Controller

Job description

About AirGarage AirGarage is on a mission to bring real estate online, starting with parking. We replace broken parking machines, fragmented software, and manual, labor-intensive operations with a unified, data-rich operating system for parking real estate. We handle everything it takes to run and optimize a parking asset: payments, dynamic pricing, enforcement, license plate recognition, analytics, and more. By building all of our technology in-house, we are able to deliver a magical experience for drivers while providing real-time visibility and revenue increases of 20-50% or more for real estate owners. That’s why national real‑estate leaders like Hines and Greystar, as well as technology companies like Meta, partner with AirGarage to optimize their parking facilities. AirGarage uses datapoints like real-time occupancy, local events, weather, driver behavior, competitor pricing, and more to bring true intelligence to real estate owners’ assets for the first time. We’re investing aggressively to make the physical world legible to a digital system: cameras, sensors, and software that generate a firehose of real-time data about the world around us. That data fuels models and algorithms that allow us to optimize performance at each property while giving owners the clarity and control they’ve never had before. Before you can optimize an asset, you need to observe it. Before you can observe it, you need to bring it online. We are starting with the $131 billion US parking real estate market because it is one of the most offline and mismanaged commercial real estate asset types. 26% of the land area in the median American urban core is dedicated to parking. We are backed by top tier investors including Headline Growth, Andreessen Horowitz, Floodgate, Founders Fund, Abstract Ventures, and angel investors who have founded or worked at companies like Uber, Opendoor, Flexport, and more. Want to learn more about AirGarage and the problem we're tackling? Check out these podcasts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU0NkDK51E4 https://youtu.be/_8aM6NQHYiE?si=p5WIujBWUA1sG-b7 THE ROLE 💼 As our Controller, you'll be the architect and owner of AirGarage's accounting function, the person who makes our numbers unimpeachable. You'll lead our in-house accounting team, modernize our systems and processes, and build the financial foundation that a fast-scaling, capital-intensive, real-world business demands. This is a builder's role, not a maintainer's role. Money moves through our platform every day: collected from drivers, split with property owners, taxed by dozens of jurisdictions. Our accounting has to keep pace with a business that gets more complex every quarter. You'll take us from scrappy to scalable: converting our books to full accrual accounting, leading our migration from QuickBooks to a modern ERP, rebuilding the chart of accounts, tightening the close, and getting us audit-ready. You'll report to our CEO today and to finance leadership as the team grows. This is the cornerstone accounting seat at AirGarage: the person every future finance hire will be glad came before them. If you love the craft of accounting, if clean books, tight controls, and a fast close are things you take genuine pride in, this is a rare chance to build the whole thing your way, at a company where the work actually matters to how the business is run and is critical to the end product delivered to customers. WHAT YOU WILL DO 📊 Own the books, end to end: Lead the monthly close and continuously shorten it. Own revenue recognition, reconciliations, AP/AR, payroll coordination, and the integrity of every number that rolls up to the P&L, balance sheet, and cash flow statement. Convert us to true accrual accounting: Design and implement proper GAAP revenue recognition for a transactional, multi-location, revenue-share business. Make the accounting reflect economic reality, not just cash movement. Lead the ERP migration: Own our transition from QuickBooks to a modern ERP as your flagship first project: selection, implementation, data migration, integrations with our payments and data infrastructure, and change management with the team. Rebuild the chart of accounts: Rationalize our account structure so that location-level, team-level, and corporate reporting all roll up cleanly and leadership can trust every cut of the data. Connect accounting to our data systems: We have rich, real-time transaction data flowing through our platform and data warehouse. Make our accounting systems and our operational systems agree with each other so there is one source of truth, automated wherever possible. Own indirect tax and compliance: Manage parking taxes, regulatory fees, and multi-jurisdiction sales/use tax compliance across a national footprint of locations. Build the processes that keep us clean as we enter new markets. Get us audit-ready: Establish the controls, documentation, and processes to take AirGarage through its first financial statement audit and make every audit after that boring. Level up the team: Manage, mentor, and develop our in-house accountants. Set the standard for what excellent looks like and build the processes that let a lean team punch above its weight. Partner across the business: Work with Operations, Sales, and Product to make sure the way we bill, collect, split, and report revenue is accurate at the source, not patched up at close. Support financial reporting: Deliver timely, accurate monthly financials and supporting schedules that leadership, the board, and investors can rely on without an asterisk. WHAT YOU NEED 🦚 Deep technical accounting chops: CPA (or equivalent rigor) with real command of GAAP, especially revenue recognition for transactional or marketplace-style businesses. You know the standards and, more importantly, how to apply them pragmatically. You've done the messy middle before: You've been the senior-most accounting owner (Controller, Assistant Controller, or Director of Accounting) at a venture-backed company as it scaled through rapid growth and you personally did the work, not just supervised it. ERP migration experience: You've led (not observed) a move off QuickBooks onto a modern ERP. You know where these projects go wrong and how to land them on time. Cash-to-accrual conversion experience: You've taken a company's books from cash-basis or hybrid to full accrual and lived to tell the tale. Audit experience: You've prepared a company for and taken it through financial statement audits. Ideally its first one, which is a different animal than its fifth. Systems thinker: You're comfortable working alongside data teams, wielding a data pipeline, and designing processes where the system of record does the work instead of a spreadsheet. You'd rather automate a reconciliation than perform one. Hands-on operator: You'll design the close checklist at 10am and personally clear a gnarly