Accounting Lead at Merge Labs in San Francisco Bay Area

Merge Labs is a frontier research lab with the mission of bridging biological and artificial intelligence to maximize human ability, agency and experience. We’re pursuing this goal by developing fundamentally new approaches to brain-computer interfaces that interact with the brain at high bandwidth, integrate with advanced AI, and are ultimately safe and accessible for anyone to use.

About the team:

Merge is building the next generation of brain-computer interfaces by combining advances in synthetic biology, neuroscience, AI, and non-invasive imaging. As we scale the science, we're scaling the operational backbone that supports it. Finance is central to that effort: we need accurate, auditable financials; thoughtful controls; and systems that let scientists and operators move quickly while giving leadership a clear view of where resources are going.

About the role:

We're hiring our first in-house Accounting Lead to become the accountable owner of accounting at Merge. You'll inherit an outsourced accounting model and a modern but still-evolving finance stack, then build the internal standards, controls, and operating cadence we need as the company scales.

This is a hands-on builder role. You will own the close, financial statements, general ledger, AP/expenses, procurement, technical accounting, controls, finance systems, audit readiness, and the accounting inputs that make budgeting and forecasting reliable. External partners will continue to support areas such as payroll, tax, FP&A modeling, and selected transaction processing, but you will own the outcome wherever their work touches the books.

You'll report to an operations and strategy leader rather than to a career accountant. That makes judgment and communication especially important: we want someone who can be the technical authority, teach the organization, push back when necessary, and reason from first principles to explain why a recommendation is right for the organization and for our mission. You'll translate financial data into clear insights that inform decisions across the company, whether you're walking leadership through burn rate or helping a non-financial team understand the impact of a purchasing decision.

If you enjoy building scalable finance operations that accelerates research, we’d love to meet you.

In this role, you will:

• Own the monthly, quarterly, and annual close, including the general ledger, chart of accounts, reconciliations, accruals, coding standards, and financial statements.

• Own procurement, AP, and expenses end-to-end, building a fast, service-oriented process that preserves appropriate controls without blocking scientists from critical vendors, equipment, materials, or services.

• Own accounting for significant CapEx and fixed assets across laboratory, hardware, equipment, and facilities spend.

• Establish and maintain technical accounting policies for an R&D-intensive company, including R&D spend, leases, prepaids/accruals, equity and stock-based compensation, and other material areas as they emerge.

• Build and maintain a pragmatic control environment that supports accurate, auditable financials without unnecessary bureaucracy.

• Lead audit preparation and the external auditor relationship, making financing diligence and audit support repeatable and well-organized.

• Own finance systems and integrations across Rillet, Ramp, Procurify, Rippling, Carta, and external-provider workflows, improving and automating them as the company scales.

• Own the internal budgeting-input process and ensure clean actuals-to-plan mapping, partnering with the external FP&A team on forecasting and modeling.

• Produce clear financial reporting for leadership, the board, and investors, including burn, major variances, CapEx, and other decision-relevant insights.

• Direct and review outsourced finance partners, establish clear SLAs and quality standards, and determine what to insource as the company grows.

You might thrive in this role if:

• You are a builder and an owner. You are an exceptional accountant first: you have deep command of GAAP, close, financial reporting, controls, and auditability, and people trust your technical judgment. You have owned accounting processes end-to-end rather than contributing to only one slice of a large finance organization. You enjoy inheriting imperfect systems and making them simpler, faster, more reliable, and easier to audit. You thrive in a fast-growing startup or similarly dynamic environment where the process was not already built for you.

• You reason from first principles. You distinguish accounting requirements, risk-management choices, and conventions, and can explain the tradeoffs clearly to non-experts.

• You use AI to increase your leverage. You use AI tools as part of your everyday workflow to make yourself faster and more rigorous. You do not need to be an AI expert; we are especially excited by people who have used AI to automate repetitive work, build checks or review tools, improve reconciliations, interrogate data, accelerate research, or create lightweight tools for themselves and their teams.

• You are a clear, high-bandwidth communicator. You communicate crisply with scientists, engineers, operators, executives, auditors, and vendors. You live in the world of numbers, but you can translate those numbers into a compelling story that the organization can understand.

• You stay hands-on while building for scale. You are comfortable being hands-on today while designing for the team and scale we'll need tomorrow.

• You have already operated at meaningful accounting scope. You are likely operating today at the Head of Accounting, Accounting Lead, Assistant Controller, Controller, or comparable level. We care more about the scope and quality of your work than a specific number of years.

• You are deeply aligned with our mission. You are excited by Merge’s mission and want your work to help enable ambitious scientific research. You care about building the operational foundation that lets our scientists move faster and pursue difficult, long-term problems.

Especially helpful experience:

• CPA; Big Four/public-accounting experience.

• Biotech, life sciences, deep tech, robotics, hardware, AI research, advanced manufacturing, or another R&D- and CapEx-intensive environment.

• Building or scaling an accounting function as an early finance hire.

• Equity/stock-based compensation accounting and financing-round audit support.

• Managing outsourced accounting/tax/payroll partners while retaining clear internal accountability.

• Finance-system implementation, automation, data analysis, SQL, or other technical tooling

• Fluency with modern AI tools and experience building automations, agents, and tools for finance workflows.

If you're excited about this role but don't meet every qualification, please apply. As we build, we're hiring for complementary strengths to form a high-impact team.

For more information about hiring at Merge, please visit our Hiring FAQ

Merge Labs does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, family status, ancestry, citizenship, U.S. military (state and federal) and veteran status, or any other legally protected status. It is our intention that all applicants be given equal opportunity and that selection decisions are based on job related factors. We are an equal opportunity employer.

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made by emailing accommodations@merge.io.