Startup Financial Accountant

Our client is building the future of AI for analysts and scientists, based on a fundamentally new approach to reasoning and knowledge representation. Their team of 40 exceptional researchers and engineers - distributed across 16 countries - are tackling some of the hardest problems in AI.

They are building a system that represents domain knowledge as modular probabilistic models — making analysis rigorous and transparent. Users can connect these models flexibly into larger structures. The system enforces consistency across them, and propagates uncertainty through each step. Their first applications are in finance and scientific research, with use cases ranging from equity valuation and distress monitoring, to particle physics.

Behind this work is a Finance team that holds the function to the same standard: rigorous, transparent, and built to last. You'll be the operational backbone of that team — owning accounting, compliance, payroll, and corporate governance processes end-to-end. That means full responsibility: not just executing the steps, but making sure every process is as lean and efficient as possible, and that nothing depends on someone else to catch.

You'll work closely with the Finance Manager and with a network of external providers — bookkeeper, tax advisor, auditors, legal counsel, global payroll provider. You'll manage these relationships actively: setting expectations, reviewing outputs critically, and continuously asking whether a process can be brought in-house, automated, or streamlined. Your job is precision, ownership, and relentless improvement — not maintenance.

Location: Remote (working hours are 09:00-18:00 CET)

Team: Finance (3 members)

What you'll own

• Accounting close & reporting — run the monthly close, reconciliations, and management accounts through our Xero/Dext/Banking stack, working alongside our external bookkeeper who handles day-to-day transaction processing
• Tax & compliance — be the point of contact for our external tax advisor, who prepares tax filings; you provide the data, review the outputs, and make sure nothing slips through the calendar
• Payroll — manage monthly payroll submissions and reconciliations alongside our global payroll provider Deel across 16 countries and 3 engagement models (direct employees, EoRs, contractors) 
• Corporate governance — maintain our share register, prepare AGM materials and board packs, and coordinate capital increase documentation with legal counsel; well-structured processes are already in place
• Treasury operations — execute bank transfers, manage the quarterly liquidity plan, and administer fixed term deposits; this is checklist-driven work that rewards attention to detail and critical thinking 
• Vendor payments & AP — run the weekly invoice and payment cycle, keep vendor files current, and maintain our approval workflows
• Audit support — prepare documentation and liaise with auditors for our annual limited audit; Elliot leads the process, you make sure everything is ready

• Around 4 years of experience: ideally 1–2 years in Big 4 or mid-tier audit, followed by 2–3 years at a tech startup where you owned real accounting work (not just supported it), in an environment that values automation and constant process improvement
• Professional German, spoken and written — you'll need it for Swiss corporate filings, advisor interactions, and cantonal governance
• Solid grounding in German HGB and/or Swiss OR (some familiarity with UK employment compliance is a plus)
• Hands-on with modern finance tools — Xero or equivalent, invoice management tools, various banking platforms, and ideally Deel or a comparable global payroll platform
• A process-improvement mindset — you notice what's manual and ask whether it should be; you don't wait to be told something can be better
  
  

You would thrive if

• You don't accept "that's how we've always done it." When you spot a manual step, your instinct is to understand why it exists and whether it should — and then to fix it properly, not patch it. You document what you build so that the next person can pick it up without asking you ten questions.
• You hold yourself to a no-error standard. In a role covering payroll, tax, and audit, "almost right" has real consequences — and you know that. You're the person who reads the output twice before sending it, not because someone told you to, but because that's who you are.
• You're comfortable working with smart, demanding people who push back, ask hard questions, and expect you to do the same. This isn't a role where you execute quietly and wait for instructions — you're expected to flag problems early, propose solutions, and take ownership of outcomes.