Staff Accountant

Masterworks; New York (NY); On-site; USD 70,000 - 95,000; Full time

Job summary

Masterworks, a NYC-based fintech, seeks an accountant-engineer who builds automation around traditional accounting. You’ll join a lean team that uses code, AI, and automation to perform tasks that once required multiple people.

You will own reconciliations and reporting across hundreds of SPVs and corporate entities, continuously improving the finance engine with AI-driven tools and data pipelines. This role reports to the Sr Accounting Manager.

Qualifications

• Degree in Accounting (or equivalent) is mandatory.
• 1–3 years of accounting experience with close work, reconciliations, and financial statement prep.
• Evidence of building a script, automation, workflow, or repo that saved real time.
• Fluency using AI to get things done programmatically—prompt-to-working-code.
• Detail orientation and deadline discipline are essential.

Responsibilities

• Keep our financial engine running smoothly across hundreds of investment vehicles and entities.
• Execute monthly, quarterly, and annual closes with precise reconciliations and clean support.
• Lead preparation of SEC annual and semi-annual reports (1-K and 1-SA).
• Own pay-in/pay-out reconciliations and investor payment run files.
• Maintain and extend automation scripts, data pipelines, and AI agents for accounting workflows.
• Identify and kill manual, fragile steps with automation and document your work.

Skills

Accounting principles

Automation

AI workflows

SQL querying

Excel / Sheets

GitHub

Education

Accounting degree

Tools

Python

Claude/ChatGPT

GitHub

SQL

Job description

Masterworks is a fintech platform that allows anyone to invest in SEC-qualified shares of multi-million dollar paintings by names like Banksy, Basquiat, and Picasso. Since launching in April 2019, we have securitized over $1.5 billion in world-class artworks.

Masterworks has been covered by major media publications such as The New York Times, CNBC, The Wall Street Journal, and the Financial Times.

Our employees are based out of our offices at 1 World Trade Center in the Financial District of New York City.

The Role

This isn't your grandfather's accounting role — and honestly, it isn't last year's either. We're looking for an accountant by trade who thinks like an engineer: someone who knows debits and credits cold, but whose first instinct when handed a repetitive task is to build something that does it automatically — and whose second instinct is to point an AI agent at it.

Masterworks runs the books for hundreds of art investment vehicles plus our corporate entities. That kind of scale doesn't get solved by hiring armies of accountants — it gets solved by a small team of accountant-builders who use code, AI, and automation to make one person do the work that used to take four (the good version of that sentence: through systems, not burnout). You'll step into a well-built engine, keep it running with precision, and make it measurably better every quarter.

You’ll report to: Our Sr Accounting Manager

You Might Be Our Person If

• You're that rare breed who understands both accounting principles AND technical systems — a CPA-track brain with a GitHub account
• You tried being a developer but missed the structure of accounting (or vice versa)
• You've "vibe coded" something real — you use Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor to write Python that actually shipped, and you can show us
• You dream about AI agentic workflows — not "AI will change everything" LinkedIn posts, but actual agents you've wired up to do actual work
• You know your way around APIs, databases, and SQL — you'd rather query the source than ask someone to export a report
• The idea of managing 500 SPVs doesn't make you break into a cold sweat — it makes you start sketching the automation architecture
• You geek out on automating random stuff at home just because you can
• You know financial statement prep cold, including what SEC-grade output looks like — you know what the end product should be before you build toward it
• You're intellectually curious, learn new tools for fun, and are detail-oriented without being paralyzed by perfectionism

Your Mission

• Keep our financial engine running smoothly across hundreds of art investment vehicles and our corporate entities
• Execute monthly, quarterly, and annual closes with precision — reconciliations that tie, entries with clean support, deadlines that don't slip
• Lead preparation of SEC annual and semi-annual reports (1-K and 1-SA)
• Own pay-in/pay-out reconciliations and the supporting files behind investor payment runs
• Maintain and extend the systems our accountant-developer hybrid team has built — scripts, workflows, data pipelines, and AI agents that do real accounting work
• Hunt down the manual, fragile steps in our processes and kill them with automation — then document what you built so it outlives you
• Be the reliable backbone that keeps our financial reporting accurate — the engineering is in service of the accounting, never the other way around

The Stack You'll Work In

• Google Sheets and Excel
• Python — you don't need to be a wizard, but you should be dangerous with an AI copilot beside you
• AI tools — Claude, ChatGPT, and agentic workflows are part of how this team gets work done, daily
• GitHub — version control isn't just for engineers; our accounting logic lives in repos
• SQL / databases — comfort querying and joining data at the source
• APIs — enough understanding to pull data from (and push data to) the systems we use
• Workflow / automation tools — Alteryx, GH Actions, Zapier, or you tell us what you'd build instead

Must-Haves

• Degree in Accounting (or equivalent accounting academia) — the foundation is non-negotiable; the engineering is built on top of it
• 1–3 years of accounting experience (close work, reconciliations, financial statement prep) — public or private
• Demonstrable evidence of building: a script, an automation, a workflow, a repo — something you made that saved real time. We will ask to see it
• Fluency using AI to get things done programmatically — prompt-to-working-code, not prompt-to-paragraph
• Detail orientation and deadline discipline — the close calendar is the heartbeat of this team

Nice-to-Haves

• CPA track (or interest in it)
• Experience with investment-entity accounting
• Exposure to SEC reporting (1-K, 1-SA, 10-K/Q formats)
• Coding coursework, bootcamp, or a self-taught portfolio — we care about the evidence, not the credential

How Does Masterworks Think About Compensation?

The compensation range for the role is $70,000 – $95,000 (inclusive only of base salary, and exclusive of other potential competitive benefits such as bonus payments and equity). Our ranges are broad to accommodate all types of candidates and encourage growth. Specific compensation offered to a candidate may be dependent on factors such as education, experience, qualifications, and alignment with market data. Exceptional candidates may receive salaries outside of the posted ranges.

The Bottom Line

We need an accountant who builds. Not a developer who tolerates accounting, and not an accountant who tolerates technology — someone who genuinely likes both and uses each to make the other better. You'll join a lean team where your contribution matters daily, your automations compound, and the work you systematize becomes the foundation for scaling the entire accounting function. If you're that perfect blend of accounting nerd and AI-native builder, we want to talk.