Project Accountant (Greater Tampa Bay Area)

ASCEND TECHNOLOGIES GROUP LLC and Family of Companies

Project Accountant

Tampa, Florida — full-time in office — reporting to the Controller

The group

The finance department at Ascend Technologies Group LLC (ATG) supports the following 4 entities operating in Tampa, Florida:

1. ATG - a managed services, technology resale business operating in Tampa, Florida.
2. ATG Poland - a wholly owned Polish subsidiary of ATG.
3. A minority interest in a healthcare artificial intelligence and technology company that uses data and real-world data (RWD) to improve cancer care and accelerate medical research.
4. A future spin out of a TEM business.

The role

All companies deliver work through defined projects or agreements, and the accounting consequences follow the project rather than the invoice. In this role, you are not a clock-puncher or a data-entry clerk. You are a strategic financial partner. You will work directly with project and account managers to track budgets, manage cash flow and ensure flawless job costing. You will own the architecture.

Responsibilities and objectives

1. Plan Budgets and maintain absolute accuracy in tracking project expenses, labor, materials and indirect costs against the original estimates or budget.
2. Identify and flag budget overruns or cash flow constraints before they impact project timelines.
3. Work closely with the delivery team to understand and assist with capacity constraints and ensure timely deliverables.
4. Leverage accounting technology to automate manual tasks, maximizing your efficiency.
5. Financial reporting at the job and project level to support the Controller’s consolidated financial statements.
6. Cost analysis and variance tracking.
7. Work with the Bookkeeper to ensure that proper coding is applied to jobs and deliverables.
8. Vendor management for project-related subcontractors and capitalized project costs.
9. Compliance with ASC 606.

Weekly

• Review time posted through the timekeeping system against jobs and activity types and query the accuracy before it is approved rather than after it has posted.
• Confirm that labor on related-party jobs is captured for recharge.

Monthly

• Roll forward the contract fulfillment asset by job: opening balance, additions, releases to cost of revenue, closing balance.
• Release fulfillment cost when the related build revenue is recognized, and evidence the trigger.
• Prepare revenue by deliverable across the three performance obligations.
• Prepare the labor recharge between the companies, with the margin applied and documented.
• Prepare job-level margin reporting the delivery leads can act on.
• Reconcile the project subledger to the general ledger.

Quarterly and at year end

• Support the capitalized software roll forward, distinguishing amounts in service from amounts still in progress.
• Supply the inputs to the intra-entity profit elimination: the portion of the investee’s capitalized cost sourced through Ascend Technologies Group, and the margin embedded in it.
• Support the remaining performance obligation and contract balance disclosures.

Qualifications

Required

• Five or more years of accounting experience, including project accounting, job costing.
• Strong knowledge of ASC 606, sufficient to apply a multiple performance obligation arrangement and to see when a fact pattern does not fit the policy.
• Experience with capitalized labor, whether into software, work in progress or contract costs, including the placed-in-service and release mechanics.
• Advanced Excel. The role produces schedules that must be capable of review by someone who did not build them.
• The judgment to decline a coding that is not supported, and the willingness to say so.

Preferred

• Certified Public Accountant or actively pursuing it.
• NetSuite project accounting, or experience through an ERP conversion.
• Experience with a timekeeping system feeding a general ledger.
• Related-party recharge or intercompany labor allocation experience.

The person

The position is also the technical cover for the Controller. The role suits someone who wants to understand why the conclusions are what they are, not only what to do with them, and who could close the books in the Controller’s absence. This is not a traditional 9-5 job, nor is it designed for someone seeking a rigid, predictable routine. This is an outcome-driven salaried position built for an autonomous professional who takes full accountability.