Finance & Operations Lead

Job description

# Hi there! We're Alma 👋 We're on a mission to make immigration more accessible, transparent, and human through cutting-edge technology and thoughtful legal support. We're backed by top-tier investors (Bling, Forerunner, Village Global, NFX, NEA, MVP, Conviction, and Silkroad Innovation), and our team combines decades of experience across immigration law, product, operations, and high-growth startups. # **The role** **We're hiring an AI-native finance operator to own the day-to-day financial engine of the business today and become the leader of Alma’s finance organization tomorrow.** From Day 1, you will own revenue accuracy, billing and collections, cash movement, and the monthly close, and to bring order and automation to processes that are currently manual. You'll be the internal owner who directs our outsourced accounting, trust-accounting, and audit partners, defines how we measure revenue, and makes sure the numbers are right, and they match the cash in the bank. This is a high-ownership seat with a clear growth path. As you get the books clean and automated, you'll grow into strategic finance: forecasting, budgeting, and margin analysis, that shapes how we run the business. We're looking for someone who can both roll up their sleeves on the operational grind today and is sharp enough to automate it away and step up over time. # **What you'll own today** ## **Revenue accuracy** - Define what counts as revenue each month and apply it consistently, including cases billed in installments - Match every case to the right client and deal so revenue isn't over- or under-counted, and correctly classify each category and segments of revenues ## **Billing & collections** - Own invoicing across our platform, Stripe, and off-platform, and make sure every invoice ties to the right case. - Own accounts receivable end to end — drive collections, enforce controls like collecting the required deposit before work begins, and clean up outstanding balances. - Process refunds and adjustments per policy and keep a clear record of the reason each time. ## **Treasury & payments** - Pay vendor invoices, manage company cards and per-team spend limits, and fund payroll on time across both entities. - Own our bank accounts, signatories, and money movement, and keep recurring payments and auto-charges clean and current. ## **Monthly close & outside firms** - Run the monthly close and produce the P&L: pulling from our stack (HubSpot, Rippling, Brex, Mercury, and the banks), categorizing expenses, and running the sanity checks that catch real errors. - Direct and quality-check our outsourced accountants and external auditor: feed them clean data, keep everyone aligned on one revenue definition, and catch mistakes before they land. ## **Payroll, contractors & commissions** - Run payrolls and set up one-off items (e.g. bonuses) from signed agreements. - Manage contractor payments, and coordinate and approve the sales-commission pay run. ## **People ops (light)** - Handle onboarding/offboarding logistics — HRIS setup, equipment, background checks — and own routine HR and benefits administration. ## **Systems & automation (important)** - **Automate all the manual work across the above bullet points — including working with our product and engineering team to build financial controls into the platform.** - Rationalize our finance tooling and vendor relationships (consolidate where we have overlap). # **What you will own 3-6 months from now** **As the day-to-day gets clean and automated, you'll take on more of strategic finance leadership:** - Building a forward-looking P&L and an operating model that ties headcount and capacity to margins over time. - Setting assumption-driven budgets with each department head and tracking actuals against them. - Defining and improving gross margin and unit economics, and recommending structural changes to how we bill and operate. - Getting the numbers investor-ready and supporting corporate-development work You don't need to have all of these skills or experiences today. We can teach you the rest. What matters most is a quick-learning mindset and the drive to grow into a strategic finance leader. # **What we're looking for (must have)** - Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, Finance, or related field - 3+ years of progressive accounting experience, including 1+ years in high-growth startups or tech companies - Extensive accounting knowledge with a firm grasp of current US GAAP standards - Proven track record establishing and growing financial operations in a fast-paced or early-stage ("0→1") setting - Skilled with contemporary accounting platforms (familiarity with AI-native or automation-first ERPs is a bonus) and wider financial tools - Effective partner across teams; capable of translating complex accounting and financial ideas for stakeholders outside of finance - Sharp eye for detail combined with sound operational judgment - An entrepreneurial approach: you take strong ownership, work with urgency, and build structure where none yet exists # **Nice to have** - CPA or CFA qualification - FP&A / financial modeling experience. - Experience with multi-entity finance, professional-services or law-firm accounting, or trust accounting. - Hands-on familiarity with our stack (Stripe, Rippling, Brex, Mercury, HubSpot) or comparable tools. # **The ideal candidate** The ideal candidate is a sharp, hands-on finance operator who can walk in and bring order to the day-to-day — owning revenue accuracy, collections, and our outside accounting partners — while spotting the manual work that should be automated and building it away. You're equally comfortable grinding through a messy reconciliation and stepping back to ask why the process exists at all. **You likely come from one of two backgrounds:** - An early finance hire at a Series seed–B startup who has worn every hat, or - An ex-IB banker, MBB analyst, ex-Big 4 auditor, transaction advisory, or FDD wizzard, now a year or two into an in-house finance role Above all, you have the aptitude and ambition to grow into strategic finance — forecasting, budgets, and margins — and become the finance leader of a fast-growing company # What It's Like to Work at Alma We're a small, mission-driven team reimagining immigration from the ground up. We value thoughtfulness, speed, and building systems that scale. You'll own the financial backbone of a category-defining company from day one, sitting right next to our CEO with a real path to grow into a strategic finance leader # Benefits & Perks - Competitive base salary based on experience, plus meaningful equity - 100% Health coverage + Vision + Dental - 20 days PTO + 10 Federal Holidays - $250 per month in wellness allowance - Direct, daily access to our CEO and leadership team, on the decisions that actually shape the company - A rare scope for someone this early in their career: build a finance function from zero, with the support to grow into leading it # A Quick Note We know the "perfect" candidate doesn't exist. If this role excites you but you don't meet every qualification, we'd still love to hear from you. Immigration is complex. So are people. That's what makes this work so meaningful.