Tax & Compliance Manager, VCS

Avalara, Inc.; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Avalara is seeking a Tax & Compliance Manager, VCS, to lead a team delivering Premium Sales Tax Risk Assessments, VDAs, and historical compliance for customers across multiple states. You’ll coach Tax Associates, uphold a 48-hour client response SLA, and ensure accurate state submissions.

You’ll partner with the Practice Director on capacity planning and billing, drive automation and AI-enabled workflows, and build scalable processes.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Business Admin, Accounting, Finance or related field.
• 5+ years of sales and use tax consulting or compliance experience, including time spent leading a team or serving in a team lead role.
• Strong proficiency in Microsoft Excel and comfort with data transformation to tell a story.
• Hands-on Salesforce experience to track pipelines, tasks, and reporting.
• Demonstrated track record using AI tools to improve speed, accuracy, or scalability, plus ability to coach adoption.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, comfortable presenting to clients and working with tax authorities.
• Preferred: experience leading full voluntary compliance processes across multiple states and local jurisdictions.
• Preferred: regional or national public accounting experience in state/local tax and managing multi-location teams.

Responsibilities

• Lead a team of Tax Associates delivering sales tax risk assessments, VDAs, and historical compliance filings across multiple states.
• Set expectations and uphold client response standards, including 48-hour turnarounds and on-time state submissions and returns.
• Lead hiring, onboarding, and training for new team members and develop those with growth potential within VCS.
• Serve as escalation point for complex client issues, state authority inquiries, or cross-functional questions.
• Partner with Practice Director on capacity planning, reporting, billing oversight, and overall practice health.
• Document and standardize processes to make quality repeatable and the customer experience consistent.
• Identify, pilot, and scale automation and AI-assisted tools, and measure their impact on productivity and quality.

Skills

Sales tax experience

Team leadership

Excel & data storytelling

Salesforce proficiency

AI tooling adoption

Excellent communication

Education

Bachelor's degree in Business Admin, Accounting, Finance

Tools

Salesforce

Job description

What You’ll Do

The Tax & Compliance Manager, VCS leads a team of Tax Associates who deliver Premium Sales Tax Risk Assessments (PSTRA), Voluntary Disclosure Agreements (VDAs), and historical compliance engagements for Avalara customers across multiple jurisdictions. As transaction volumes grow and voluntary disclosure work scales, this role ensures consistent SLA and quality performance across a paired Tax Associate/State Data delivery model, develops and retains high-performing talent, and embeds AI-enabled workflows into day-to-day team operations.

Why This Role Matters

• For our customers: Your team delivers timely, accurate compliance work that protects customers from penalties, interest, and audit exposure.
• For the business: You'll reduce unnecessary escalations and rework, surface opportunities for automation, and help keep our cost-to-serve in check - all without compromising quality.
• For the team: You'll be the kind of manager people remember. Through coaching, clear expectations, and consistent recognition, you'll build engagement, deepen expertise, and create real career paths.
• For the practice: You'll actively push us forward by embedding AI-assisted workflows into how the team operates and sharing what works with the broader VCS organization.

What Your Responsibilities Will Be

Leading the Team

• Coach and develop a team of Tax Associates delivering sales tax risk assessments, voluntary disclosure agreements, and historical compliance filings across multiple states.
• Set clear expectations and hold the team accountable to our client response standards, including our 48-hour turnaround commitment and on-time delivery of state submissions and returns.
• Lead hiring, onboarding, and structured training for new team members — hiring for high standards and developing those with the strongest potential for growth within VCS.
• Serve as the escalation point for complex client issues, state authority inquiries, or internal cross-functional questions the team can't resolve on their own.

Driving Operational Excellence

• Partner closely with the Practice Director on capacity planning, reporting, billing oversight, and overall practice health.
• Document and standardize how the team works — building out clear process guides that make quality repeatable and the customer experience consistent.
• Identify, pilot, and scale automation and AI-assisted tools within the team (such as data validation, status tracking, research support, and template generation), and measure their impact on productivity and quality.
• Use AI tools to improve your own management effectiveness — whether that's synthesizing performance data, running operational reviews, or spotting workload patterns before they become problems.

Building Relationships and Alignment

• Maintain strong working relationships across Project Managers, Data Consultants, Tax Associates, State Activities leads, Tax Directors, Sales, and Account Management — keeping everyone aligned on scope, timelines, risk, and client outcomes.
• Ensure team process documentation (covering data intake, nexus validation, account reconciliation, disclosure submission, return preparation, notice handling, and file closeout) is thorough, current, and consistently followed.

Contributing to the Broader Practice

• Act as a subject-matter resource for other Professional Services teams when needed.
• Share insights, tools, and process improvements with VCS leadership to help raise the bar across the practice.

What You’ll Need to be Successful

Requirements

• A Bachelor's degree in Business Administration, Accounting, Finance, or a related field.
• At least 5 years of sales and use tax consulting or compliance experience — including time spent leading a team or serving in a team lead role.
• Strong proficiency in Microsoft Excel and comfort working with data transformation; you know how to make data tell a story.
• Hands-on experience using Salesforce (or a comparable project management or CRM platform) to track pipelines, tasks, and reporting.
• A demonstrated track record of using AI tools to make your team's work faster, more accurate, or easier to scale — whether in research, documentation, data analysis, or reporting. Just as important: the ability to coach others through adoption so the whole team benefits.
• Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal. You're comfortable presenting to clients, navigating conversations with state taxing authorities, and collaborating across Sales, Operations, and other internal teams.
• A high bar for quality and professionalism. You set the standard and hold it — for yourself and your team.
• Preferred: Hands-on experience leading the full voluntary compliance process — including nexus studies, voluntary disclosure agreements, and sales tax risk assessments — across multiple states and local jurisdictions.
• Preferred: Regional or national public accounting experience in a state or local tax practice, and experience managing teams that work across different locations or time zones.

Avalara is an AI-first Company

AI is embedded in our workflows, decision-making, and products. Success here requires embracing AI as an essential capability.

• You’ll bring experience using AI and AI-related technologies, ready to thrive here.
• You’ll apply AI every day to business challenges - improving efficiency, contributing solutions, and driving results for your team, our company, and our customers.
• You’ll grow with AI by staying curious about new trends and best practices, and by sharing what you learn so others can benefit too.

How We’ll Take Care of You

Total Rewards

In addition to a great compensation package, paid time off, and paid parental leave, many Avalara employees are eligible for bonuses.

Health & Wellness

Benefits vary by location but generally include private medical, life, and disability insurance.

Inclusive culture and diversity

Avalara strongly supports diversity, equity, and inclusion, and is committed to integrating them into our business practices and our organizational culture. We also have a total of 8 employee-run resource groups, each with senior leadership and exec sponsorship.

What You Need To Know About Avalara

We’re defining the relationship between tax and tech.

We’ve already built an industry-leading cloud compliance platform, processing over 54 billion customer API calls and over 6.6 million tax returns a year. Our growth is real - we're a billion dollar business - and we’re not slowing down until we’ve achieved our mission - to be part of every transaction in the world.

We’re bright, innovative, and disruptive, like the orange we love to wear. It captures our quirky spirit and optimistic mindset. It shows off the culture we’ve designed, that empowers our people to win. We’ve been different from day one. Join us, and your career will be too.

We’re An Equal Opportunity Employer

Supporting diversity and inclusion is a cornerstone of our company — we don’t want people to fit into our culture, but to enrich it. All qualified candidates will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, age, gender, national orientation, disability, sexual orientation, US Veteran status, or any other factor protected by law. If you require any reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, please let us know.