Director, Technical Accounting – M&A and Investments

About Anthropic

Anthropic’s mission is to create reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. We want AI to be safe and beneficial for our users and for society as a whole. Our team is a quickly growing group of committed researchers, engineers, policy experts, and business leaders working together to build beneficial AI systems.

About the role:

We are seeking a Director of Technical Accounting – M&A and Investments to join our Finance team at Anthropic. In this role, you will serve as the company’s principal accounting authority for mergers, acquisitions, strategic investments, and other complex capital transactions. You will own the technical accounting lifecycle for every deal — from term-sheet diligence through purchase accounting, opening balance sheet, and post-close measurement-period adjustments — and you will build the function, playbooks, and team required to execute these transactions with public-company rigor.

As Anthropic continues to scale rapidly and deploy capital into acquisitions, minority investments, joint ventures, and novel commercial structures, you will be the decisive voice on structuring alternatives, consolidation outcomes, and financial statement impact. You will partner directly with Corporate Development, Legal, Tax, Treasury, FP&A, and executive leadership to ensure that deal economics are accurately reflected under US GAAP and that positions are defensible to external auditors, valuation specialists, and future regulators.

This is a builder-leader role: you will establish the M&A and investments accounting function largely from the ground up, recruit and develop a high-performing team, and stand up the controls, valuation governance, and close-ready documentation expected of a large accelerated filer. If you thrive on being in the room when deals are shaped — and then making the accounting land cleanly — we want to hear from you.

Responsibilities:

• Serve as the company’s principal technical accounting authority for business combinations, asset acquisitions, strategic equity investments, joint ventures, divestitures, and related financing and equity structures

• Lead accounting due diligence on prospective transactions; evaluate structuring alternatives and advise Corporate Development and executive leadership on GAAP, control, and earnings implications before terms are finalized

• Own end-to-end purchase accounting: identification of the acquirer, determination of the acquisition date, measurement of consideration transferred (including contingent consideration, rollover equity, and replacement awards), recognition and measurement of identifiable assets and liabilities, and goodwill

• Direct the consolidation assessment for every investee and structured arrangement, including VIE identification, primary-beneficiary analysis, and ongoing reconsideration events

• Oversee the investment portfolio accounting model — determining and monitoring classification across consolidation, equity method, the measurement alternative, and fair value through earnings — and govern observable-price-change and impairment reviews

• Manage third-party valuation specialists; review and challenge purchase price allocations, intangible asset valuations, contingent consideration fair values, and impairment analyses

• Author and defend technical accounting memoranda for each transaction; serve as the primary point of contact with external auditors on M&A, investment, and consolidation matters

• Build and lead the M&A and Investments Accounting team — define roles, hire, mentor, and set the operating cadence — while remaining a hands-on reviewer on the most judgmental areas

• Design and implement the deal-accounting operating model: diligence checklists, Day-1 close playbooks, opening balance sheet procedures, measurement-period tracking, integration accounting workplans, and SOX-ready controls over non-routine transactions

• Drive post-close integration accounting, including conforming accounting policies, system/ledger onboarding, working capital true-ups, earn-out remeasurement, and push-down considerations

• Prepare and review transaction-related disclosures for quarterly and annual financial statements, including pro forma financial information and significance testing where applicable

• Partner with Tax on deal structuring, inside/outside basis differences, and ASC 740 impacts of acquisitions and investments; partner with Treasury and Legal on equity, SAFE/convertible, and complex financing instruments embedded in deals

• Present transaction accounting conclusions and financial statement impacts to the Controller, CFO, and Audit Committee in clear, decision-ready terms

• Monitor standard-setting and SEC developments affecting business combinations, consolidation, and investments; lead adoption and cross-functional education

You may be a good fit if you:

• Have 15+ years of progressive accounting experience, including 6+ years leading teams and owning the accounting for M&A and strategic investment transactions end-to-end

• Hold an active CPA license

• Bring significant Big 4 experience — ideally including time in a National Office, Transaction/Deal Advisory, or Capital Markets/Accounting Advisory group — paired with in-house experience at a high-growth or public technology company

• Have personally led the technical accounting for multiple closed acquisitions and a portfolio of minority/strategic investments, including at least one transaction of meaningful scale or complexity

• Possess deep command of US GAAP for business combinations, consolidation, equity method and other investments, fair value measurement, and related areas, with a track record of authoring positions that withstand auditor and regulator scrutiny

• Are fluent in valuation concepts and can credibly direct and challenge third-party specialists on PPA, contingent consideration, and impairment models

• Have built or materially scaled a deal-accounting or investments-accounting function, including hiring, playbook creation, and controls design

• Operate with executive presence — able to influence Corporate Development, Legal, and the C-suite on structuring trade-offs, and to present to the Audit Committee

