Accounting Senior Manager - CPG Team Lead

Graphite Financial is a growing boutique finance, accounting, tax, and strategy firm (www.graphitefinancial.com) built to help startup and high-growth companies scale efficiently and sustainably. Graphite Financial is redefining the “finance department” for early-stage companies and VC-backed startups. We deliver high-caliber accounting and finance leadership and support to entrepreneurs and management teams building scalable, high-growth companies. Our clients are actively managing cash burn, measuring performance, reporting to investors, making capital allocation decisions, and preparing for fundraising. All of that takes expertise and time that founders don’t have and can’t afford to hire for. Graphite bridges the gap with flexible, fixed-fee support packages that provide fractional leadership and operational support from CFOs, Controllers, FP&A Managers, and Tax leaders.

ROLE PURPOSE

Ensure high-quality, consistent client delivery across an assigned team of CPG-focused Client Leads and staff by enabling, coaching, and coordinating their work. The Accounting Senior Manager — CPG Team Lead is accountable for team effectiveness across a portfolio of consumer packaged goods clients — not just individual client outcomes. This role requires both delivery leadership and people leadership, and carries formal responsibilities for performance reviews, career coaching, and development planning.

CPG is a demanding vertical. Clients in this space deal with trade promotion complexity, multi-channel revenue structures, inventory and landed cost challenges, and margin pressure that requires precision at every level. The Team Lead must be fluent enough in CPG accounting to coach Client Leads through these challenges credibly — and to recognize quality work product when they review it.

WHAT IT TAKES TO SUCCEED HERE

This is a fully remote leadership role within a client-facing professional services firm. You lead a team of Accounting Managers (Client Leads), Senior Associates, and Associates serving CPG clients who expect Graphite-quality accounting every month. The following qualities define what high performance looks like at this level.

•      CPG Accounting Fluency: You understand CPG accounting at a practitioner level — trade spend, deductions, landed cost, inventory reconciliation, gross-to-net revenue across channels. You do not need to prepare every reconciliation yourself, but you need to review one and know immediately whether it is right.

•      Leadership Without Proximity: You set clear expectations, provide consistent coaching, and hold your team accountable — entirely through remote communication and structured operating rhythms. Your presence is felt through the quality of what your team produces.

•      Client Credibility: You maintain the technical depth and professional presence to engage senior CPG client contacts directly when needed. Your team’s standards reflect yours — invest in both.

•      Coaching Over Fixing: Your job is to make Client Leads better — not to do their work for them. When something goes wrong on a CPG engagement, your first instinct is to coach, not to take over.

•      Responsiveness at Scale: You model the responsiveness you expect from your team. Delayed decisions and slow escalations create client risk in a fast-moving industry. Move fast, communicate clearly, and resolve things.

•      Accountability for Team Outcomes: You own what your team delivers across the CPG portfolio. You do not deflect to process or capacity. You identify problems early and solve them.

•      Professional Standards Enforcement: You hold Client Leads and Associates to a high bar for written communication, client interaction, and del