Who This Role Is For
This role is designed for recent graduates and early-career professionals with up to two years of relevant experience in accounting or finance.
This is not a traditional entry-level position focused solely on administrative tasks. You will be trusted with meaningful responsibilities from day one and will be expected to take ownership of recurring accounting and financial processes that are critical to the company's continued growth.
The right candidate is highly detail-oriented, executes with precision, manages multiple competing priorities, and takes accountability for outcomes. Mistakes will happen, particularly in a fast-growing organization, but you must be able to identify them quickly, understand their root causes, improve the underlying process, and prevent them from recurring.
Planet Networks is at a critical point in its growth trajectory. This role provides a unique opportunity to join the finance organization while its accounting processes, financial reporting capabilities, systems, and internal controls are being built and scaled.
Job Description
As an Accounting & Finance Associate, you will support the company's accounting operations, month-end close, financial reporting, cash management, and performance analysis.
Approximately 70% of the role will focus on accounting activities, including transaction processing, reconciliations, journal entries, fixed assets, and month-end close. The remaining 30% will focus on finance activities, including liquidity reporting, management reporting, KPI analysis, and financial modeling.
You will work directly with the Vice President of Finance & Procurement and collaborate with employees across the organization, including construction, engineering, customer success, sales, and operations.
This role requires someone who is comfortable working in a fast-paced and evolving environment. You will be expected to manage recurring responsibilities independently, improve existing processes, support the implementation of automated workflows and systems, and consistently deliver accurate and thoughtful work under tight timelines.
Key Responsibilities
Accounting Operations
- Support accounts payable activities, including reviewing vendor invoices, validating supporting documentation, coding expenses, and ensuring transactions are processed accurately and on time.
- Support accounts receivable activities, including recording customer payments, reconciling payment activity, and resolving differences between financial systems and supporting records.
- Prepare bank reconciliations and other balance-sheet account reconciliations.
- Investigate reconciling items, identify root causes, and ensure issues are resolved promptly.
- Prepare and post recurring and nonrecurring journal entries with appropriate supporting documentation.
- Participate in the monthly, quarterly, and annual financial close processes.
- Maintain accurate accounting schedules and supporting workpapers.
- Assist with fixed-asset and capital-project accounting, including asset additions, transfers, disposals, depreciation, and construction-in-progress activity.
- Review transactions for appropriate classification and compliance with U.S. GAAP and company accounting policies.
- Support the development and documentation of accounting procedures, internal controls, and standardized workflows.
Financial Reporting and Analysis
- Assist with the preparation of monthly management reporting packages.
- Prepare and analyze key financial and operational performance indicators.
- Support cash-flow and liquidity reporting, including short-term cash forecasting and analysis of expected receipts and disbursements.
- Analyze actual financial performance against budget, forecast, and prior periods.
- Identify unusual trends, variances, risks, and opportunities and communicate findings clearly.
- Assist with the preparation of financial models, schedules, and analyses used to support business decisions.
- Organize financial and operational data into clear, concise, and actionable reporting for management.
Systems, Automation, and Process Improvement
- Take ownership of assigned recurring accounting and financial processes.
- Help design, implement, and maintain automated accounting workflows, reconciliations, reports, and system controls.
- Identify opportunities to reduce manual work, improve data quality, strengthen controls, and accelerate the monthly close.
- Support the continued implementation and optimization of NetSuite and related financial systems.
- Validate the completeness, accuracy, and reasonableness of information produced by automated processes and systems.
- Document process changes and ensure procedures remain current as the company grows.
- Participate in special projects and perform other accounting and finance responsibilities as assigned.
Required Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in accounting, finance, or a closely related field.
- Zero to two years of relevant professional experience.
- Prior internship or professional experience in public accounting, corporate accounting, financial planning and analysis, or audit.
- Strong understanding of fundamental accounting concepts and U.S. GAAP.
- Advanced Microsoft Excel skills, including the ability to organize, analyze, reconcile, and interpret large datasets.
- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
- Excellent attention to detail and a low tolerance for errors.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills.
- Ability to manage multiple deadlines and prioritize effectively.
- Ability to work independently while collaborating across departments.
- Willingness and ability to learn new systems, processes, and business concepts quickly.
- Ability to work onsite in Newton, New Jersey.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience using NetSuite or another enterprise resource planning system.
- Experience using QuickBooks.
- Experience using Power BI or another business-intelligence and data-visualization platform.
- Exposure to SQL or Python.
- Experience building or maintaining financial models.
- Experience with automated workflows, system implementations, or accounting-process improvements.
- Familiarity with fixed assets, capital-project accounting, or businesses with significant infrastructure investment.
What It Takes to Succeed
- Precision: You consistently produce accurate work and verify information before it is finalized.
- Ownership: You take responsibility for processes and outcomes rather than waiting for others to identify or solve problems.
- Judgment: You know when an issue can be resolved independently and when it should be escalated.
- Curiosity: You seek to understand how transactions, systems, and operating decisions affect the company's financial results.
- Process orientation: You do not simply complete a task. You look for ways to make the process more reliable, efficient, automated, and scalable.
- Responsiveness: You communicate clearly, meet deadlines, and raise potential issues early.
- Adaptability: You remain effective when priorities, systems, and processes are evolving.
- Accountability: You learn quickly from mistakes and take action to prevent them from recurring.
- Business partnership: You can explain accounting and financial information to employees who do not have finance backgrounds.
- Commitment: You are excited by the opportunity to help build a finance organization during an important stage of the company's growth.
Career Development
This position is intended to provide broad exposure across accounting, financial reporting, systems, and financial analysis.
The anticipated career path for a high-performing employee is:
Accounting & Finance Associate
Accounting & Finance Senior Associate
Accounting & Finance Manager
Advancement will be based on performance, technical development, ownership of increasingly complex responsibilities, and the ability to improve the company's accounting and financial processes.
Compensation
The anticipated base salary range for this position is $80,000 to $100,000 annually. Actual compensation will be determined based on the candidate's experience, qualifications, technical capabilities, and overall fit for the position.
