Head of Revenue Accounting - Deal Desk & Technical Accounting
Anthropic · San Francisco, United States +3 · 2mo 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 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
Anthropic is an AI safety and research company working to build reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. As we scale, our revenue is growing extremely quickly, our commercial agreements are getting more complex, and the related systems and controls need to keep pace. We are looking for a Head of Revenue Accounting, Deal Desk & Technical Accounting to own the accounting judgments behind that growth — the technical positions we take, the deals we approve, the disclosures we produce, the revenue systems that process it all, and the controls that make it dependable.
You will act as the company's authority on complex revenue accounting questions. That includes developing our revenue recognition policies, leading enhancements to our revenue system, as well as designing, implementing, and operating our internal controls. You will set the bar for how much of this work Claude can do, so your team spends its time on key judgments rather than mechanics.
Much of this role's impact comes through influence rather than authority. You'll shape deals before they're signed by getting to Sales and Legal early with a point of view on structures, and you'll shape our systems roadmap by advocating to engineering and systems partners for automation. This is a role for someone who can enable deal and business velocity while maintaining appropriate controllership.
Key responsibilities
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Own technical accounting. Serve as the company's authority on complex revenue recognition matters — researching, concluding, and documenting positions in clear, well-reasoned memos, and explaining those conclusions to internal stakeholders and external auditors.
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Own the deal desk from accounting. Own our contract approval policy and its execution: define the accounting guardrails for non-standard terms, serve as the accounting approver in deal review, and partner with Sales and Legal to structure agreements that work commercially while maintaining appropriate controllership.
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Influence deal structures before they're signed. Build the credibility and relationships to shape how deals and programs are constructed rather than reacting to them — getting to Sales, Legal, and Finance early with a clear point of view, and making the accounting case in commercial terms that decision-makers can act on.
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Lead financial reporting and disclosure. Lead preparation of revenue related footnotes and technical disclosure positions, and build toward public-company reporting readiness.
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Lead the revenue system enhancements. Own the ongoing roadmap of our revenue system — requirements, design, testing, cutover, and post-launch optimization — partnering with Finance Systems.
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Influence the systems and automation roadmap. Advocate with engineering and system partners for the automation your team needs, translating accounting requirements into system priorities and building the working relationships that get them sequenced and shipped.
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Design and implement internal controls. Build controls over financial reporting for revenue and technical accounting processes, including documentation, testing, remediation, and audit support.
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Build scalable processes. Design well-documented processes that hold up as transaction volume and deal complexity multiply, replacing manual effort with automation.
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Apply Claude to the team's work. Utilize Claude to streamline processes, including accelerating research, drafting memos, reviewing contracts, and preparing reconciliations and disclosures.
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Enable growth while maintaining controllership. Partner across Sales, Finance, Legal, and systems teams to support new products, pricing models, and go-to-market motions, and advise leadership on accounting implications before decisions are made.
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Lead and grow the team. Set priorities, mentor the team, and raise the technical bar as the team scales.
Minimum qualifications
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A track record of leading and developing a high-performing accounting team.
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Deep expertise in revenue recognition under ASC 606 for software, subscription, or consumption-based business models.
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Personal ownership of complex technical accounting research — writing position memos, defending those conclusions with external auditors, and preparing the resulting disclosures under US GAAP.
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Experience designing, implementing, and operating internal controls over financial reporting, including documentation and testing.
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Demonstrated ability to influence non-accounting stakeholders — shaping commercial deal and program structures with Sales and Legal, and shaping automation priorities with systems teams.
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Experience owning a revenue or billing platform (Zuora or comparable), either as implementation lead or as the accounting owner of its roadmap.
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CPA or an equivalent professional accounting qualification.
Preferred qualifications
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Public company experience, or experience preparing a high-growth company for public reporting and SOX 404 compliance.
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Background at a national or Big Four firm.
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Experience with consumption-based, usage-based, or hybrid revenue models, particularly in AI, cloud, or infrastructure.
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Experience using large language models or AI tooling to automate accounting, contract review, or controls work.
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Experience standing up or overhauling a deal desk approval process.
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Hands-on Zuora implementation or operation experience.
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.