Overview:
Salary Range: $160,000 - $250,000
Costco Wholesale offers a comprehensive package of benefits including paid time off, health benefits - medical/dental/vision/hearing aid/pharmacy/behavioral health/employee assistance, health care reimbursement account, dependent care assistance plan, short-term disability and long-term disability insurance, AD&D insurance, life insurance, 401(k), stock purchase plan to eligible employees.
Location: Issaquah, WA
California applicants: Please click here to review the Costco Applicant Privacy Notice.
Description of Position
Costco’s Tax Team is responsible for global income tax reporting, U.S. federal, state, and local income tax and indirect tax compliance, transfer pricing, strategic initiative implementations, business advisory, property taxes, unclaimed property, and global tax policy to ensure Costco complies with the law and generates value for our customers, suppliers, and our members.
The Tax Technology & Transformation director will champion a “Tax-First, Tech-Second” operating philosophy. Leveraging a deep, foundational understanding of complex tax operations, compliance, and accounting. They will identify key opportunities where automation, data engineering, and AI can scale department capacity, mitigate enterprise risk, reduce turnaround times, and shift our operational model toward a high-value analytical environment.
Job Duties/Essential Functions
- Strategic Vision & Technology Roadmap: Partners closely with the VP of Global Tax and specialized tax sub-departments (Direct Tax, Indirect Tax, Transfer Pricing, and Provision) to establish, refine, and champion a multi-year tax technology roadmap that aligns with the enterprise-wide digital transformation strategy.
- Problem Definition & Business Case Development: Consolidates manual or fragmented processes across the global tax footprint. Translates complex, highly technical tax pain points into clear, structured “problem statements” business cases, functional requirements, and quantifiable ROI projections (e.g., hours returned to the business, risk mitigation).
- Cross-Functional Partnership: Serves as the principal translator and bridging advocate between the Tax Department, Corporate IT, Accounting, Product Teams, and external third-party software vendors. Ensures technical tax requirements are correctly understood, scoped, and executed by technical delivery teams.
- Process Automation & Emerging Tech Evaluation: Researches, pilots, and deploys high-impact technology solutions. Drives the integration of tax engines (e.g., Vertex, ONESOURCE), ERP configurations (SAP, Oracle), advanced ETL tools (Alteryx, Power Query), and emerging Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning applications to eliminate highly repetitive manual work.
- Change Management & Capability Building: Leads the cultural shift within the tax organization. Designs training programs, documents best practices, and coaches team members at all experience levels, to elevate their digital literacy and confidently adopt newly implemented automation and analytics platforms.
- This is a full-time management/leadership position (45+ hours per week).
Ability to operate vehicles, equipment or machinery.
- Computer, printer, phone, fax
Experience, Skills, Education & Licenses/Certifications
Required:
- Minimum of 15 plus years of progressive, hands-on experience in a corporate tax department of a large multinational corporation, and/or a major public accounting firm (Big 4).
- Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, Finance, Management Information Systems, or a related field.
- Deep knowledge across corporate income tax, transfer pricing, indirect tax, or tax provision.
- Experience working with Tax Teams to develop key initiatives consistent with automation goals.
- Experience developing and articulating a vision and roadmap.
- Demonstrated success driving tax technology implementations (e.g., tax engine integration, provisioning systems, Alteryx workflows, or Power BI dashboards) from the business-owner side rather than purely as a developer.
- Exceptional stakeholder management capabilities.
- Proven ability to influence senior leaders, negotiate resource allocation with IT executives, and guide skeptical or change-resistant team members through workflow transitions.
- Comfort with the structural logic of enterprise ERPs (such as SAP, Oracle, or Workday), database architectures, tax provisioning suites (ONESOURCE, Corptax), and modern productivity automation tools.
- HIPAA Training and Supervisors Orientation (within 30 days of hire); Leadership Development 101 (within one year); Costco Pay Policies (within 90 days of promotion)
Recommended:
- Certified Public Accountant (CPA), Master of Science in Taxation (MST), or Juris Doctor (JD) is highly preferred.