, accuracy, control, and judgment.

You’ll bring an AI-forward mindset to how the function operates. That means redesigning workflows—not simply layering tools onto old processes—across the close, reconciliations, spend monitoring, reporting, and other core work. You’ll determine where AI can own work, where human review matters, and how the systems remain explainable and auditable as they scale.

You’ll be a steward of that operating model. You’ll work closely with Product and Engineering, bringing a practitioner’s perspective to the same problems our customers are trying to solve and turning what we learn internally into better systems, sharper product insight, and a credible example of what an AI-native accounting function can look like.

This is a high-ownership role for someone who combines technical accounting depth with systems thinking, curiosity, and strong business judgment. You should enjoy getting into the details while also helping define how a modern finance function operates at an AI company.

Location: NYC, Flatiron office. In-person team, five days a week.

What You’ll Bring

• 6-12 years of progressive accounting and finance experience, including meaningful ownership of accounting operations at a high-growth company.

• Strong technical accounting knowledge across financial reporting, revenue recognition, accruals, capitalization, equity, and other areas relevant to a fast-growing AI company.

• A systems mindset: you can translate messy processes into clear workflows, reliable data, thoughtful controls, and scalable operating rhythms. You are comfortable designing the system, implementing it, reviewing the details, and doing the work yourself when needed.

• This is a building role. We value experience building systems for accounts payable, procurement, expense management, purchasing approvals, vendor commitments, and spend reporting.

• Strong analytical judgment and the ability to explain not only what changed financially, but why it changed and what the business should do about it.

• The ability to partner effectively with technical and nontechnical teams, including Engineering, Product, Sales, People, and company leadership.

What We’d Love to See

• Accounting Function Building: Experience helping an accounting organization evolve from founder-led or highly manual processes into a scalable, well-controlled function.

• AI or Infrastructure Cost Fluency: Experience managing or analyzing cloud, compute, model, data, infrastructure, or other variable technology costs.

• Spend Systems: Experience building procurement, approval, vendor-management, cost-allocation, or expense systems from scratch that improved visibility without slowing the business down.

What Success Looks Like

• Scalable Close Process & Reliable Reporting: Leadership receives accurate, timely financial information and trusts the underlying data. The monthly close runs on a clear cadence and becomes faster and automated month-over-month.

• Real Spend Visibility: Basis can clearly understand spend by vendor, team, category, product, customer, and underlying cost driver where relevant.

• Thoughtful Cost Controls: Purchasing and commitments have clear ownership, approval paths, and guardrails that manage risk without creating unnecessary friction.

• Revenue Integrity: Commercial agreements flow cleanly into billing, collections, revenue recognition, and reporting.

• Systems That Compound: Accounting workflows, integrations, controls, and data improve with scale instead of becoming increasingly manual or fragile.

• Audit and Compliance Readiness: Financial records, policies, supporting documentation, tax matters, and controls remain organized and ready for external scrutiny.

Benefits at Basis

We offer a competitive and thoughtful benefits package designed to support your physical, mental, and financial well-being:

• Health & Wellness: Premium Medical, Dental, and Vision coverage; Life Insurance; and 6 coaching & 6 therapy sessions through Spring Health.

  • Basis will cover 100% of your Wellhub Gold membership.

  • Wellhub gives you access to gyms like Lifetime, SoulCycle, NYSC and so many more - as well as access to wellness apps like Strava & Headspace!

• Time off: Unlimited PTO + 12 paid company holidays.

• In-Office Perks: Daily meal stipends, a fully stocked kitchen, and $300 toward your custom desk setup.

• Financial Benefits: Pre-tax commuter benefits and 401(k) retirement plan

• Team Culture: Monthly office activities and frequent optional team happy hours.

• Parental Leave