Senior Financial Analyst - Cost Accounting (Hybrid, 3 days onsite in Palo Alto, CA Office)

Company Description

Guardant Health is a leading precision oncology company focused on guarding wellness and giving every person more time free from cancer. Founded in 2012, Guardant is transforming patient care and accelerating new cancer therapies by providing critical insights into what drives disease through its advanced blood and tissue tests, real-world data and AI analytics. Guardant tests help improve outcomes across all stages of care, including screening to find cancer early, monitoring for recurrence in early-stage cancer, and treatment selection for patients with advanced cancer. For more information, visit guardanthealth.com and follow the company on LinkedIn, X (Twitter) and Facebook.

Job Description

Senior Financial Analyst, Cost Accounting

Guardant Health is looking for a Senior Financial Analyst, Cost Accounting who will contribute to the inventory and cost accounting functions of a publicly traded multinational company.  The position will play a key role in the development, implementation and improvement of inventory accounting, cost analysis and related system and process improvements. 

The ideal candidate will either have proven operational experience from companies with in-house productions or operations of commercial product(s), or public accounting experience with clients who have manufacturing operations.   This is a highly visible role, working cross-functionally and partnering closely with multiple Operations functions in addition to Finance and IT teams to deliver cost accounting solutions that support evolving business needs. 

To be successful, the incumbent will be a strong, collaborator, communicator, project/process manager, with the focus on details and the drive for continuous improvement.  The position will be based in our Palo Alto office reporting to the Director, Finance.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Deliver accurate, timely and efficient accounting processes including preparation of month-end and quarter-end close activities, monthly and quarterly account reconciliations and fluctuation analysis.
• Ensure the delivery of timely and accurate financial information that can be relied on by various functions with sufficient clarity and granularity enabling the measurement of operational efficiency.
• Lead COGS analytics with a strong finance focus; develop and maintain detailed COGS variance analysis.
• Manage monthly E&O review meetings and partner with Operations and Supply Chain to analyze inventory for potential excess and obsolete reserves and make related entries in accordance with the company’s policies.
• Plan, collect, and analyze data to drive the standard cost revaluation processes; implement cost update periodically with inputs from Supply Chain; provide impact analysis for review and approval; investigate/resolve significant variances in between updates.
• Analyze standard and actual costs, materials, external costs, labor and overhead costs, for inaccuracies, and lead the efforts to address the underlying root causes.
• Identify and maintain key metrics related to materials consumptions and external costs that highlight operations performance and help improve operational efficiency.
• Develop and maintain methodology for calculating and applying material costs, labor costs and overhead rates as required by generally accepted accounting principles.
• Support ERP and technology initiatives
• Assist with the coordination of the cycle count process and ensure discrepancies are resolved.
• Assist with the coordination of quarterly and/or annual physical inventories.
• Partner with Operations, supply chain, quality control, quality assurance to ensure the accuracy of inventory costs for Operations and R&D.
• Interact with internal/external auditors and provide various analysis and