reconciliation at 2pm. A lean team means the Controller still touches the work every day. Complexity is your comfort zone: Multi-location, multi-jurisdiction, revenue-share, or payments-heavy business exposure. If your entire career is clean single-entity SaaS subscription revenue, this business will surprise you daily. Pride in the craft: You genuinely love accounting done right. Your ambition is to be an exceptional Controller and build an exceptional accounting org and you see a growing finance function around you as a feature, not a threat. Bias for action: You move fast, fix root causes instead of symptoms, and know when "80/20 and shipping" beats "perfect and late." Accounting should make the company faster and more confident, never slower. Strongly preferred: Big Four or top regional firm foundation plus startup operating experience (one without the other is a yellow flag), indirect tax / sales tax / regulatory fee experience across many jurisdictions, experience with payment processors and marketplace money movement, and familiarity with modern accounting tools and automation. 🚨 WHY THIS ROLE MAY NOT BE FOR YOU 🚨 Please review this section before applying. We are sharing this information up front because we don't expect this job to be appealing to everybody and we do not want to waste your time if you are not on board with all of the following. Being the Controller at a high growth startup means many different things, but there is one thing above all that it certainly means: the accuracy and integrity of our books are ultimately your responsibility to own. When something doesn't tie out, "that's how the system works" is not an answer; fixing the system is the job. This will be a hard job. We work long hours at AirGarage, including nights and weekends, because we love what we do. We are growing fast but our Finance & Accounting team is lean, so every day you will have new challenges and too much on your plate, but you'll be expected to find a way to deliver anyways. Below are some of the reasons you might not want this job: You want to inherit a finished machine. Our accounting worked for the company we were a year ago. Your job is to rebuild it for the company we're becoming while the monthly close keeps happening. You'll be writing the playbook while running the plays. You're a maintainer, not a builder. If your best work has been keeping an already-excellent process running, this role will be uncomfortable. We need someone who has built the process itself. You don't love complexity. We're a technology company that interacts with the physical world, not a SaaS business with a clean, predictable P&L. Money flows in from drivers, out to property owners, and through dozens of tax jurisdictions across hundreds of locations. That complexity is exactly why this role matters and why it's interesting. You see this seat as a stepping stone to CFO. We're looking for someone who wants to be a world-class Controller and grow with a scaling accounting org, not someone waiting for a different job. As our finance leadership grows around this role, the right person will see that as backup arriving, not competition. You expect to only direct. This is a hands-on role with a small team. If you prefer reviewing work to doing it, this won't feel right. You need everything defined before you act. You'll frequently be the most senior accounting voice in the room. We need someone who notices the gap, proposes the fix, and drives it. We need an order maker, not an order taker. IMPORTANT NOTE 🚨 AirGarage is a remote-first company, but we also value in-person collaboration to strengthen trust and teamwork. Team members should expect ~6 weeks of travel per year for: - 2–3 full company offsites, “Remote Weeks” - Lending a hand to support one new location launch - In-person onboarding as well as supporting other onboarding sessions for new team members The rest of the year, team members can work remotely from wherever (US time zones) they’re most comfortable as long as they are performing well in their role. Attendance at in-person events throughout the year is expected—if you’re not open to traveling ~6 weeks per year for work, our team won't be a good fit for you. THE UPSIDE 📈 - 📈 Equity: Have a stake in the business that you’re helping to build and grow. - 🌴 Work remotely: Live and work wherever you like! We believe in folks working where they are happiest and most productive. We currently hire teammates that are located anywhere within North America. - 🏥 Health insurance: We offer health insurance and currently cover 85% of the cost of medical, dental, and vision plans for the primary employee and 50% of the cost of plans for dependents. - 🍼 Parental Leave: We offer 12 weeks of fully paid parental leave to all parents to bond with a newly born, adopted, or fostered child. The 12 weeks can be taken as a continuous leave or intermittently over the first 18 months of the child's life. - 💻 Home office setup: Get a laptop + additional equipment needed to set you up for success. - ⛺ Time to recharge: We have an unlimited PTO policy with a minimum requirement of 10 days per year. - 🤑 401k: Make financial planning right for you with a 401k retirement savings program. - ✈️ Team Off-sites: ~2 times per year our team comes together for a full week in places like Tahoe, Charleston, San Diego, Park City, and Austin. - 📚 BookGarage: Our team loves to learn and grow together, so join us for our optional recurring book club. - 🪴Room to grow: Our team will be orders of magnitude larger within a few years; as a part of our foundational team, you'll have opportunities to grow with us. - 🏙️ Transform our cities: The opportunity to change the way that the world thinks about real estate use in our cities. - 👐 Work with a diverse team: At AirGarage, we've always been committed to building a thriving team that represents the communities we serve. Our team is currently 40% female and 30%+ from underrepresented communities. Note: Employment with AirGarage is contingent upon successful completion of a background check and employment verification conducted in compliance with applicable laws. Background checks are completed only after a conditional offer of employment has been made. We understand that there's no such thing as a 'perfect' candidate. We're looking for someone passionate, with grit and determination, who is excited to face the challenges of a rapidly growing startup. AirGarage is the type of company where you can grow exponentially, and we encourage you to apply to us even if you don't 100% match the candidate description. AirGarage is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. Candidates and employees are always evaluated based on merit, qualifications, and performance. We will never discriminate on the basis of race, color, gender, national origin, ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability, or any other legally protected status.