Senior Cost Accountant

Job Description

Job Description

The Role

HydroPoint — a smart irrigation company whose three product lines (WeatherTRAK, Baseline, and WaterCompass) each combine connected hardware with subscription revenue, with managed services on WeatherTRAK and WaterCompass — is seeking a senior cost accountant to own price, cost, and margin integrity across its hardware, subscription, and service categories. We are in a period of heightened financial scrutiny and are strengthening the rigor of our cost and margin reporting.

This is a hands-on, high-ownership role for someone who will lean in — interrogate the numbers, surface variances and anomalies, and drive the control, policy, and process changes that keep actual results aligned with expectations. It reports directly to the CFO, carries real visibility, and offers strong potential to convert to a permanent position.

Key Responsibilities

• Margin analysis across categories — analyze price, cost, and margin performance across hardware, subscription, and service categories; build and maintain margin decomposition by product line and revenue type.
• Variance & anomaly detection — identify variances and anomalies against budget, forecast, standard cost, and prior periods; determine root cause and quantify the P&L impact.
• Controls, policy & process — recommend and help implement improvements to controls, policies, and processes to mitigate, correct, and prevent unfavorable outcomes versus expectations.
• Hardware cost accounting — establish and maintain standard costs, BOMs, and inventory valuation; investigate absorption, purchase price variance, and capitalized variances, and reconcile to the GL.
• Shared-cost allocation — design, document, and defend appropriate allocation methods for shared and indirect costs (support, platform, facilities, R&D) across product lines and revenue categories.
• Subscription & services economics — monitor SaaS unit economics — ASPs, renewal and discount impact, deferred revenue, and services cost-to-serve — and flag margin erosion early.
• Cross-functional partnership — work with FP&A, revenue accounting, operations, and sales to pressure-test assumptions and improve forecast accuracy.
• Decision-ready reporting — produce clear analysis and recommendations for the CFO and leadership, at a standard that withstands audit and third-party diligence.

Required Qualifications

• Experience — 8+ years of progressive cost / manufacturing accounting, including a senior or lead role.
• Credentials — Bachelor's in Accounting or Finance; CPA, CMA, or equivalent strongly preferred.
• Costing depth — deep standard and actual costing in a manufacturing + inventory environment; command of BOMs, routings, PPV, absorption, and inventory valuation (ASC 330).
• Multi-category fluency — experience spanning hardware, subscription / SaaS, and services revenue and cost — not manufacturing alone.
• Cost allocation — proven ability to develop and justify allocation methodologies for shared and indirect costs across products and revenue types.
• US GAAP — revenue recognition (ASC 606), inventory (ASC 330), and software cost capitalization (ASC 350-40, 985-20).
• Systems — NetSuite (ideally ARM / Revenue Cloud) and a manufacturing / inventory ERP (e.g., MISys or comparable); advanced Excel modeling.
• Analytical track record — demonstrated variance, margin, and anomaly analysis, with a history of translating findings into control, policy, and process change.

Preferred / Plus

• Experience in a diligence, audit, quality-of-earnings, or transaction-readiness environment.
• SaaS / IoT unit economics — ARR, churn, CAC / LTV, cost-to-serve.
• ERP migration, or chart-of-accounts / SKU taxonomy redesign experience.

Who Succeeds Here

• Leans in — takes ownership, digs until the number is explained, and stays effective with ambiguous or incomplete data.
• Controls mindset — an instinct for where process and policy gaps create risk, and the judgment to close them without over-engineering.
• Credible communicator — can defend an analysis to a CFO, an auditor, or a skeptical stakeholder.
• Pace — thrives in a fast, high-scrutiny environment and delivers to deadline.