• Demonstrate exceptional written and verbal communication, translating complex deal accounting into clear business implications for non-accountants

• Excel at both strategic leadership and hands-on technical review, and move comfortably between the two in a fast-paced, ambiguous environment

• Are proficient with accounting systems (NetSuite preferred), consolidation tools, and advanced Excel/modeling

Strong candidates may also:

• Have deep, practitioner-level expertise in one or more of the following:

  • Business combinations and asset acquisitions (ASC 805), including contingent consideration, replacement share-based awards, and step acquisitions

  • Consolidation and VIE analysis (ASC 810), including kick-out/participating rights and primary-beneficiary reassessment

  • Equity method investments and joint ventures (ASC 323), including basis differences and in-substance common stock

  • Equity securities and the measurement alternative (ASC 321), including observable price changes and impairment

  • Fair value measurement (ASC 820) and acquired financial instruments (ASC 815, 825)

  • Goodwill and intangibles, including impairment testing and IPR&D (ASC 350, 360)

  • Foreign currency and highly inflationary considerations in acquired entities (ASC 830)

• Have led accounting for carve-outs, divestitures, spin-offs, or legal-entity rationalizations

• Have prepared or reviewed pro forma financial information under Article 11 of Regulation S-X and performed S-X Rule 3-05 / 1-02(w) significance testing

• Have stood up SOX-compliant controls over non-routine transactions and investment valuation governance

• Have experience with novel AI/technology deal structures — acqui-hires, IP/license-heavy transactions, data and compute arrangements, revenue-share partnerships, and strategic investor rights

• Have supported S-1 or other registration statement processes for transaction-related financial statements and disclosures

• Have implemented or integrated ERP/consolidation platforms for acquired entities

• Are passionate about leveraging technology and AI to accelerate diligence, memo drafting, and close

Deadline to apply: None. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.

The annual compensation range for this role is listed below.

For sales roles, the range provided is the role’s On Target Earnings ("OTE") range, meaning that the range includes both the sales commissions/sales bonuses target and annual base salary for the role.

Logistics

Minimum education: Bachelor’s degree or an equivalent combination of education, training, and/or experience

Required field of study: A field relevant to the role as demonstrated through coursework, training, or professional experience

Minimum years of experience: Years of experience required will correlate with the internal job level requirements for the position

Location-based hybrid policy: Currently, we expect all staff to be in one of our offices at least 25% of the time. However, some roles may require more time in our offices.

Visa sponsorship: We do sponsor visas! However, we aren't able to successfully sponsor visas for every role and every candidate. But if we make you an offer, we will make every reasonable effort to get you a visa, and we retain an immigration lawyer to help with this.

We encourage you to apply even if you do not believe you meet every single qualification. Not all strong candidates will meet every single qualification as listed. Research shows that people who identify as being from underrepresented groups are more prone to experiencing imposter syndrome and doubting the strength of their candidacy, so we urge you not to exclude yourself prematurely and to submit an application if you're interested in this work. We think AI systems like the ones we're building have enormous social and ethical implications. We think this makes representation even more important, and we strive to include a range of diverse perspectives on our team.

Your safety matters to us. To protect yourself from potential scams, remember that Anthropic recruiters only contact you from @anthropic.com email addresses. In some cases, we may partner with vetted recruiting agencies who will identify themselves as working on behalf of Anthropic. Be cautious of emails from other domains. Legitimate Anthropic recruiters will never ask for money, fees, or banking information before your first day. If you're ever unsure about a communication, don't click any links—visit anthropic.com/careers directly for confirmed position openings.

How we're different

We believe that the highest-impact AI research will be big science. At Anthropic we work as a single cohesive team on just a few large-scale research efforts. And we value impact — advancing our long-term goals of steerable, trustworthy AI — rather than work on smaller and more specific puzzles. We view AI research as an empirical science, which has as much in common with physics and biology as with traditional efforts in computer science. We're an extremely collaborative group, and we host frequent research discussions to ensure that we are pursuing the highest-impact work at any given time. As such, we greatly value communication skills.

The easiest way to understand our research directions is to read our recent research. This research continues many of the directions our team worked on prior to Anthropic, including: GPT-3, Circuit-Based Interpretability, Multimodal Neurons, Scaling Laws, AI & Compute, Concrete Problems in AI Safety, and Learning from Human Preferences.

Come work with us!

Anthropic is a public benefit corporation headquartered in San Francisco. We offer competitive compensation and benefits, optional equity donation matching, generous vacation and parental leave, flexible working hours, and a lovely office space in which to collaborate with colleagues. Guidance on Candidates' AI Usage: Learn about our policy for using AI in our application process