About Us
Institute of Free Technology is a mission-driven tech startup studio. We take ideas from the drawing board to market with financial, technical, legal, people operations, and brand-building support at every step.
Our startups are free to focus on what they do best — building public goods to safeguard civil liberties in the digital age.
The role
We are building a Core Accounting function with the pace and discipline of an in-house Finance team in financial services or trading — timely management accounts delivered to FP&A on a tight cadence that compresses as the function matures; reliable books that downstream consumers can build on; problems owned and resolved within the function.
This position is a senior, autonomous hire responsible for ownership of the close and books integrity across a multi-entity, multi-jurisdiction group. Management accounts are the headline priority — the close cadence and data-quality standard are set to serve internal decision-making first; statutory treatments wrap around that, not the other way around.
Responsibilities
- Own the monthly close and the timely publication of clean management accounts to FP&A on the agreed cadence. The deadline is cultural — met every month. The first phase is establishing the cadence and data-quality standards on a solid foundation; the cycle is then expected to compress over time as systems, controls and team capability mature.
- Own the integrity and quality of the books — accruals, reconciliations, journal entries, intercompany — to a standard that supports confident downstream use by FP&A, Exec and Investors.
- Define and enforce the data-quality boundary with Crypto Operations — on-chain transaction records arriving complete, reconciled and ready for entry to the books, with the upstream feedback loop owned where they don’t. The integrity of the books cannot be policed downstream of bad data.
- Own the statutory accounts and local filings for each of the group’s sister entities across multiple jurisdictions; coordinate with local accountancy firms where useful, expanding the network where it improves throughput or quality.
- Account confidently for complex financial instruments and digital-asset positions — options and FX hedges, DeFi positions, native token operations — and the IFRS / US GAAP treatments these require. Use Cryptio (and any external technical-accounting advice you commission) effectively.
- Own the financial-controls framework — segregation of duties, control owners, periodic review — and bring discipline and structure to the function.
- Lead, mentor and develop the small accounting team, with capacity and intent to expand. Hands-on enough to fix anything yourself, with a team that does the low-level work as it scales.
- Drive the adoption of AI and modern automation across Finance operations — in partnership with internal technical resources — progressively removing low-level work from the team and freeing capacity for higher-value activity. Pace calibrated to what the function can absorb at the time.
- Establish the function in a posture that is verifiably investor-diligence-ready by year-end, and maintain that posture as the business scales.
- Partner with FP&A (who own management commentary, variance analysis and dashboards), with Treasury / Crypto Operations (who hand over the on-chain transaction record), and with external service providers (local accountants, payroll provider) to keep the function running smoothly.
Must haves
- Recognised senior accounting qualification (ACA, ACCA, CIMA, CPA or international equivalent), with significant post-qualification experience in industry — financial services, trading, banking, hedge funds, or a similarly fast-moving in-house Finance environment. You take problems on and drive them to resolution under your own initiative.
- Hands-on group controllership at multi-entity, multi-jurisdiction scale. You have personally closed and produced statutory accounts across multiple sister entities, dealt with intercompany, and effectively leveraged external advisor relationships (local accountants, payroll providers, etc.) for throughput.
- Comfortable accounting for complex financial instruments — options, FX hedges, derivatives, structured positions, fair-value vs. cost questions, mark-to-market. Crypto-specific accounting experience is useful but not the bar; the bar is fluency with the instruments and the judgement to handle whatever arrives in the books.
- Leader who is also operator. You will personally close the books some months, file stat accounts hands-on, and write the rare technical-accounting memo. Equally, you will lead a team that does most of the work most of the time — and you will hold them to your standard.
- Direct, accountable communicator. You surface problems early with proposed fixes, take responsibility when something goes wrong, and own the quality of what leaves your function.
- Strong bias for structure, automation and a forward view on where Finance is going. You design controls and close routines that work without you, and you see AI and modern automation as the default direction for the function — spotting opportunities, sponsoring the work, and partnering effectively with the technical resources who build the tooling. You don’t need to build it yourself, but you don’t wait for someone else to use it either.
Should haves
- Direct experience accounting for digital assets and DeFi positions — exposure to Cryptio, Bitwave, Tres, or equivalent sub-ledgers; familiarity with token accounting (own-token holdings, vesting schedules, governance tokens, token-for-equity).
- Experience preparing a Finance function for first-time external investor diligence on a finite timeline.
- Experience leading a small remote team across multiple time zones.
- Familiarity with the broader Finance stack — accounting systems, AP automation, sub-ledger integrations, reporting workflows.
Hiring process
- Introduction call with the Talent team
- Interview with the CFO
- Compensated Task (2-3 hours of work)
- Interview with Program Lead
- Interview with Co-founder
The steps may change along the way if we see it makes sense to adapt the interview stages, so please consider the above as a guideline.
Note: A background check might be required for this role.