Director, Corporate Accounting

Company:Driven Brands Driven Brands is North America’s largest automotive services company with a portfolio of iconic brands including Take 5 Oil Change®, Meineke Car Care Centers®, Maaco®, 1-800-Radiator & A/C®, Auto Glass Now®, and CARSTAR®. Our vision is to fuel the pursuit with the simplest, most convenient, and most reliable car care experience. Headquartered in Charlotte, NC, Driven Brands is more than a workplace. We’re a launchpad — for careers, for dreams, and for people driven to do great things. Every day, we fuel the pursuit — for our customers chasing life’s moments, for our franchisees building lasting legacies, and for each other as we grow, lead, and succeed together. Performance matters. We take pride in it. We own it. We show up for one another and for our communities. Because at Driven Brands, we’re not just fixing cars. We’re building futures, unlocking potential, and fueling what’s possible — together. JOB DESCRIPTION: Reporting to the Vice President, Corporate Controller, the Director, Corporate Accounting leads and oversees accounting activities across corporate accounting, including financial instruments, including debt and derivatives, insurance, advertising funds, benefits, legal and corporate support functions; long-lived assets, including fixed assets and leases; and consolidations and intercompany. The Director is accountable for strengthening the talent, processes, controls, and technology supporting these areas and for creating a stable, disciplined, and high-performing operating environment. This is a hands-on transformation leadership role in a public-company environment. The Director will oversee management’s execution of remediation activities affecting account reconciliations, manual journal entries, leases, intercompany and consolidation processes, construction in progress, and related resource and capability gaps. The role will partner with the SOX team to operationalize remediation plans into sustainable operating practices, establish clear ownership and accountability, improve the quality and retention of audit evidence, and collaborate with a large group of stakeholders including the second line SOX function, Internal Audit, external auditors, Financial Reporting, Tax, Treasury, FP&A, Accounting Operations, Legal, business partners, and Accounting Systems. The successful candidate combines strong leadership presence, operating discipline, technical accounting and internal control expertise, and a proven ability to stabilize teams through significant changes. This leader will set clear standards, develop talent, address performance and capacity gaps, and use automation, workflow, analytics, and standardization to improve close performance, reconciliation quality, journal entry governance, reporting accuracy, and scalability. How you will _ Own It: _ Lead, stabilize, and develop a multi-location team of accounting professionals, establishing clear roles, decision rights, performance expectations, review standards, and escalation protocols. Create a high-accountability, inclusive culture that values technical rigor, sound judgment, timely execution, constructive challenge, collaboration, and continuous improvement. Assess organizational capability and capacity across assigned areas; strengthen succession, cross-training, onboarding, knowledge transfer, and retention of critical process knowledge. Own the quality, accuracy, completeness, and timeliness of accounting activities within the assigned areas of responsibility, including journal entries, account reconciliations, variance analyses, close deliverables, reporting inputs, and audit support. Oversee execution of remediation activities within assigned processes and ensure redesigned controls and procedures directly address identified root causes and are embedded into normal operations. Partner with remediation owners and the second line SOX function to drive timely resolution of control deficiencies, audit findings, unsupported balances, aged reconciling items, late or unsupported journal entries, and other quality or execution issues; establish sustainable corrective actions rather than temporary workarounds. Strengthen preparation and review controls through standardized workpapers, documented review criteria, clear evidence of review, appropriate segregation of duties, and disciplined retention of support. Lead process redesign and automation across close, journal entries, reconciliations, fixed assets, leases, and corporate accounting activities; reduce manual touchpoints, duplicate work, offline tracking, and avoidable topside adjustments. Establish measurable KPIs and operating dashboards covering close timeliness, reconciliation quality, aging, journal entry volume and exceptions, control performance, audit requests, process capacity, and automation benefits. Partner with Accounting Systems and Technology teams to define business requirements, improve system configuration and interfaces, strengthen data quality, and implement scalable workflows and reporting. Establish and maintain accounting policies, standard operating procedures, desktop procedures, process flows, RACIs, control documentation, and training materials for areas of responsibility. Serve as a primary accounting partner for Internal Audit and external auditors, coordinating timely and complete support, responding to questions, resolving issues, and maintaining transparency regarding risks and remediation progress. Partner with Financial Reporting on standalone and other financial statements, disclosures, and reporting inputs; coordinate with Tax, Treasury, FP&A, Accounting Operations, Legal, business leaders on end-to-end process dependencies. Communicate risks, decisions, progress, resource needs, and performance trends clearly to the Corporate Controller, Chief Accounting Officer, and other senior stakeholders. Lead special projects and other responsibilities as assigned. How you’ll _ Make a Difference _ : Visible, steady leader who can create clarity and confidence during periods of significant change, remediation, and elevated workload. Demonstrated success improving team performance while maintaining respect, candor, accountability, and appropriate urgency. Ability to move between strategic design and detailed execution, including reviewing workpapers, challenging conclusions, and removing operational barriers. Strong change leadership skills, including stakeholder alignment, communication, adoption, training, and course correction. Bias for action supported by sound judgment, disciplined prioritization, and a commitment to sustainable solutions. Executive-ready communication and presentation skills, including the ability to explain complex accounting, control, and operational issues concisely. What you’ll _ Bring: _ Strong knowledge of U.S. GAAP, SEC reporting considerations, and SOX/ICFR requirements in a public-company environment. Deep experience with close management, journal entries, account reconciliations, balance sheet substantiation, fixed assets, leases, intercompany and consolidations, and corporate accounting processes. Ability to evaluate process and control design, review precision, information produced by the entity, evidence sufficiency, and operating effectiveness readiness. Proven record of leading remediation, audit-readiness, or accounting transformation initiatives involving multiple functions and competing priorities. Demonstrated experience standardizing and automating accounting processes and translating business needs into system, workflow, reporting, or data requirements. Strong analytical, problem-solving, project management, and root-cause analysis capabilities. Strong systems aptitude, including Microsoft Office and experience with Oracle ERP and EPM tools; experience with reconciliation, lease accounting, workflow, analytics, or automation platforms (Alteryx) is preferred. Ability to establish trusted relationships and influence effectively across Accounting, Finance, Technology, Operations, Legal, Procurement, Internal Audit, external audit, and executive leadership. You’re _ Good-to-Go if you have: _ Bachelor’s degree in Accounting or Finance required. Active CPA license required. 12+ years of progressive accounting experience, including meaningful leadership responsibility in a complex organization. Public-company experience required. Public accounting experience strongly preferred. Experience leading teams through material weakness or significant deficiency remediation, restatement-related improvement, or a comparable control transformation strongly preferred. Experience with multi-entity, multi-location, international, or multi-currency operations preferred. Experience with securitized debt, franchise operations, advertising funds, leases, and high-volume transactional accounting is highly valued. Ability to travel as needed; minimal travel anticipated. Get early access to 50% of your earned wages at any time through our myFlexPay program. #J-18808-Ljbffr