Director, Technical Accounting - M&A

Location: San Francisco, CA | Seattle, WA About Anthropic Anthropic’s mission is to create reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. We want AI to be safe and beneficial for our users and for society as a whole. Our team is a quickly growing group of committed researchers, engineers, policy experts, and business leaders working together to build beneficial AI systems. About the Role We are seeking a Director, Technical Accounting – M&A to join our Finance team at Anthropic. In this role, you will support the company's accounting for mergers, acquisitions, strategic investments, and other complex capital transactions. You will report to the Senior Director, Technical Accounting – M&A As Anthropic continues to scale rapidly and deploy capital into acquisitions, strategic investments, joint ventures, and novel commercial structures, you will be a key technical resource on structuring alternatives, consolidation outcomes, and financial statement impact. You will partner closely with Corporate Development, Legal, Tax, Treasury, FP&A, and leadership to ensure that deal economics are accurately reflected under US GAAP and that positions are defensible to external auditors, valuation specialists, and future regulators. This is a builder role: you'll help operate and continuously sharpen the controls, valuation governance, and close-ready documentation expected of a large accelerated filer, working alongside the Senior Director as the function takes shape. If you thrive on being in the room when deals are shaped — and then making the accounting land cleanly — we want to hear from you. In this role, you will: Execute technical accounting for business combinations, asset acquisitions, joint ventures, and related financing/equity structures Partner with and influence Corporate Dev to steer deal structures toward preferred terms and outcomes Perform accounting due diligence on prospective transactions, advising Corporate Development and leadership on GAAP, control, and earnings implications before terms are finalized Execute end-to-end purchase accounting — acquirer and acquisition-date identification, consideration measurement (contingent consideration, rollover equity, replacement awards), and recognition/measurement of assets, liabilities, and goodwill Execute post-close integration accounting — conforming accounting policies, system/ledger onboarding, working capital true-ups, earn-out remeasurement, and push-down considerations Assess and monitor consolidation and investment classification for investees and structured arrangements — VIE/primary-beneficiary analysis, reconsideration events, equity method, measurement alternative, and fair value through earnings — and support impairment and observable-price-change reviews Manage third-party valuation specialists; review PPA, intangible asset valuations, contingent consideration fair values, and impairment analyses Author and defend technical accounting policies & memoranda; partner closely with external auditors on M&A, investment, and consolidation matters Partner with Tax on deal structuring and ASC 740/basis-difference impacts; with Treasury and Legal on equity, SAFE/convertible, and other financing instruments Help refine the deal-accounting operating model — diligence checklists, Day-1 close playbooks, opening balance sheet procedures, measurement-period tracking, integration workplans, and SOX-ready controls over non-routine transactions Prepare and review transaction-related disclosures for quarterly and annual filings, including pro forma financial information and significance testing Present transaction accounting conclusions and financial statement impacts to leadership and cross-functional stakeholders in clear, decision-ready terms Monitor standard-setting and SEC developments affecting business combinations, consolidation, and investments; support adoption and cross-functional education You may be a good fit if you: Have 10+ years of progressive accounting experience, including 4+ years owning complex M&A and strategic investment accounting transactions end-to-end Hold an active CPA license Bring significant Big 4 experience — ideally in a National Office, Transaction/Deal Advisory, or Capital Markets/Accounting Advisory group — paired with in-house experience at a high-growth or public technology company Have contributed to multiple closed acquisitions and minority/strategic investments, including at least one transaction of meaningful scale or complexity Possess deep command of US GAAP for business combinations, consolidation, equity method, and fair value measurement, with a track record of positions that withstand auditor and regulator scrutiny Are fluent in valuation concepts and can direct and challenge third-party specialists on PPA, contingent consideration, and impairment models Have operated within a deal-accounting or investments-accounting function, contributing to playbook and controls design Communicate effectively with Corporate Development and Legal on structuring trade-offs, translating technical conclusions for cross-functional and senior stakeholders Demonstrate exceptional written and verbal communication, translating complex deal accounting into clear business implications Excel at hands-on technical execution in a fast-paced, ambiguous