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Tern is a venture-backed SaaS company transforming the $127B travel agency industry by providing modern infrastructure to small travel businesses. The company is expanding beyond subscription-based software into fintech and transaction-based revenue streams, requiring a complete overhaul of its finance and accounting function.
You will be Tern's first dedicated finance and accounting hire, building the accounting function from the ground up. Currently, bookkeeping is outsourced and the chart of accounts was designed for a pure software company. Every decision about how the new business gets recorded is unmade—this is your opportunity to shape it.
You will report to the Chief of Staff, who currently covers finance and will remain a close partner on investor-facing work and supplier economics. You own the accounting outright and serve as the company's accounting authority for both internal and external stakeholders.
Key responsibilities include: restructuring the P&L to reflect the actual businesses Tern runs with unit economics per transaction; setting revenue recognition policy across all business verticals; overseeing the month-end close process; owning burn analysis (policy, categorization, and reconciliation between P&L and actual cash outflows); writing accounting requirements for payment and operations products and partnering with engineering to implement them; mapping and closing tax exposure from new business lines; and serving as the accounting SME for internal teams and users.
You will work in a mission-driven environment focused on operational excellence, user obsession, and moving fast without sacrificing quality. The company values growth, optimistic agency, and healthy tension—everyone has a voice and responsibility to use it.
REQUIREMENTS:
- Deep accounting expertise: You've owned technical accounting at a company where the answer wasn't in a playbook. You can reason from accounting standards rather than precedent and are the person others consult when nobody knows how something should be booked.
- Built the function: You've been the first or earliest accounting hire at one or two startups, building the chart of accounts, close process, and controls from scratch rather than inheriting them.
- Revenue recognition judgment: You've made gross-vs-net calls under ASC 606 and lived with the consequences, ideally at a company that was or became the merchant of record. You can reason through the principal-vs-agent test, not just recite it.
- Payments and marketplace accounting: You've accounted for money flowing through the company (held funds, payouts, chargebacks, interchange, processing fees).
- Requirements writing: You've communicated ledger requirements to engineering teams and had them built. You can hold that line without owning the roadmap.
- Close ownership: You can spot a wrong close by inspection. You've owned month-end, not just reviewed output.
- Pace: You operate without defined processes and don't wait for them. You pick up unowned work.
BONUS:
- Travel tech experience or industries with commissions, supplier statements, and trust accounting
- CPA certification
- Experience in institutional fundraising and diligence processes
- Track record replacing outsourced bookkeeping with in-house function
- Multi-entity or multi-currency experience
