Senior Accountant

Senior Accountant

Portland, OR

About Panthalassa

We are a renewable energy and ocean technology company committed to rapidly developing and deploying technologies that will ensure a sustainable future for Earth by unlocking the vast energy potential of its oceans. Our focus is on capturing civilizational levels of ultra-low-cost renewable energy for applications including computing and affordable renewable fuels delivered to shore.

The company is a public benefit corporation headquartered in Portland, Oregon, and backed by leading venture capitalists, philanthropic investors, university endowments, and private investment offices. We operate as an idea meritocracy in which the best ideas change the company's direction on a regular basis.

About the Role

Panthalassa continues to expand and strengthen our internal finance and accounting capabilities as the company scales from R&D toward manufacturing and deployment. We are looking for a hands-on accounting operator to own the accuracy, reliability, and responsiveness of our day-to-day accounting workflows.

As a Senior Accountant you will be responsible for making sure vendors are onboarded correctly, invoices are entered and routed cleanly, payments move through the right process, and transactions are coded accurately in NetSuite. You will work across finance, engineering, manufacturing, procurement, vendors, and external accounting partners to understand the business context behind spend and translate that context into consistent accounting treatment. We are looking for someone who is technology-forward and excited to use AI and modern productivity tools to make accounting processes faster, cleaner, more auditable, and more scalable without sacrificing accuracy or judgment.

This is a high-ownership operating role that goes beyond AP processing, well suited for someone who likes clean data, clear processes, accurate books, and practical problem solving.

Key Responsibilities

• Own and support core accounting operations, with a primary focus on accounts payable and procure-to-pay workflows.
• Manage vendor onboarding, vendor records, invoice intake, bill entry, approval routing, payment preparation, and payment follow-up.
• Help maintain clean, accurate financial data in NetSuite, including transaction coding, vendor records, reporting inputs, and process documentation.
• Ensure invoices, bills, expenses, and payments are coded accurately by department, project, vendor, spend category, and other relevant dimensions.
• Assist with spend tagging and reporting to improve visibility for budgeting, forecasting, and financial planning.
• Work with internal teams to understand the context behind purchases and translate that context into repeatable accounting and coding rules.
• Support timely and accurate month-end close, including reconciliations, journal entries, accruals, prepaid expenses, account analysis, and supporting schedules.
• Identify repetitive, manual, or error-prone accounting workflows and propose practical ways to improve them using automation, AI tools, better spreadsheet design, workflow software, or ERP configuration.
• Help build and document scalable accounting processes as Panthalassa brings more work in-house.
• Support payment operations, including vendor questions, missing payments, invoice discrepancies, payment timing, and related issue resolution.
• Identify errors, gaps, and inconsistencies in existing processes, then help implement practical fixes.
• Support audit, tax, compliance, and other finance requests as needed.
• Partner with finance and leadership, accounting leadership, and external accounting partners on technical accounting questions, controls, close tasks, and reporting needs.
• Maintain a high bar for accuracy, confidentiality, responsiveness, and ownership.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of accounting, accounting operations, accounts payable, general ledger, or related finance operations experience.
• Strong accounting fundamentals and familiarity with U.S. GAAP.
• Experience with accounts payable, vendor onboarding, payment processing, invoice coding, and month-end close support.
• Ability to book journal entries and understand when to escalate more complex accounting questions.
• Technology-forward, with strong judgment for using AI, automation, and modern tools to improve accounting workflows while preserving accuracy and controls.
• Strong communication skills with both internal stakeholders and external vendors.
• Ability to understand business context and turn it into clear, repeatable accounting treatment.
• Comfort working in spreadsheets and with financial data; you do not need to be a hardcore quant, but you should have strong number sense.
• Experience with NetSuite or another ERP system.
• Strong Excel skills.
• A hands-on, ownership-oriented mindset and willingness to do the work directly.
• Comfort operating in a fast-moving, lean environment where systems and processes are still being built.

Desired Qualifications

• NetSuite experience strongly preferred.
• CPA or CPA-track background is a plus, but not required.
• Bachelor's degree in Accounting, Finance, Business, or a related field preferred.
• Experience in a startup, manufacturing, hardware, energy, infrastructure, or project-based environment.
• Experience improving or documenting accounting processes.
• Experience supporting audit, tax, compliance, or technical accounting requests.
• Experience with procure-to-pay workflows, payment systems, expense management tools, or ERP implementations.

The above qualifications are desired, not required. We encourage you to apply if you are a strong candidate with only some of the desired skills and experience listed.

Compensation and Benefits

If hired for this full-time role, you will receive:

• Cash compensation of $125,000 - $180,000
• Equity in the company. We're all owners and if we're successful, this equity should be far and away the most valuable component of your compensation.
• A benefits package that helps you take care of yourself and your family, including:
• Flexible paid time off
• Health insurance (the company pays 100% of gold level PPO plan for full time employees, their partners, and dependents)
• Dental insurance (the company pays 100% for full time employees, their partners and dependents)
• Vision insurance (the company pays 100% for full time employees, their partners, and dependents)
• Disability insurance (the company pays 100% for a policy to provide long term financial support if you become disabled)
• Ability to contribute to tax-advantaged accounts, including 401(k), health FSA, and dependent care FSA
• Relocation assistance to facilitate your move to Portland (if needed).

Location

This is an on-site position. Our offices, lab, and shop are located in Portland, Oregon.