Controller/CPA

Corps Team; Boulder (CO); On-site; USD 160,000 - 185,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Bonus plan

Job summary

Corps Team is seeking an experienced Controller to stand up finance for a drone-manufacturing startup in Boulder. You will baseline the books, design the cost-tracking structure, and align spend with the industrial plan alongside the founder team.

You will implement budgeting, reporting, and control accounts, coordinating with external auditors and advisors to prepare for audits. This role requires hands-on leadership in a fast-moving, semi-structured environment.

Qualifications

• CPA certification required, active or inactive.
• Experience building finance structure from a low baseline.
• Familiarity with contract- and resource-level cost tracking for government-facing businesses.
• Experience coordinating with external auditors and advisors.

Responsibilities

• Baseline the books and establish a clean financial baseline.
• Stand up the finance structure: budgets, control accounts, cost tracking.
• Track the industrial plan and tie spend to projects.
• Establish regular financial reporting cadence for leadership visibility.
• Record, analyze, and track all costs; compare budget vs spend.
• Support audit readiness and conversion with external advisors.
• Systemize cost visibility and ERP processes (NetSuite).

Skills

Controller-level experience

Senior finance experience

Cost tracking

ERP systems (NetSuite)

Audit readiness

Education

CPA certification

Job description

Our client, a start-up company focused on drone manufacturing, is seeking an experienced Controller. This role will be onsite in Boulder and must be a CPA (active or inactive). This role brings professional finance discipline to a newly acquired company from the inside, building the reporting, controls, and budgeting the business needs.This helps scale them into production-grade suppliers.This business is strong on engineering and light on finance little formal accounting structure. The Controller is the dedicated finance professional and will work alongside the founder team and existing operations lead to baseline the books, stand up structure, and prepare the business for audit.

What You Own

• Baseline the books. Establish a clean, reliable financial baseline for the company, working alongside the existing operations lead and the external advisors already engaged.
• Stand up structure. Build the work-breakdown and control-account structure, department budgets, and cost tracking the company currently lacks, so spend can be managed against plan rather than after the fact.
• Track the industrial plan. Put in place day-to-day and month‑to‑month tracking of the invested capital against the industrial‑plan use of funds, tying spend to the projects and resources it was earmarked for.
• Reporting cadence. Establish regular financial reporting so leadership has timely, accurate visibility, replacing the reactive, ad‑hoc information flow that exists today.
• Cost Accounting.Record, analyze, and track all costs, compare budget vs spend.
• Support audit and conversion. Coordinate with the external advisors handling the cash‑to‑accrual conversion and the independent audit, providing the on‑the‑ground finance support they need from the company.
• Systems and cost visibility. Help implement the systems and processes required for contract‑andresource‑level cost tracking at the portfolio company, in coordination with the corporate ERP standard (NetSuite) rather than as a standalone system.

How You Work with the Founder and Team

This role works alongside the founder team, which is passionate about the technology and less focused on back‑office matters. Success means being proactive and on top of the finances rather than waiting to be asked, while remaining respectful of a small team that is not accustomed to formal finance processes. The goal is to add the structure the business needs without disrupting the culture and pace that make it work. The existing operations lead, who has carried finance along with many other responsibilities, remains part of the team. This role provides the finance expertise the company has lacked, in partnership with that person rather than in place of them.

Qualifications

• Strong controller-level or senior finance experience, ideally ina related regulated environment.
• Experience building finance structure from a low baseline: budgets, control accounts, cost tracking, and reporting where little existed before.
• Familiarity with contract- and resource-level cost tracking and the reporting standards expected in government-facing businesses.
• Comfort coordinating with external auditors and advisors and supporting audit readiness.
• Systems fluency, with experience implementing or converting ERP and financial systems (NetSuite experience a plus).
• A hands‑on, proactive operator comfortable in a fast‑moving, under‑structured environment, willing to do the detailed work and build the function up.
• Strong interpersonal skills and the judgment to work effectively with founders and small teams that are new to formal finance.

Salary Range: $160-185k plus 20% bonus plan.

Salary depends on skills, experience, education and overall qualifications.