Controller

About the Role:

Engine is a high-growth, multi-entity travel marketplace with multiple revenue streams, international operations, a company-branded charge card, and a disciplined 5-day close. Accounting here already runs lean and AI-forward.

We are hiring a Controller to take it to the next level of excellence, building on the automation and AI already in place and scaling a modern close through Engine’s next phase of growth.

This is not a maintenance role. We are looking for a decisive, high-judgment leader who can raise talent density, simplify how work gets done, and push our existing AI and automation further to create real operating leverage. The goal is not to build a larger function. It is to build a better one.

You will report to the VP, Accounting and lead the core Accounting leadership team, including Assistant Controller / GL, AR and, Payroll, and Tax. The role has a meaningful runway to grow into broader scope as Engine grows.

Your Mission

Own the operating system of Engine’s accounting function: the talent bar, the integrity of the close, the control environment, and the pace of automation, so a lean team scales with the business without scaling headcount.

Key Responsibilities:

• Raise the operating bar: Create a clearer, more accountable operating model across Accounting. Clarify decision rights, push ownership closer to the work, reduce unnecessary escalation, and move priorities quickly from discussion to execution.
• Increase talent density: Build a high-performing leadership team that operates with strong judgment and increasing independence. Set a clear performance bar, develop strong managers, address capability gaps directly, and make thoughtful talent upgrades where needed.
• Scale AI and automation: Build on the automation and AI already in place across Accounting and take it further. Partner with Systems and cross-functional teams to automate high-volume and repetitive work, apply AI to reconciliations, documentation, anomaly detection, and management visibility, and ensure headcount grows slower than transaction volume and business complexity.
• Modernize the close: Take an already-disciplined 5-day close and make it cleaner, faster, and less manual. Strengthen ownership across revenue, AR, payroll, tax, consolidations, reconciliations, and reporting. Remove recurring friction, simplify review layers, and fix root causes.
• Make decisions at speed: Serve as a senior decision-maker across complex accounting and operational issues. Make well-reasoned calls with imperfect information, document the rationale, and keep the organization moving. Bring strong technical accounting depth without allowing complexity to become a reason for delay.
• Drive cross-functional execution: Create clarity where ownership is fragmented, surface tradeoffs, make recommendations, and drive work to resolution across Product, Finance, Tax, Legal, Credit, Fraud, Sales, People, and Systems.
• Prepare Accounting for the next phase: Build the leadership depth, systems, processes, and controls required to support increasing transaction volume, new revenue streams, international expansion, card receivables, rewards, supplier economics, intercompany activity, and FX. Anticipate where today’s processes will break at tomorrow’s scale and address those constraints early.

What You’ll Bring:

• Experience: 10+ years of progressive accounting leadership, including Controller, Assistant Controller, or equivalent responsibility in a high-growth environment. CPA strongly preferred.
• Track Record: A history of improving an established accounting function, not just maintaining one.
• Talent Leadership: Proven ability to act as a talent magnet, improving the talent bar, developing the team, and building leadership depth.
• Automation & AI: An AI-native, automation-forward operating style, with demonstrated success reducing manual work and creating measurable operating leverage.
• Technical Accounting: Strong multi-entity close, consolidation, reconciliation, and financial statement experience, with depth across ASC 606 (gross-versus-net and principal-agent analysis), ASC 842, ASC 718, reserves, and other judgment-heavy areas.
• Judgment & Pace: Strong judgment and decisive pace; comfortable making calls with incomplete information and operating strategically while staying close to execution.

Nice to Have:

• Travel, marketplace, fintech, payments, card-program, or high-volume transaction accounting experience.
• Card receivables, rewards, supplier economics, merchant and agency models, or complex revenue streams.
• International experience, including intercompany, FX, VAT/GST, transfer-pricing support, or statutory reporting.
• NetSuite and modern close, reconciliation, workflow, BI, automation, and AI tools.

What Success Looks Like:

Within the first 6 to 12 months:

• The close is less dependent on manual intervention.
• Automation and AI improvements are tied to measurable capacity, accuracy, and cycle-time gains.
• Cross-functional issues move to resolution faster.
• The function absorbs greater complexity without proportional headcount growth.