Head of Business Controls
Anthropic · San Francisco, United States · 24d ago
About Anthropic
Anthropic’s mission is to create reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. We want AI to be safe and beneficial for our users and for society as a whole. Our team is a quickly growing group of committed researchers, engineers, policy experts, and business leaders working together to build beneficial AI systems.
About the Role
We are looking for a Head of Business Controls to join our Internal Audit team at Anthropic. In this role, you will lead the organization's financial audit and SOX 404 compliance program, with a primary focus on financial process controls, business process risk assessments, and end-to-end financial reporting integrity as we scale rapidly toward an IPO.
This is a unique opportunity to build financial audit controls at an AI-first company, leveraging cutting-edge AI technology to create innovative, automated, and scalable compliance solutions. You will help define how AI can transform traditional financial audit processes — from continuous monitoring of financial transactions to intelligent anomaly detection — while maintaining the rigor required for public company compliance.
As the Head of Business Controls, you will own audit planning, scoping, testing, remediation, and reporting, partnering directly with Finance, Accounting, Operations, and Business teams to design scalable controls, oversee documentation, and manage communication with external auditors. This role reports to the Head of Internal Audit and plays a critical part in strengthening internal control maturity through pre-IPO readiness and beyond.
Key responsibilities
- Lead and manage the organization's end-to-end financial audit and SOX compliance program
- Own financial audit planning, scoping, testing, remediation, and reporting activities
- Build scalable, automated, and sustainable controls to support growth through pre-IPO and post-IPO readiness
- Develop and maintain the financial audit compliance roadmap aligned with organizational growth
- Pioneer the use of AI and automation technologies to enhance control effectiveness, continuous monitoring, and anomaly detection across financial processes
- Drive financial controls rationalization initiatives to optimize the control environment and increase reliance on automated controls
- Design, implement, and monitor controls across key financial processes including revenue recognition, financial close, accounts payable/receivable, and treasury operations
- Evaluate and test business process controls and automated controls to ensure proper functionality and compliance with US GAAP and SEC reporting requirements
- Conduct process and risk assessments to identify control gaps and remediation needs across financial workflows
- Oversee control documentation and ensure audit-ready evidence is maintained for all financial processes
- Assess and monitor controls over financial system implementations, ERP migrations (e.g., Workday Financials), and related integrations
- Partner with Finance, Accounting, Operations, and Business teams to implement scalable financial controls
- Work directly with the Controller, CFO, and Chief Accounting Officer to align audit priorities with business objectives
- Collaborate with process owners to identify control improvements and automation opportunities across financial workflows
- Support management's assessment of internal controls over financial reporting (ICFR) and related disclosures
- Serve as the primary point of contact for external auditors on financial audit and SOX matters
- Manage audit requests, coordinate testing schedules, and facilitate walkthroughs across all financial processes
- Track and report on financial audit compliance status to leadership, the Board, and Audit Committee
- Drive alignment with external auditors on testing approaches, reliance strategies, and deficiency evaluation
Minimum qualifications
- Have 10+ years of hands-on financial audit and SOX compliance experience, preferably in both Big 4 and in-house internal audit/SOX leadership roles at a fast-paced technology company
- Have proven ability to establish or scale financial audit and SOX compliance programs at newly public or pre-IPO companies
- Possess deep understanding of business process controls, financial reporting, and US GAAP requirements
- Have strong project management, analytical, and communication skills
- Hold a Bachelor's degree in Accounting, Finance, Business Administration, or a related field
- Are passionate about building scalable processes that support organizational growth and Anthropic's mission to create safe AI
Preferred qualifications
- Have 10+ years of hands-on financial audit and SOX compliance experience, preferably in both Big 4 and in-house internal audit/SOX leadership roles at a fast-paced technology company
- CPA, CIA, CISA, or similar certification
- Experience supporting rapid company growth and scaling financial compliance programs accordingly
- Interest in or experience applying AI/ML technologies to financial audit, compliance, or risk management processes
- Deep understanding of revenue recognition (ASC 606), lease accounting (ASC 842), or other complex accounting standards relevant to technology companies
- Experience working at a high-growth AI or technology company
- Familiarity with financial data governance, internal controls over financial reporting (ICFR), and SEC disclosure requirements
The annual compensation range for this role is listed below.
For sales roles, the range provided is the role’s On Target Earnings ("OTE") range, meaning that the range includes both the sales commissions/sales bonuses target and annual base salary for the role.
Logistics
Minimum education: Bachelor’s degree or an equivalent combination of education, training, and/or experience
Required field of study: A field relevant to the role as demonstrated through coursework, training, or professional experience
Minimum years of experience: Years of experience required will correlate with the internal job level requirements for the position
Location-based hybrid policy: Currently, we expect all staff to be in one of our offices at least 25% of the time. However, some roles may require more time in our offices.
Visa sponsorship: We do sponsor visas! However, we aren't able to successfully sponsor visas for every role and every candidate. But if we make you an offer, we will make every reasonable effort to get you a visa, and we retain an immigration lawyer to help with this.
We encourage you to apply even if you do not believe you meet every single qualification. Not all strong candidates will meet every single qualification as listed. Research shows that people who identify as being from underrepresented groups are more prone to experiencing imposter syndrome and doubting the strength of their candidacy, so we urge you not to exclude yourself prematurely and to submit an application if you're interested in this work. We think AI systems like the ones we're building have enormous social and ethical implications. We think this makes representation even more important, and we strive to include a range of diverse perspectives on our team.
Your safety matters to us. To protect yourself from potential scams, remember that Anthropic recruiters only contact you from @anthropic.com email addresses. In some cases, we may partner with vetted recruiting agencies who will identify themselves as working on behalf of Anthropic. Be cautious of emails from other domains. Legitimate Anthropic recruiters will never ask for money, fees, or banking information before your first day. If you're ever unsure about a communication, don't click any links—visit anthropic.com/careers directly for confirmed position openings.
How we're different
We believe that the highest-impact AI research will be big science. At Anthropic we work as a single cohesive team on just a few large-scale research efforts. And we value impact — advancing our long-term goals of steerable, trustworthy AI — rather than work on smaller and more specific puzzles. We view AI research as an empirical science, which has as much in common with physics and biology as with traditional efforts in computer science. We're an extremely collaborative group, and we host frequent research discussions to ensure that we are pursuing the highest-impact work at any given time. As such, we greatly value communication skills.
The easiest way to understand our research directions is to read our recent research. This research continues many of the directions our team worked on prior to Anthropic, including: GPT-3, Circuit-Based Interpretability, Multimodal Neurons, Scaling Laws, AI & Compute, Concrete Problems in AI Safety, and Learning from Human Preferences.
Come work with us!
Anthropic is a public benefit corporation headquartered in San Francisco. We offer competitive compensation and benefits, optional equity donation matching, generous vacation and parental leave, flexible working hours, and a lovely office space in which to collaborate with colleagues. Guidance on Candidates' AI Usage: Learn about our policy for using AI in our application process.