Senior Manager, Accounting Team Lead

ROLE PURPOSE:

Ensure high-quality, consistent client delivery across an assigned team by enabling, coaching, and coordinating Client Leads and staff. The Team Lead is accountable for team effectiveness — not just individual client outcomes. This is a leadership role that requires the ability to develop people, manage execution quality at scale, and maintain Graphite’s delivery standards across a full book of client engagements. Team Leads also carry formal people management responsibilities including performance reviews, career coaching, and development planning.

WHAT IT TAKES TO SUCCEED AS A TEAM LEAD HERE AT GRAPHITE FINANCIAL

This is a fully remote leadership role within a client-facing professional services organization. You lead a team within a diverse and distributed workforce. Your standards, communication, and judgment define what your team delivers. The following qualities are essential.

• Leadership Without Proximity: You set clear expectations, provide consistent coaching, and hold your team accountable — entirely through remote communication and structured operating rhythms. Your presence is felt through the quality of what your team produces.
• Client Credibility: You maintain the technical depth and professional presence to engage senior client contacts directly when needed. Your team’s standards reflect yours and you invest in both.
• Responsiveness at Scale: You model the responsiveness you expect from your team. Delayed decisions and slow escalations create client risk. You move fast, communicate clearly, and resolve things.
• Coaching Over Fixing: Your job is to make Client Leads better — not to do their work for them. When something goes wrong, your first instinct is to coach, not do.
• Accountability for Team Outcomes: You own what your team delivers. You do not deflect to process, capacity, or individual performance. You identify problems early and solve them.
• Professional Standards Enforcement: You hold Client Leads and Associates to a high bar for written communication, client interaction, and deliverable quality. This is not optional in a remote, client-facing environment.

CORE RESPONSIBILITIES

Team Enablement & Oversight

•      Coach Client Leads on solution design, client management, delivery approach, and professional judgment

•      Review client engagement approaches for technical risk, complexity, or inconsistency with firm standards — and redirect when necessary

•      Serve as the first escalation point for delivery challenges, client issues, and team capacity problems

•      Ensure all work produced by the team meets Graphite’s quality standards before it reaches clients

People Leadership

•      Conduct formal performance reviews and ongoing career development conversations with direct reports

•      Identify capability gaps within the team and address them through coaching, training, or other resources

•      Build a team environment where Client Leads operate with confidence and accountability, not dependency

Capacity & Quality Management

•      Balance workload across Client Leads and adjust resourcing to manage close peaks, client demands, and coverage risks

•      Drive execution consistency across clients without creating bureaucratic overhead

•      Ensure no client engagement is dependent on a single person — cross-training and documentation are standing expectations

Client Execution

•      Maintain a purposefully limited personal client book using direct client execution to stay technically current, model the standards you set for your team, and remain credible as a coach and escalation resource

Cross-Team Coordination

•      Partner cross-functionally across service lines and teams to translate firm-wide standards into practical, client-ready execution within your team

•      Surface recurring delivery issues, client patterns, and improvement opportunities to the Director proactively

QUALIFICATIONS

•      Bachelor’s degree in Accounting required; CPA required

•      7–10 years of accounting experience including at least 2 years in a client lead, manager, or team leadership role; public accounting (Manager level) or outsourced accounting leadership experience strongly preferred

•      Deep working knowledge of GAAP with direct experience navigating startup-specific accounting complexity: SAFEs, convertible instruments, ASC 606, equity compensation, and more

•      Demonstrated ability to manage a team and a client portfolio simultaneously without sacrificing quality on either

•      Strong coaching and feedback skills — you have developed junior accounting professionals before and take that responsibility seriously

•      Excellent written and verbal communication skills; executive presence in client-facing situations

•      Proficiency in QuickBooks Online; experience with NetSuite, Sage Intacct, or similar platforms preferred

•      Experience working in a remote professional services environment is strongly preferred

COMPREHENSIVE PERKS AND BENEFITS:

• Health & Wellness: Competitive Medical, Dental, and Vision coverage. 100% of the employee's health insurance premium is covered by the company.
• Financial Security: Company-paid Short-Term and Long-Term Disability insurance.
• Work/Life Balance To Include: Generous Unlimited Paid Time Off (PTO), 11 Paid Company Holidays, and comprehensive Paid Parental Leave.
• Remote Work Setup: Fully remote position with company-provided technology equipment and a $250 technology stipend to support your ideal home office setup.
• 401k: With a company match