Controller
Accounting & Finance · Full-time
Washington, DC, USA · Seattle, WA, USA
About Endurance
Endurance is building the world's first modular subsea geothermal power plants, converting vast thermal resources under the ocean into gigawatts of baseload power. Backed by Founders Fund, Felicis, First Round Capital, and Point72 Ventures, our founding team includes veterans from SpaceX, Helion, Blue Origin, and Apple. We have completed multiple deep-ocean deployments to subsea volcanoes and are launching a long-term demonstration project this fall. By leveraging modular design, manufacturing scale, efficient drilling, and latent cooling on the seafloor, we are pioneering a new category of energy that outperforms traditional sources on environmental impact, deployment speed, and cost.
The Role
The Controller owns the books at Endurance and builds the machinery that maintains them. You will stand up the accounting function from scratch: the monthly close, GAAP financials, internal controls, ERP, and the multi-entity structure behind our projects. Your mandate is to make Endurance audit-ready from day one and keep it that way as we grow from startup into an owner-operator of power plants around the world.
We are scaling a factory, standing up project entities, and heading into institutional diligence, and none of it works without accounting infrastructure that holds up: a fast and reliable close, clean consolidation across entities, cost accounting that reflects real production, and controls that pass audit. The decisions you make on systems and entity structure this year are ones the company will live with for a decade.
You will report directly to the COO, transitioning to finance leadership as the team grows. You will work directly with executives, auditors, and outside counsel, design the function to run without heroics, and hire the accounting team as the company scales.
Key Responsibilities
Own the monthly close end to end, and drive it to a fast, reliable cadence with clean, GAAP-compliant financial statements.
Lead the implementation and ownership of our ERP (NetSuite or equivalent), including chart of accounts design, integrations, and process automation.
Design and operate internal controls appropriate to our stage, and mature them toward institutional and audit-grade standards.
Own multi-entity accounting and consolidation, including project SPVs and international subsidiaries as they come online, and set the bookkeeping standards for new entities in partnership with counsel.
Own audit readiness: select and manage auditors, run the audit process, and keep the company diligence-ready for lenders and investors.
Build cost and inventory accounting for our manufacturing operation, including standard costs, WIP, and production variances.
Own revenue recognition for first-of-a-kind contracts, including power sales, milestones, and long-term agreements.
Coordinate tax compliance and planning with outside advisors across federal, state, and international jurisdictions.
Own payroll, equity accounting, and stock-based compensation in partnership with People and outside counsel.
Own accounts payable, accounts receivable, and cash management operations, including banking relationships and treasury operations.
Partner with the Head of Finance to connect close-to-forecast, so actuals, budget, and forecast reconcile every month.
Build and lead the accounting team as the company grows, and stand up the systems and processes the function runs on.
Qualifications
~10 years of progressive accounting experience, including controller or assistant controller ownership at a scaling company. We care about what you have built, not where you sat; backgrounds in venture-backed hardware startups, energy or industrial companies, project finance companies, or public accounting followed by industry can all fit.
Track record of building the accounting function at a company that scaled: close, controls, ERP, and policies built from scratch, not inherited.
Deep GAAP fluency, including revenue recognition, inventory and cost accounting, capitalization policy, and stock-based compensation.
Experience owning multi-entity consolidation, ideally including SPVs, joint ventures, or international subsidiaries.
Hands-on experience leading an ERP implementation or migration (NetSuite strongly preferred).
Experience selecting and managing auditors and running annual audits, and owning responses to lender and investor financial diligence.
Experience with cost accounting in a manufacturing or hardware environment, including inventory, WIP, and standard costing.
Detail-oriented and organized manager who can own the close calendar, documentation, and management of outside advisors, auditors, and service vendors.
Clear, direct writing suitable for accounting memos, policy documentation, and audit and diligence responses.
Excellent communication skills, able to code switch across audiences: auditors, engineers, executives, and finance professionals.
Comfort operating with ambiguity, incomplete data, and short timelines.
Preferred Skills
CPA.
Experience at an energy, infrastructure, or project finance company, including project-level and SPV accounting.
Familiarity with project financing structures and the accounting they require: intercompany agreements, waterfall distributions, and lender reporting.
Experience with equity accounting at a venture-backed startup, including 409A cycles and cap table systems.
Prior experience standing up accounting for international subsidiaries or foreign-flag entities.
Exposure to IPO readiness, SOX, or public-company controls standards.
Experience with government contracts or grant accounting.
Experience operating in high-urgency organizations with aggressive commercial and operational.
Compensation, Benefits, & Perks
As a pre-revenue startup, Endurance Energy offers competitive base salaries and generous equity packages for full-time employees. Final base salary will be determined by an array of factors including internal equity, job-related knowledge, skills, and work experience.
A key aspect of our compensation philosophy is that value creation should be aligned with rewards. Right now this means equity is a significant portion of every full-time employee's compensation. As the company matures, there will be continued evolution and changes to the total rewards and total compensation package. What will always be true is that if we win, we win together. Equity is granted to every full-time employee as a meaningful piece of ownership. We believe the people building the company should share directly in the value they create.
In addition to a competitive base salary and equity, employees will receive all of our other great benefits and perks, including:
Benefits: Health, Dental, and Vision insurance coverage
Time Away: Flexible PTO including 12 paid company holidays
Global Fieldwork: Travel to fascinating deployment sites along oceanic ridges in locations like the Pacific Northwest, Hawaii, Iceland, Japan, New Zealand, and the Azores
Hands-on Experience: Participate in sea trials and deployment operations in partnership with leading oceanographic institutions
Cutting-edge Development: Work with technology that spans high-power electronics, marine systems, and clean energy
Impactful Work: Help solve one of the world's most pressing challenges
Dive Certification: Company-sponsored recreational dive certification
Other Perks: Access to the company boat, free meals and snacks, and the list goes on!
If you’re selected for consideration, a recruiter will be able to discuss in greater detail.
