Controller
Sparrow · United States · $160,000–$225,000 (stated in the posting)
About us
Sparrow is the first high-tech, high-touch employee leave management solution. Our mission is to make it simple for companies to provide their employees with all kinds of leave (i.e. family, medical, etc.).
Currently, the leave management process is painful and inefficient for everyone. Company leaders struggle to keep up with regulations and processes that change frequently, and the employees going on leave are overwhelmed by bureaucracy at an exceptionally important juncture in their career. Sparrow transforms this ordinarily tedious, error-prone, complex to remain compliant, and time-consuming process into a 30-minute end-to-end experience saving teams time (20 - 40 hours per leave) and money (up to $30K per leave).
Sparrow is headquartered in San Francisco but all employees work remotely across the country. Sparrow is a diverse, highly talented, and supportive team. Together, we are hardworking, collaborative, smart, and humble—after all, we’re solving real problems.
Sparrow is hiring its first Controller, reporting directly to the CFO. This is a foundational hire: today, all accounting work is handled by an outsourced provider with no dedicated internal owner. You'll take direct oversight of our outsourced accounting function, fix real process gaps that exist today, and build the accounting infrastructure, controls, and team that will take us through an eventual audit and beyond. This role is highly hands-on to start, with the expectation that you'll build and lead an in-house team over time as we transition functions off our outsourced provider.
Here's What You'll Do:
Own close: Run the monthly close end-to-end, journal entries, reconciliations, financial statements, with accuracy and improving speed over time. Establish a close calendar and repeatable processes that get tighter every month.
Build the accounting foundation: Design and document accounting policies, internal controls, and workflows from the ground up.
Own revenue recognition: Apply GAAP judgment to our prepay, usage-based, and pay-as-you-go contract mix, an area that doesn't fit a standard per-seat SaaS model and requires real thinking, not just following a template.
Lead order-to-cash: Own the full cycle from invoicing through collections, including reconciliation of usage-based billing against contracted commitments, working cross-functionally to ensure accuracy, reduce time-to-payment, and flag issues early.
Prepare us for our first audit: Own audit readiness end-to-end, building audit-ready workpapers, managing the relationship with external auditors, and ensuring we can move through our first audit efficiently and cleanly.
Drive ERP and system selection and implementation: Evaluate our current tools and lead the process of selecting and implementing the right ERP and other systems for where we're going. Bring a systems-thinking mindset.
Identify and adopt the right AI finance tools, including our own.
Build the team: Hire and manage an in-house accounting team over time as we transition functions off our outsourced provider.
About You:
CPA preferred but not required.
8 to 10+ years of relevant experience: Big 4 or national firm experience. Experience at a high-growth startup is a plus but not required.
Builder mindset above all else: You're energized by the work of building an accounting function from the ground up, setting up systems, writing the first version of a policy, figuring out the right process when no playbook exists.
Deep US GAAP expertise, with real ASC 606 revenue recognition experience. You can write the policy and defend it to an auditor.
Systems fluency: You've worked with ERP systems and billing systems. Bonus if you've been through an ERP or other systems selection or implementation before.
You've integrated AI meaningfully into how you work, and you build new workflows AI-first. You can speak specifically to where it works, where it doesn't, and how you've developed judgment about when to trust the output.
Clear communicator: You can explain accounting concepts without jargon. You're comfortable pushing back when something doesn't make financial sense.
Integrity and discretion: We need someone we trust completely.
Compensation
This is a full-time, salaried position with compensation of $160,000 to $225,000 depending on experience and location.
Why Sparrow?
Our work at Sparrow is impactful. We help People teams with one of the hardest parts of their job, and we support employees at a time when they need it most. We’re driven by our mission, much like a nonprofit, but with the resources and scale of a fast-growing venture-backed company.
Sparrow is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. While we are united by our excitement for the mission and product, the diversity of our experiences is one of our strengths. The Sparrow team is made up of people with all types of backgrounds, and we have teammates in 40 states and counting. To learn more about the Sparrow team and its benefits, check out our careers page.