environment, partnering closely with the Senior Director on strategic judgment calls Are proficient with accounting systems (Workday preferred), consolidation tools, and advanced Excel/modeling Curious about and quick to adopt new AI tools, including Claude and Claude for Finance Strong candidates may also: Have deep, practitioner-level expertise in one or more of the following: Business combinations and asset acquisitions (ASC 805), including contingent consideration, replacement share-based awards, and step acquisitions Consolidation and investment classification (ASC 810, 323, 321), including VIE/primary-beneficiary analysis, basis differences, and the measurement alternative Fair value measurement, acquired financial instruments, and goodwill/intangibles (ASC 820, 815, 825, 350, 360), including impairment testing and IPR&D Have led accounting for carve-outs, divestitures, spin-offs, or legal-entity rationalizations, including standing up SOX-compliant controls over non-routine/complex transactions Have prepared or reviewed pro forma financial information and registration-statement disclosures (Article 11 of Regulation S-X, S-X Rule 3-05/1-02(w) significance testing, S-1 processes) Have experience with novel AI/technology deal structures — acqui-hires, IP/license-heavy transactions, data and compute arrangements, revenue-share partnerships, and strategic investor rights — and are passionate about leveraging AI to accelerate diligence, memo drafting, and close Deadline to apply: None. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis. The annual compensation range for this role is listed below. For sales roles, the range provided is the role’s On Target Earnings ("OTE") range, meaning that the range includes both the sales commissions/sales bonuses target and annual base salary for the role. Annual Salary: $230,000 — $300,000 USD Logistics Minimum education: Bachelor’s degree or an equivalent combination of education, training, and/or experience Required field of study: A field relevant to the role as demonstrated through coursework, training, or professional experience Minimum years of experience: Years of experience required will correlate with the internal job level requirements for the position Location-based hybrid policy: Currently, we expect all staff to be in one of our offices at least 25% of the time. However, some roles may require more time in our offices. Visa sponsorship: We do sponsor visas! However, we aren't able to successfully sponsor visas for every role and every candidate. But if we make you an offer, we will make every reasonable effort to get you a visa, and we retain an immigration lawyer to help with this. We encourage you to apply even if you do not believe you meet every single qualification. Not all strong candidates will meet every single qualification as listed.  Research shows that people who identify as being from underrepresented groups are more prone to experiencing imposter syndrome and doubting the strength of their candidacy, so we urge you not to exclude yourself prematurely and to submit an application if you're interested in this work. We think AI systems like the ones we're building have enormous social and ethical implications. We think this makes representation even more important, and we strive to include a range of diverse perspectives on our team. Your safety matters to us. To protect yourself from potential scams, remember that Anthropic recruiters only contact you from @anthropic.com email addresses. In some cases, we may partner with vetted recruiting agencies who will identify themselves as working on behalf of Anthropic. Be cautious of emails from other domains. Legitimate Anthropic recruiters will never ask for money, fees, or banking information before your first day. If you're ever unsure about a communication, don't click any links—visit anthropic.com/careers directly for confirmed position openings. How we're different We believe that the highest-impact AI research will be big science. At Anthropic we work as a single cohesive team on just a few large-scale research efforts. And we value impact — advancing our long-term goals of steerable, trustworthy AI — rather than work on smaller and more specific puzzles. We view AI research as an empirical science, which has as much in common with physics and biology as with traditional efforts in computer science. We're an extremely collaborative group, and we host frequent research discussions to ensure that we are pursuing the highest-impact work at any given time. As such, we greatly value communication skills. The easiest way to understand our research directions is to read our recent research. This research continues many of the directions our team worked on prior to Anthropic, including: GPT-3, Circuit-Based Interpretability, Multimodal Neurons, Scaling Laws, AI & Compute, Concrete Problems in AI Safety, and Learning from Human Preferences. Come work with us! Anthropic is a public benefit corporation headquartered in San Francisco. We offer competitive compensation and benefits, optional equity donation matching, generous vacation and parental leave, flexible working hours, and a lovely office space in which to collaborate with colleagues. Guidance on Candidates' AI Usage: Learn about our policy for using AI in our application process.