Chief Accounting Officer

• Financial Reporting Integrity: Ensure the completeness, accuracy, and integrity of the Company’s consolidated financial statements in accordance with U.S. GAAP.
  
• Close and Consolidation: Lead monthly, quarterly, and annual close and consolidation processes, ensuring rigor, consistency, accountability, and timely execution across corporate and field locations.
  
• SEC Reporting: Establish and oversee company reporting processes, including processes that are able to prepare Forms 10-K, 10-Q, and 8-K, related financial disclosures.
  
• Audit and Governance: Serve as the principal accounting liaison to external auditors, lead quarterly reviews and annual audits, and advise the CFO on significant accounting policies, judgments, and control matters.
  
• Cross-Functional Alignment: Partner with FP&A and executive management to ensure that operational decisions and management reporting are supported by standardized, reliable financial data.
  
• Technical Subject Matter Authority: Act as the Company’s primary authority on complex U.S. GAAP interpretation, technical accounting research, and formal accounting position memoranda.
  
• Transaction Execution: Provide accounting leadership for complex business transactions, including mergers and acquisitions (M&A), divestitures, credit facility/financing arrangements, equity compensation, and corporate restructurings.
  
• Governance and Regulatory Standards: Monitor emerging SEC and FASB developments, lead implementation of new accounting standards, and establish disclosure controls that would support CEO and CFO certification requirements under Sections 302 and 906.
  
• Plant Costing Governance: Establish and maintain consistent inventory accounting and costing methodologies across all decentralized manufacturing, processing, and distribution facilities.
  
• Valuation and Controls: Oversee the accounting for raw materials, work-in-process (WIP), and finished goods, including standard costing models, overhead allocations, inventory reserves, obsolescence, and lower-of-cost-or-net-realizable-value (LCNRV) assessments, to ensure accurate and compliant inventory valuation.
  
• Field Analytics and Yields: Direct control processes over physical inventory counts, cycle-counting programs, manufacturing variances, production yields, waste, and spoilage across all operating plants.
  
• Operational Partnership: Bridge corporate accounting standards with plant-level operations to elevate underlying operational data quality without compromising business agility.
  
• SOX Compliance Architecture: Design, implement, and maintain an internal control framework compliant with Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.
  
• Deficiency Remediation: Partner with internal audit, external audit, and operational leaders to proactively identify, evaluate, and remediate control deficiencies.
  
• Process Automation: Lead initiatives to automate key financial controls, reducing spreadsheet reliance and manual entries across corporate and facility-level accounting workflows.
  
• Talent Development: Structure, mentor, and retain a high-performing accounting team across financial reporting, technical accounting, plant/cost accounting, and compliance functions.
  
• Culture & Accountability: Foster a high-performance culture centered on integrity, technical precision, continuous improvement, and business partnership.
  
• ERP & Infrastructure Modernization: Assess and optimize the Company’s ERP, consolidation, and reporting systems to accelerate close timelines and enhance enterprise data governance.
  

• U.S. GAAP & SEC Mastery: Deep technical command of U.S. GAAP, SEC filing requirements (Forms 10-K, 10-Q, 8-K), and public financial statement disclosures.
  
• SOX & COSO Frameworks: Advanced knowledge of internal controls over financial reporting (ICFR), COSO frameworks, and SOX 404 readiness and maintenance.
  
• Cost Accounting Expertise: Proficiency in process costing, standard costing models, inventory valuation, variance analysis, and multi-facility operational cost controls.
  
• Financial Systems Literacy: Hands-on leadership experience with enterprise ERP systems such as SAP, Oracle, Microsoft BC, or NetSuite; close-management software such as BlackLine or FloQast; and business intelligence and consolidation platforms like workday.
  
• Transaction Accounting: Direct knowledge of purchase accounting, M&A integration, complex debt/equity instruments, and capital structure accounting.
  

Interpersonal

• Executive Communication: Exceptional written, verbal, and presentation skills; ability to convey complex technical accounting issues clearly to executive peers, Board members, auditors, and non-financial business leaders.
  
• Strategic and Hands-On Leadership: Ability to move seamlessly between enterprise-level strategic planning and detailed operational analysis when addressing plant-level or technical accounting matters.
  
• Change Management & Influence: Proven track record of introducing structure, standardization, and process discipline into growing, dynamic business environments.
  
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Strong relationship-building skills to partner effectively across operations, supply chain, IT, legal, tax, and HR.
  
• Ethical Integrity & Skepticism: Uncompromising personal integrity, professional skepticism, and sound business judgment appropriate for a senior corporate officer.
  

Education and Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, Finance, or a related discipline required; Master of Accounting or MBA preferred.
  
• 15+ years of progressively responsible accounting and finance leadership, with significant executive team management in complex corporate environments.
  
• Preferred experience within a U.S. public company accounting environment or key leadership experience guiding a private enterprise through an IPO readiness roadmap.
  
• Strong operational familiarity with food processing, food manufacturing, consumer packaged goods (CPG), agriculture, or similar multi-site, inventory-intensive processing industries.
  
• Big Four or national public accounting audit background strongly preferred.
  
• Active Certified Public Accountant (CPA) license strongly preferred.
  
• Demonstrated success managing financial close, cost accounting, and internal control functions across decentralized operating facilities.