Director, Technical Accounting – Investments
Anthropic · San Francisco, United States +1 · 2h 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 seeking a Director, Technical Accounting – Investments and M&A to join our Finance team at Anthropic. In this role, you will own the company's accounting for strategic investments, partnerships with investment components, and related capital transactions, and support mergers and acquisitions when deal volume requires. You will report to the Senior Director, Technical Accounting – M&A and Investments.
As Anthropic continues to scale rapidly and deploy capital into strategic investments, joint ventures, and novel commercial structures, including compute arrangements that carry warrants and other investment features, you will be a key technical resource on classification, consolidation outcomes, fair value, and financial statement impact across the portfolio. You will partner closely with Corporate Development, Legal, Tax, Treasury, FP&A, and leadership to ensure that investment economics are accurately reflected under US GAAP and that positions are defensible to external auditors, valuation specialists, and future regulators.
This is a builder role: you'll help stand up and continuously sharpen the portfolio accounting process, controls, and valuation governance expected of a world class finance organization, working alongside the Senior Director as the function takes shape. If you want to own a portfolio end to end — and still be in the room when deals are shaped — we want to hear from you.
Responsibilities
- Execute technical accounting for strategic investments, joint ventures, partnership structures, and related financing/equity instruments from entry through exit
- Partner with and influence Corporate Development to steer investment structures toward preferred terms and outcomes, reviewing term sheets and deal documents before signing
- Own entry accounting for each new investment — classification under ASC 321, 323, or 810, VIE/primary-beneficiary analysis, basis differences, and the initial measurement memo
- Run the quarterly portfolio review — reconsideration events, impairment indicators, observable price changes, and equity method pick-ups — and account for follow-on investments, conversions, down rounds, and exits
- Own the investment rollforward, its reconciliation to the general ledger, and the portfolio reporting that supports close, FP&A, and leadership, including review of portfolio company financial statements
- Manage third-party valuation specialists; review fair values of investments, warrants, and derivative features, including Level 3 inputs and impairment analyses
- Assess warrants, equity rights, and other investment components embedded in partnerships and compute arrangements, partnering with Accounting Policy on how consideration is allocated
- Support M&A transactions alongside the M&A lead when deal volume requires — accounting due diligence, purchase accounting (consideration measurement, PPA review, opening balance sheet), and measurement-period adjustments
- Author and defend technical accounting policies & memoranda; partner closely with external auditors on investment, consolidation, and M&A matters
- Help build the investments operating model — intake form and approval gates, memo templates, quarterly checklists, and SOX-ready controls — designed to scale as the portfolio grows including utilizing Claude, ERP systems and third party applications (as applicable)
- Prepare and review investment and transaction disclosures for quarterly and annual filings, including fair value, equity method, and VIE disclosures
- Present investment accounting conclusions and financial statement impacts to leadership and cross-functional stakeholders in clear, decision-ready terms
- Monitor standard-setting and SEC developments affecting investments, consolidation, and business combinations; support adoption and cross-functional education
Minimum qualifications
- Bring significant Big 4 experience — ideally in a National Office, Transaction/Deal Advisory, or Capital Markets/Accounting Advisory group — paired with in-house experience at a technology company and public accounting or advisory experience
- Proven experience leading complex valuations (e.g., business combinations, equity and debt investments, warrants and other Level 3 instruments), including directing and challenging the work of third-party valuation specialists
- Have owned the accounting for a portfolio of minority/strategic investments, including quarterly impairment and fair value monitoring and at least one investment of meaningful scale or complexity
- Possess deep command of US GAAP for investments in equity securities, equity method, consolidation and VIEs, fair value measurement, and business combinations, with a track record of positions that withstand auditor and regulator scrutiny
- Are fluent in valuation concepts and can direct and challenge third-party specialists on private company fair value, warrant/option pricing, impairment, and PPA models
- Have operated within an investments-accounting or deal-accounting function, contributing to playbook and controls design
- Communicate effectively with Corporate Development, Legal, and Tax on structuring trade-offs, translating technical conclusions for cross-functional and senior stakeholders
- Demonstrate exceptional written and verbal communication, translating complex investment and deal accounting into clear business implications
- Excel at hands-on technical execution in a fast-paced, ambiguous environment, shifting between portfolio work and live deals as priorities change
- Are proficient with accounting systems (Workday preferred), consolidation tools, and advanced Excel/modeling
- Curious about and quick to adopt new AI tools, including Claude and Claude for Finance
Preferred qualifications
- Have 10+ years of progressive accounting experience, including 4+ years owning strategic investment, equity method, or consolidation accounting end-to-end
- Have deep, practitioner-level expertise in one or more of the following:
- Investments in equity securities, equity method, and consolidation (ASC 321, 323, 810), including VIE/primary-beneficiary analysis, basis differences, and the measurement alternative
- Fair value measurement, derivatives, and embedded features (ASC 820, 815, 825), including warrants and Level 3 inputs for private company investments
- Business combinations and asset acquisitions (ASC 805), including contingent consideration and step acquisitions
- Collaborative arrangements and consideration exchanged in commercial deals (ASC 808, 606)
- Hold an active CPA license
- Have built an investment accounting process from the ground up, including intake, quarterly monitoring, and SOX-compliant controls over non-routine/complex transactions
- Have prepared or reviewed investment disclosures in SEC filings, including fair value hierarchy, equity method, and VIE disclosures
- Have experience with novel AI/technology structures — investments bundled with compute or commercial agreements, warrants received from customers or vendors, revenue-share partnerships, and strategic investor rights — and are passionate about leveraging AI to automate portfolio monitoring, memo drafting, and close
Deadline to apply: None. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.
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.