Accounting Manager, GL& Close

Company Overview Deepgram is the leading platform underpinning the emerging trillion-dollar Voice AI economy, providing real-time APIs for speech-to-text (STT), text-to-speech (TTS), and building production-grade voice agents at scale. More than 200,000 developers and 1,300+ organizations build voice offerings that are ‘Powered by Deepgram’, including Twilio, Cloudflare, Sierra, Decagon, Vapi, Daily, Cresta, Granola, and Jack in the Box. Deepgram’s voice-native foundation models are accessed through cloud APIs or as self-hosted and on-premises software, with unmatched accuracy, low latency, and cost efficiency. Backed by a recent Series C led by leading global investors and strategic partners, Deepgram has processed over 50,000 years of audio and transcribed more than 1 trillion words. There is no organization in the world that understands voice better than Deepgram. Company Operating Rhythm At Deepgram, we expect an AI-first mindset—AI use and comfort aren’t optional, they’re core to how we operate, innovate, and measure performance. Every team member who works at Deepgram is expected to actively use and experiment with advanced AI tools, and even build your own into your everyday work. We measure how effectively AI is applied to deliver results, and consistent, creative use of the latest AI capabilities is key to success here. Candidates should be comfortable adopting new models and modes quickly, integrating AI into their workflows, and continuously pushing the boundaries of what these technologies can do. Additionally, we move at the pace of AI. Change is rapid, and you can expect your day-to-day work to evolve just as quickly. This may not be the right role if you’re not excited to experiment, adapt, think on your feet, and learn constantly, or if you’re seeking something highly prescriptive with a traditional 9-to-5. We're hiring an Accounting Manager, GL & Close to run the more complex parts of our monthly close and to push large sections of it forward as Deepgram scales through its first external audit and toward public markets. You'll report directly to the Chief Accounting Officer on a small, deliberately lean finance team, and transition to the Senior Director, Accounting once that role is filled — which means unusual proximity to the top of the function from day one, and a manager above you who has taken a company through this exact arc before. Your manager owns the close. You own the parts of it that carry the most judgment, and you move the rest of it along without waiting to be asked. Practically, that means you'll prepare in the areas where the answer depends on a call rather than a formula, and review in the areas where the process is established — with the line between the two moving as the team grows and as the business gets more complicated. This is a hands-on role. You'll be in the workpapers, not just over them. If you're looking for a seat where you assign schedules and approve them, this isn't it. If you want to own the technically hardest work in the close while developing the people who own the rest, it is. It's also a build, not a maintain. The close you inherit is a startup close. The close you leave behind has to survive an external audit, an ERP migration off Xero, and SOX — and it has to run on a team that stays small, which means it runs on AI. We're not looking for someone who closes faster with AI on the side. We're looking for someone who rebuilds the work around it. What You'll Do Push the close forward. Own the critical-path workstreams and drive them to done. Chase open items, unblock the team, escalate early, and keep the calendar honest. When the close lands on time, it's because you moved it. Prepare the complex and judgmental areas. Stock-based compensation, leases, capitalized software, payroll and compensation accruals, intercompany and foreign currency are examples of where we'd expect your own hands on the schedule — but the list will shift with what the business throws at us. The constant is that the hard ones come to you, and you build them well enough to defend to an auditor. Review the established areas. Fixed assets, prepaids, cash, recurring accruals and journal entries, AP, expense reports — prepared by the Senior Accountant and our offshore team, reviewed by you. Your review is where the quality bar gets set, and it should teach as well as catch. Expect to roll up your sleeves and prepare in these areas too when volume, timing, or complexity calls for it. Own the tie-out and the story. Consolidation and the close package, plus flux — month-over-month and budget-to-actual — in narrative the CAO and CFO can read once and act on. Manage and develop the team. Coach the Senior Accountant, set the standard, and delegate in a way that grows them rather than just moving work off your plate. Hire the next accountant as we scale. Be a day-to-day owner in our first external audit. Build the PBC packages for your areas, run the walkthroughs, and answer the auditors directly. Design close controls that survive SOX. Documented, evidenced, repeatable — built in now, not retrofitted the year before we file. Own your workstream in the ERP migration off Xero. Close-process design, subledger and schedule migration, cutover reconciliations, parallel-run validation. Rebuild the work around AI. Reconciliation matching, anomaly detection, schedule and rollforward generation, first-draft entries and flux narratives, PBC assembly, workflow automation. Build tooling the team runs without you in the room. What You'll Need 6+ years of progressive accounting experience , including hands-on ownership of technical close areas — things like stock compensation, leases, capitalized software, or payroll accounting — and real experience reviewing another accountant's work. Active CPA preferred. Big 4 or national firm foundation a plus. Deep operational US GAAP fluency where it's hardest. Capitalization judgment, equity compensation, leases, payroll and compensation, intercompany, foreign currency, and cutoff. You know where the judgment lives, not just where the guidance is — and you can build a schedule from a blank page. Hands-on ERP and systems experience. Comfort with equity administration platforms (Carta or similar), payroll systems, close tooling (Numeric, FloQast, BlackLine or similar), and spend platforms (Ramp or similar). A demonstrated AI-native working style. This is a requirement, not a preference. You use LLMs daily on accounting work. You have reasoned, specific views on where AI is trustworthy in a close — reconciliation matching, anomaly detection, schedule generation, first-draft narratives, PBC assembly — and where it isn't: materiality calls, capitalization judgment, cutoff, novel technical positions. And at least one thing you've built is in daily use by people other than you. We run a dedicated interview on this and we don't soften it. Comfort vibe-coding small scripts (Python, SQL, Apps Script) for schedules, reconciliations, data pulls, and automation. A real expectation at this level — Deepgram's AI-native operating model applies to every finance hire, and managers here extend their own work with tooling they build. Reviewer instincts. Review that raises the bar rather than just catching errors, and feedback the other person can actually use. A builder's instinct. Comfort with ambiguity, no waiting for a playbook, strong bias to ship. Strong written communication. You can explain a variance or a technical entry to a non-finance leader without losing them, and write support the auditors don't come back on. High integrity, high ownership, low ego. It Would Be Great If You Had Experience preparing for or running a company's first external audit. Experience implementing or migrating an ERP — particularly off a small-business system onto a scale platform. SaaS, usage-based, or AI infrastructure accounting experience. Exposure to multi-entity and international intercompany accounting. SOX control design and doc