Director, Operational Finance & Accounting in Austin, Texas at SORTERA ALLOYS INC

Director, Operational Finance & Accounting

Job Description

Sortera Technologies sorts shredded scrap metal piece by piece, by alloy, using X-ray fluorescence, lasers, cameras and artificial intelligence, and sells the sorted aluminum to U.S. manufacturers that turn it back into cars and other products. Founded in 2020 as a spin-out of the Department of Energy’s ARPA-E METALS program, the company runs plants in Markle, Indiana and Lebanon, Tennessee, which can process about 240 million pounds of scrap a year, and develops its sensing, AI and software in-house at its research and development center in Austin, Texas. Sortera has more than 100 employees, is backed by investors including Breakthrough Energy Ventures, T. Rowe Price and RA Capital Management, and was named by Newsweek one of America’s Greatest Startup Workplaces for 2026.

Job Summary

Sortera Technologies is hiring a Director, Operational Finance & Accounting to own how the company accounts for, costs, and controls its material, from the moment scrap is weighed in at a plant to the moment sorted aluminum ships to a customer. This leader will build and run inventory valuation, including NRV testing, reserves, and physical count processes across our sites and third-party processors. They will also own the product costing model and variance analysis, and build end-to-end traceability that connects plant systems and sensor data to NetSuite so that cost and yield reporting comes from source data rather than estimates.

As Sortera moves toward the public markets, this role will design and operate SOX-ready controls over inventory, costing, and cost of revenue, write the technical accounting positions behind them, and lead audit support. They will scale the function through leverage rather than headcount, setting up and supervising AI agents on recurring close work with clear, auditor-testable human review points.

The ideal candidate is a CPA with Big 4 audit roots and public company experience who can map a process from first principles, spot where it breaks, and implement proportionate controls. They should be equally credible with plant engineers, auditors, and the CFO, and comfortable making sound calls on incomplete information.

Inventory valuation

• Inventory accounting across raw feedstock, WIP, finished product, residues and by-products, and spares — at our sites and at third-party processors
• NRV testing under ASC 330: methodology, market-price inputs, grade granularity, and cadence, including price movement between period-end and settlement
• Reserves: shrink, excess and obsolete, quality downgrades, aged material
• Physical inventory and cycle count design, book-to-physical reconciliation, and inventory ownership under tolling and consignment
• The inventory and COGS close: entries, reconciliations, roll-forwards, and the schedules feeding external reporting

Costing methodology

• The product costing model — standard or actual by stream — covering feedstock, labor, energy, consumables, and overhead absorption, plus the annual cost roll
• Variance analysis: purchase price variance against index, yield and recovery, metal loss and shrink, mix, and absorption
• Cost per pound/ton and margin by product, grade, customer, and feed source, with a clear line back to source data, including the cost inputs to budgets and forecasts

Raw material lifecycle traceability

• Traceability from inbound receipt, weigh-in, and assay through sortation and shipment: lot genealogy, mass balance, and reconciliation of physical flows to the financial records
• Work with operations, engineering, and IT to connect plant systems and sensor data to NetSuite so cost and yield reporting is sourced, not estimated
• Support recycled-content and customer/ESG data requests, and turn traceability into insight — recovery and margin by supplier and feed stream

Public company readiness

• Design, document, and operate SOX-ready controls over inventory existence and valuation, costing, and cost of revenue, and write the technical accounting positions behind them
• Own inventory and COGS audit support: PBC lists, count observation, valuation testing, auditor Q&A
• Support external reporting on public-company timelines, and hedge accounting inputs where applicable

Agentic workflows and a function that scales

• Set up and supervise AI agents on recurring work: reconciliation prep, tie-outs, variance and flux drafts, data validation across NetSuite and plant systems, and PBC assembly
• Define where the human stays in the loop, at what threshold, and with what evidence, so AI-assisted work is testable by an auditor rather than a black box in the close
• Scale on leverage, not headcount — measured on close days, cycle time, and control coverage

What we screen for

Four capabilities, tested directly in the interview.

Process mapping from first principles. You follow the material and the money end to end and produce a map the people running the operation recognize as accurate — finding the undocumented handoff, the spreadsheet between two systems, the step where a number gets retyped.

Risk and gap judgment, then controls. You can say where a process breaks, what that costs us, and what control would catch it — ranked by risk, proportionate, operable, and evidenced in a way an auditor can test.

Stakeholder management. You build credibility with operations, engineering, procurement, IT, auditors, and executives — groups that don't share vocabulary. Told "that's not how it works out there," you take it seriously and come back with something better.

Cross-domain translation. You can sit with an engineer discussing sorter recovery rates and leave with a costing input, then take a valuation judgment to auditors and a variance story to the CFO with equal clarity.

Common sense matters too: much of this is judgment comes from incomplete information — what precision is worth, when an estimate is good enough, when a variance is signal rather than noise.

What we're looking for

Required

• 8 -12+ years in cost accounting, inventory or technical accounting, audit, or a comparable analytical discipline, including team leadership
• CPA, with a foundation of Big 4 (or comparable national firm) audit experience
• Public company experience — external reporting, quarterly close, and SOX controls; IPO readiness a strong plus
• Demonstrated ability to map a process, identify risks and control gaps, and recommend controls that were actually implemented — be ready to walk us through an example
• Working command of inventory valuation (including NRV/LCNRV), costing methodology, variance analysis, and reserve judgment
• Outstanding communication across technical and non-technical audiences, and proven ability to influence without authority
• Experience setting up agentic workflows on real accounting or analytical work, plus strong data skills (advanced Excel; Power BI, Tableau, or SQL)
• ERP costing experience (NetSuite preferred; SAP CO, Oracle, or similar) and the appetite to improve the system rather than work around it

Helpful, but not required

• Manufacturing, metals, recycling, mining, chemicals, battery materials, or automotive supply chain background
• Commodity or index-linked pricing exposure (LME, Platts, AMM) and hedging
• Multi-site or growth-stage experience, or standing up costing for a new facility or line

Rigorous process and controls work transfers well here — if that's your background, we would love to see your resume

How we work

We're a growth-stage industrial technology company with a real plant, real tonnage, and a real path to the public markets. If you want to work out how the economics of a company like this actually function — and build the controls that prove it — we should talk.